THE CADZOW HERD OF WHITE CATTLE. 237 



dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. In a note at page 8 

 he says : " These cattle, fierce and untamed, carefully 

 preserved from the breed that roamed wild in 'woody 

 Caledon' in ancient times, are to be seen in the Duke 

 of Hamilton's park at this day. They are beautiful 

 milk-white, with black muzzles, ears, and hoofs. The 

 author of this ballad counted to the number of 

 nineteen, young and old, about the middle of January, 

 this present year, 1809. Some of the cows have fine 

 moony horns " — an expression evidently from Leyden's 

 Scenes of Infancy — "but the bulls that have been 

 kept for a number of years back, are mostly humble ; 

 they want that fierce majestic appearance that the 

 horned ones have, but they are much safer." Safer 

 certainly ; as runs the proverb — " An illwilly coo sud 

 hae short horns." Burns nowhere says that Sir 

 Walter had been misinformed as to the cattle, and 

 his note is guarded in expression and might apply to 

 cattle reintroduced from some other place. He does 

 not say that they were the breed that had been kept 

 there for centuries ; but from the breed that roamed 

 in woody Caledon. He says also, evidently in connec- 

 tion with the descriptions of the cattle in former 

 times, that " the bulls that have been kept for a 

 number of years back are mostly humble." "A num- 

 ber of years " throws us back to the beginning of the 

 century, to the time when the herd was undoubtedly 

 reconstituted or reintroduced ; and with this it is 

 to be noted that the small number of the herd — 

 nineteen, young and old — in Burns' time is also in 

 accordance. Further, the fact of the bulls beings 

 hornless and the cows horned is most unusual, and 

 clearly betokens a heterogeneousness such as would 

 characterise a herd in process of formation from 

 different sources. 



When I first began some years ago to take notes 

 as to the cattle, I had not the slightest suspicion 

 that there had been any break in the continuity of 

 the herd at so recent a period as the end of last 

 century, and when the evidence began to force me 



