Vajra

“ Sometimes again the corn-spirit hides himself amongst the cut corn in the barn to reappear in bull or cow form at threshing. Thus at Wurmlingen, in Thüringen, the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the Cow, or rather the Barley-cow, Oats-cow, Peas-cow, or the like, according to the crop. He is entirely enveloped in straw ”

“ In one District the undigested grain left by the gorged bullocks on the threshing-floor is his portion, and a portion for which he will sometimes fight. Everywhere he is a carrion-eater, paying little or no regard to the disease from which the animal may have died.” The custom above mentioned of washing grain from the dung of cattle is not so repugnant to the Hindus, owing to the sacred character of the cow, as it is to us. ”

“ Purer pleasure have I never experienced than when, in riding over occasionally with our children, we saw the threshing of wheat and barley in progress, and heard the women singing, or the little children shouting at their games. Sixty cows used to be driven at noon to drink at the spring. ”

“ As some village girls were spinning whilst they tended the cattle grazing in the neighbourhood of a ravine, an old man with a long white beard—so long a beard that it reached to his girdle—approached them, and said, “Girls, girls, take care of that ravine. If one of you should drop her spindle down the cliff, her mother will be turned into a cow that very moment.” ”

“ For their drink, they draw a liquor from barley or other grain; and ferment the same so as to make it resemble wine. Nay, they who dwell upon the bank of the Rhine deal in wine. Their food is very simple; wild fruit, fresh venison, or coagulated milk. They banish hunger without formality, without curious dressing and curious fare. In extinguishing thirst, they use not equal temperance. If you will but humour their excess in drinking, and supply them with as much as they covet, it will be no less easy to vanquish them by vices than by arms. ”

“ At that moment herdsmen, cheese, cows, and fire vanished, and the chamois-hunter found himself alone in the deserted hut.
But when he told his night adventure at home, he learned that a small piece of meat had been cut out of the left hind quarter of his best cow. One of the oldest inhabitants of the village, moreover, informed him that the men whom he had seen were wicked herdsmen, who had neglected their duties while in the flesh, and had besides been guilty of perjury. ”

“ At some distance from the house and barn lies the great pasture land, where in the sunny autumn days eight sleek cows graze contentedly upon the fragrant grass, making sweet music as they wander to and fro,—for each cow wears a little bell about her neck. Sometimes the whole herd starts up together into lively movement ”

“ So she kept with the herd, and when the cows reached the door of the great barn, she slipped in between them, unseen in the fog and gathering dusk; for though the sun would not quite disappear, it hung low and dim on the horizon and shed but faint light through the misty air. ”

“ Whence comes dairy? There is no such word on the Continent; it is neither Latin nor Teutonic. It has no Celtic root. I have been describing the douar, which is indeed a camp; but the features which forced themselves upon my attention belonged to the sheepfold. The people are shepherds. In every tent the chief utensils are the milk-pails, leathern churns, and butter-pots; the chief produce and food, milk and butter. Why is the Arab camp a circle? It is to fold the cattle. Thence the name, douar and deïra. The exploits of Abd-el-Kadir and his Deïra have made the word familiar to us in Europe. ”

“ The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will. ”

“ Have I ever before mentioned that our cows and sheep are furnished with bells, not for the mere sake of the tinkling sound, delightful as it is in the stillness of evening, but as indispensable for guiding us through the woods to the places where the cattle are grazing? ”

“ These cows always move along the sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture; they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for him. ”

“ Luxuriant grass grew all the way up the steepest slopes, carpeting even the topmost ridges, and the climate was so genial that cattle dotted the hillside pastures during nine or ten months of the year. The cows were then far larger and fatter than any we see now, and their milk was so abundant that they were milked thrice a day into huge ponds, or tanks, where the herdsmen went about in skiffs to do the skimming. ”

“ A mountain farm often boasts in summer some three score to a hundred head of cattle, besides the pigs to fatten, and the goats, from whose milk is made a delicate little round cream-cheese, the cabecou. The herd is under the care of a responsible dairyman, aided by two or three bouviers, or cowboys, and at least one little cowherd. It is wonderful to see how mere a hut suffices to house them all. The cattle sleep in the open, save the youngest calves, who have a little byre all to themselves. ”

“ In the grove where the cuckoo is building her nest.
There the milkmaid sits down to the left of the cow,
In harvest they sow, and in haytime they plough;
While mowers, in attitudes gladsome and blythe,
Impossible antics perform with the scythe. ”

“ I cannot dismiss this subject, the feeding of cattle, without just mentioning another practice common among our best farmers in Bavaria, which, I think, deserves to be known. They chop the green clover with which they feed their cattle, and mix with it a considerable quantity of chopped straw. They pretend that this rich succulent grass is of so clammy a nature, that unless it be mixed with chopped straw, hay, or some other dry fodder, cattle which are fed with it do not ruminate sufficiently. ”

“ The cows are milked and all stable work done before breakfast, and some one drives them out to pasture. The men remain a-field until an hour before sunset. They must be content with a cold dinner, as is the usual custom with mechanics and laborers. ”

“ The herd, which before breakfast had been driven north to the river meadows, was returning to feed upon the young crops, and was dangerously near the river edge of the wheat. The cattle were grazing as they advanced, the cows leading and the beef cattle bringing up the rear. And when the foremost animals saw the youngest brother cantering toward them with the pack, they only hurried forward the faster so as to get a taste of the forbidden grain before they were compelled to turn tail. ”

