120 BIRDS AND POETS 
there were yet fields given up to grass, they found 
ample pasturage in the woods. ‘Their wide-spread- 
ing horns gleamed in the duskiness, and their paths 
and the paths of the cows became the future roads 
and highways, or even the streets of great cities. 
All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, 
and cherish and cultivate the cow. In Norway she 
is a great feature. Professor Boyesen describes what 
he calls the seter, the spring migration of the dairy 
and dairy maids, with all the appurtenances of but- 
ter and cheese making, from the valleys to the dis- 
tant plains upon the mountains, where the grass 
keeps fresh and tender till fall. It is the great 
event of the year in all the rural districts. Nearly 
the whole family go with the cattle and remain 
with them. At evening the cows are summoned 
home with a long horn, called the door, in the hands 
of the milkmaid. The whole herd comes winding 
down the mountain-side toward the seter in obedi- 
ence to the mellow blast. 
What were those old Vikings but thick-hided 
bulls that delighted in nothing so much as goring 
each other? And has not the charge of beefiness 
been brought much nearer home to us than that? 
But about all the northern races there is something 
that is kindred to cattle in the best sense,— some- — 
thing in their art and literature that is essentially 
pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, 
ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced, —a charm of 
kine, the virtue of brutes. 
The cow belongs more especially to the northern 
