Bos primigenius in Britain: or, why do fairy cows have red ears?

Folklore, April, 2002 by Jessica Hemming

Abstract

Many medievalists, especially scholars of Celtic literature, have observed that red-eared white animals are associated with fairies and other supernatural beings. What has not been satisfactorily answered is why this should be so. This article offers a possible explanation, suggesting that this widespread phenomenon is rooted not in fantasy but in zoology.

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It is a commonplace of Celtic [1] folklore that white animals with red ears come from the Otherworld. Cattle of this description occur in some of the earliest Irish sources, while similarly marked dogs accompany the king of Annwn (the Welsh Otherworld) in the Middle Welsh tale of Pwyll and are reported right into this century. In a presentation to the Folklore Society in 1928, Miss Moore Douglas said of the Isle of Man that "fairy dogs, usually white with red ears and feet, are frequently seen running across the fields in the evening" (Howey 1972, 350), and Marie Trevelyan reported that the Welsh Cwn Annwn were sometimes seen as "very small dogs, white as the drifted snow, with tiny ears quite rose coloured inside" (Trevelyan 1909, 47). There also seems to have been a particular fashion for red-eared white horses in the thirteenth century, especially in Arthurian material, but also in at least one Norse saga where the motif is almost certainly borrowed from Ireland (Loomis 1949, 90; Turville-Petre 1953, 248-9). The present discussion will be limited to cattle, as they are the earliest attested animals of this type and as dogs and horses seem to have only acquired this colour pattern by analogy.

Red-Eared White Cows in Medieval Irish and Welsh Sources

The earliest accounts of red-eared white cows are in certain of the Irish heroic tales, including, naturally enough, some of the cattle raids. In the Tain Bo Fraich, the hero's mother gives him "twelve cows out of the fairy-mound, and they white with red ears" (lines 5-6. My translation). [2] In the Tain Bo Cuailnge, the war goddess known as the Morrigan transforms herself into a white heifer with red ears when she tries to destroy Cu Chulainn. In the Compert Mongain ocus Serc Duibhe-Lacha, the hero foolishly promises away his wife in return for the king of Leinster's beautiful red-eared white cattle (Meyer 1895, 75). There are further references to these cattle--always noted for their beauty or purity and frequently specified as coming from the fairy mounds--in Tochmarc Etaine, Tain Bo Regamna, Caith Maighe Lena, and the lives of Saints Brigid, Ailbhe, Mo Lua, Columcille, Finian and Ciaran. The twelfth-century Metrical Dinshenchas also contain a place name stanza about Howth which mentions "seven hundred kine, red eared, pure white." [3] Finally, in one of the Irish law tracts, the penalty for satirising King Cernodon of Ulster includes "seven white cows with red ears" (Dillon 1932, 54). Apart from this last item, the Irish references are all purely literary. Either explicitly or implicitly, they associate these cattle with the Otherworld; at the least, they have a generalised magical aura. So why does white with red ears indicate fairy origin?

There seem to be two main choices of explanation. First, it may be that these are entirely fanciful beasts, associated in the imagination and in fantastical literature with Otherworldliness because red and white are both "magical" colours. The case is clear enough for white. In many cultures, white is variously connected with holiness, with ghosts, or with sacrificial animals. Most relevant in this context is the polysemy of the words for "white" in Celtic languages. Welsh gwyn is a good example, carrying the primary meanings "white, bright, shining, fair" and the secondary meanings "holy, blessed." Red is a bit more problematic. In his classic discussion of Anglo-Saxon magic, G. Storms gives evidence for red having been a magic colour in ancient Germanic society (Storms 1948, 102-3). This may be relevant to the early medieval Irish and Welsh, but we just do not know. Comparative studies of more recent British folklore suggest that red, white and black are typically the most symbolically significant colours, but again this provides no real information about their importance in medieval Ireland and Wales (Hutchings 1991, 57-8). The second option is that red-eared white cattle really did exist and were believed to come from the Otherworld because they were rare, or unusual, or of special value in some other way. This seems much the better explanation, for two reasons.

First, in addition to the imaginative Irish examples, there are a couple of other mentions of these special cattle, which make them seem rather more real. The first is an often-cited passage in the thirteenth-century Iorwerth Redaction of the Welsh laws in which the sarhaed (or payment due for insult) of the king of Aberffraw is set at "a hundred cows for every cantred he has, with a red-eared [white] bull for every hundred cows," plus some very precisely-measured pieces of gold (Jenkins 1990, 5). [4] The Cyfnerth and Blegywryd redactions add the following: "The status of the lord of Dinefwr is also adorned with white cows, each with its head to the tail of the next, with a bull between every twenty of them, so as to fill the space from Argoel to the court of Dinefwr" (Jenkins 1990, 6). It seems unlikely that the laws would specify payment in imaginary animals. Also, according to the Reverend John Storer, the entry for the year 1211 in Holinshed's chronicle reports that the wife of William de Braose (a powerful Norman baron with lands in Wales) gave to the queen of England "a gift of foure hundred kine and one bull, of coulour all white, the ears excepted, which were red" (Storer 1879, 107). [5] Evidently this was insufficient, as King John was to murder Matilda de Braose and her eldest son, but one may presume that the cattle were real. Finally, a custom current at Stretton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire at least until the 1870s required the villagers to pay "Wroth or Ward money" to the lord of the Hundred of Knightlow. In default they would forfeit "twenty shillings for every penny, and a white bull with red ears and a red nose" (Storer 1879, 104). Storer, who recorded this custom in 1874, said that local tradition claimed that it pre-dated the Norman Conquest. While this is, of course, unverifiable, it does at least suggest a practice of some generations' standing.