“ He gazed as if it were strange and wonderful to see a woman washing dishes, sweeping, and cooking at her own hearth. He saw her leg-rope and bail the cow, lead the cow and calf to the fenced paddock on the top of the hill after the milking, and carry buckets of water from the creek to the house, the sunlight touching her bare head and flashing from the water in her pails. ”

“ At midday some one drove past the turnpike-keeper's house, taking corn to the mill, and observed that no smoke was coming from the chimney. Why had old Vogt got no fire? Even if he didn't want to cook food for himself, the cows ought to have their warm meal. On his way home the same peasant heard the cows mooing incessantly in a troubled manner, and he related all this at the ale-house in the evening. ”

“ The cows are driven home in time for the evening milking, and are put into the barnyard at night with green fodder brought home by the returning teams. After the "chores" are done, and a hearty and substantial supper is eaten,—the principal meal of the day,—all hands will be too weary for much enjoyment of the evening, but not so weary that they will not appreciate the difference between the lounging places of a village and the former dulness at the farm. Other farmers in the neighborhood will, many of them, also be milk producers ”

“ The people, dressed in their Sunday best, assemble in the villages through which the herds must pass, to exchange merry jests with the herdsmen, bid them God speed, and admire the fat sleek cows, wearing around their necks bells of different sizes and varying tones. ”

“ Day after day rising to feed the cattle, night after night bending over the sooty stove listening to the ceaseless voice of the wind as it beat and brushed, whispered, moaned, and piped or screamed around the windows and eaves—this was their life, varied with an occasional visit to the store or the post-office, or by the call of a neighbour. ”

“ So they were left very badly off, and they went to live in a tiny cottage, and did all the housework themselves. They had a kailyard in front of the cottage, and a little field behind it, and they had a cow that grazed in the field, and which they fed with the cabbages that grew in the kailyard. For everyone knows that to feed cows with cabbages makes them give a larger quantity of milk. ”

“ But the regulated price of flour is so low that the farmer often prefers to feed the wheat to his cattle. By walking fifteen miles into the country, the women of Marki, are often able to strike a bargain with a peasant. They bring their treasure home, convert it into bread, walk another, six miles in the opposite direction and hawk it in Warsaw. ”

“ Sometimes I think of the good-natured, pied cow that would let me stroke her while the dairy-maid was milking her. Then I [112] fancy myself running after the dairy-maid into the nice, clean dairy, and see the pans full of milk and cream. Then I remember the wood-house; it had once been a barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. I used to peep about among the fagots to find the eggs the hens sometimes left there. A hen, grandmamma said, is a kindly bird, always laying more eggs than she wants on purpose to give them to her mistress for puddings and custards. ”

“ Witches took the milk from cows; the Fairies had cattle of their own; and when they attacked the farmer’s dairy, it was to take away the cows themselves, i.e. the cow in appearance remained, but its benefit (the real cow) was gone. The Elves have even the impertinence at times to drive back the cow at night to pasture on the corn of the person from whom they have stolen it. ”

“ Once as they were sauntering homeward by the brink of the turbid Eger, they came to a man lying on the grass with a pipe in his mouth, and lazily watching from under his fallen lids the cows grazing by the river-side, while in a field of scraggy wheat a file of women were reaping a belated harvest with sickles, bending wearily over to clutch the stems together and cut them with their hooked blades. ”

“ As soon as they rise, tea is made in a big kettle, and is taken with roasted flour, and then the day's work begins. The cows are milked, snow is melted in a big kettle, cups and kettles are scrubbed with ashes, flour is ground, wood is chopped and the women busy themselves among the sheep. You see them, humming a scrap of song, making their way carefully through the tightly packed flock of sheep, carrying one or two lambs under their arms, kissing and caressing the bleating animals. ”

“ There, more than a thousand people crowded together—men, women and children who fled from their homes. The milk of the cattle, a few handfuls of rye or wheat pounded between two stones entertain rather than appease the tortures of hunger. A steaming, suffocating and nauseous heat, produced by the agglomeration of people and cattle, pervades the gloomy place. ”

“ If the fiery wheel was successfully conveyed to the bank of the river and extinguished in the water, the people looked for an abundant vintage that year, and the inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a waggon-load of white wine from the surrounding vineyards. On the other hand, they believed that, if they neglected to perform the ceremony, the cattle would be attacked by giddiness and convulsions and would dance in their stalls.399
[The Midsummer fires in Bavaria; Cattle driven through the fire; the new fire; omens of the harvest drawn from the fires; burning discs thrown into the air.] ”

“ Also, she flung from her the teat of the cow which she had in her hand, and behold! it clove to the side of the cave, and when she would have removed it, it would no more be removed, but milk ran therefrom as from the living cow. And the milk thereof was good for making butter, which her soul loved.
Thus she lived in the cave, and was provided with all she desired to support life. One day it befell that the memory of her husband coming over her, she said within herself, "Perhaps, now that the last cow is slaughtered and eaten, my old man may be suffering hunger ”

“ The women look after the calves, make tea in the open air, or prepare milk in various ways; the men, mounted on fiery horses, armed with a long pole, gallop about, guiding to the best pastures the great herds of cattle which undulate over the surrounding country like waves of the sea. All of a sudden these pictures, anon so full of animation, disappear. Men, tents, herds, all have vanished in the twinkling of an eye. ”

“ They would lurk around people’s houses, looking for an opportunity to steal butter and cheese from the dairies, and they skulked about the cow-yards, in order to milk the cows and the goats, which they did so thoroughly that many a morning there was not a drop of milk to be had. ”