if one escapes the memory there will be an end of the story, and it will be impossible to tell another word of it." Cervantes probably adapted the story of counting goats from a story of counting sheep in the early twelfth-century Spanish work Disciplina clericalis. The section The King and his Story-teller (section 12) uses the idea of counting sheep humorously. Disciplina clericalis draws mainly on literary sources from the Islamic world. Counting sheep was probably a widely recognized practice in the Islamic world before the early twelfth century. Several late 19th-century writers mention the use of counting sheep in order to aid sleep; the period of the 1860s–70s appears to be when it became a commonplace term, for example in Sabine Baring-Gould's Through flood and flame (1868): "She turned her face to the wall with a weary sigh, and endeavoured, by counting sheep going through a hedge-gap, to trick sleep into closing her eyelids." Macfarlane, Alexander William wrote about the technique in Insomnia and Its Therapeutics (1891). In popular culture Serta, an American mattress manufacturer, uses animated sheep characters in its "Counting Sheep" advertising campaign, which it launched in 2000. The advertisements and characters were created by Aardman Animations. In Goodnight Mr. Bean, the thirteenth episode of the Mr. Bean television series, the titular character has difficulty falling asleep. After failing other methods, he takes out a picture of a flock of sheep and begins counting them, first with his finger and then, after losing count a few times, with the assistance of a calculator. When he sees the number of sheep (albeit inaccurate) on the calculator display, he finally and instantly falls asleep. In Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps, a 2012 series of sports-themed animated shorts, the "counting sheep" cliché is referenced in the episode entitled "Steeplechase". In the short, Shaun and his fellow sheep participate in the steeplechase event. Bitzer the dog, who is the referee, and the other sheep and farm animals, who are spectators, all fall asleep watching Shaun and the other sheep running around the track and jumping over the hurdles. The title of Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, references this term. See also Yan Tan Tethera Black sheep References Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Chapter XX Meditation Sheep in popular culture Sleep