A High Meadow is full of comedy, tragedy and melodrama, all centred around the village of Ballybobawn and Eddie Drannaghy, the Ram of God (a former trainee priest who was cynically seduced by the American wife of his cousin, fathered a child and was forced to leave the seminary), and his brothers Murt and Will.

John B. Keane weaves an inimitable tapestry of rural life: people good and bad, weak and powerful - gardaí, priests, and travellers, and towering above them all the personality of the Ram of God.