THE NORSE CONTINGENT 51 



propitious dun cow found at Durham (some time 

 back now), which directed the monks attending 

 the remains of St. Cuthbert to that seat of ease 

 and magnificence." ^ 



This legendary cow is of unusual interest. 

 Her reward was to have her effigy carved in 

 stone set up in one of the turrets of Durham 

 Cathedral about the year 1300. After the 

 Reformation she was the subject of the rhyme 

 that— 



" The dun cow's milk 

 Makes the prebend's wife go in silk," 



which if it be not sufficient to prove that the 

 original cow herself was dun, is evidence that 

 some of her post- Reformation successors were of 

 that colour. That, however, is of small moment 

 compared with the possibility that the model of 

 the effigy may have been hornless. Having 

 become worn and effaced, a new effigy was put 

 up about 1778. The original, as will be seen from 

 the illustration below, which is a copy of Grimm's 

 drawing as taken from Hutchinson's " History of 

 Durham,"^ had no horns. But the Durham 

 people of 1778 had no idea that a Durham cow 

 could ever have been hornless. Weather and time 

 must have made the old cow polled, and the new 

 one therefore was carved to look a Shorthorn ! 



» Quoted in Bates's " Thomas Bates and the Kirklevington 

 Shorthorns," 1897, p. 45. 

 2 1 785-1 794, vol. ii. p. 226. 



