220 WILD WHITE CATTLE. 
Ballads,’ and in Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient 
English Poetry,” where we are informed that it was 
entered on the Stationers’ books in 1591, although 
undoubtedly of much older date. Much of this 
story, as Mr. Storer has observed, may be mythical, 
and many of its circumstances fabulous; but it 
nevertheless seems to prove just as clearly the exist- 
ence in very ancient times of the dangerous and 
ferocious wild cow, as the popular ballads about 
Robin Hood prove the existence of fallow deer in 
Sherwood Forest in the time of King John.* 
In the Welsh laws of Howell Dha, which date 
from about A.D. 940, or before the middle of the 
roth century,t we find white cattle with red ears 
(that is, resembling in colour the wild cattle of 
Chillingham) ordered to be paid in compensation for 
offences committed against the Princes of Wales. 
It is a question, however, whether the description 
indicates a difference of breed, or merely a difference 
of colour in individuals of the ordinary breed of 
Welsh cattle. 
In the forest laws of King Canute (A.D. 1014-1035), 
wild cattle are thus referred to: ‘There are 
also a great number of cattle which, although they 
live within the limits of the forest, and are subject 
to the charge and care of the middle sort of men, 
* See also Woods’ remarks on this point in his “ Description of a 
Fossil Skull of an Ox found in Wiltshire,” 4to, 1839. 
+ An English translation of these laws will be found appended to 
* The Myvyrian Archeology of Wales collected out of Ancient Manu- 
scripts,” ed. Owen Jones and others (Denbigh, 1870), pp. 1014-1062. 
Vide cap. ii. § 3. 
