I know a joke about that.
Young lad gets taken on as The Boy on a hillfarm. He does every mucky task under the sun. Long days, hard work, cold hard bed, and not a lot of fun.
Mostly they feed him porridge, but the old cockeral died, so they had broth and they had boiled chicken from him. Not exactly good food, but a wee change.
A month or two later and the old goose died, and again he got broth and boiled fowl.
The farmer found a myxied rabbit, so they had that too.
Then one of the old sheep died, and they had braxie for weeks.
When the old granny died, he ran away...
There used to be an awful lot more sheep about, and sheep can feed on poorer ground than cattle. No wonder that mutton was a common dinner. It became fashionable for folks to want lamb though and the connotations of scrapie kind of put many off mutton too.
Hear? how to Tunnock's manage to get mutton for their pies though ? they still make them by the thousand, and they're not expensive, and it is mutton. Tastes just exactly the same as they did in the early 1960's says my English cousin who has to have them when he comes up to visit
M