XI. 



THE POETS' HERDS. 



In the earliest poetry of the world, the prose myth, the 

 "epic exploit" of cattle is so conspicuous a theme that, if 

 I might take poetical license, I should speak of " hornM 

 legend " and of "lowing verse." 



That amazing puzzle, " the Solar myth," is largely bovine, 

 and the primitive mythology being naturally zoological, found 

 its constant illustration and most frequent subject in the bulls, 

 cows, and calves without which man, in the first days of uni- 

 versal discomfort, would have been himself little better than 

 a beast of the field. The phenomena of Nature represented 

 to the bucolic generation a herd of cattle, and nothing more. 

 Everything suggested itself to them as a mode of beef. 



Men started with a cow as the original datum of con- 

 sciousness, and round it, as the one and only positive fact 

 they possessed, their lives and thoughts were grouped. Let 

 their imagination wander as far as it might, it never got 

 outside the cattle-run, and fancy could not stray beyond 

 ear-shot of the lowing kine. As they fed their bodies upon 

 the produce of their herds, so they pastured their minds 

 upon beef and milk. 'J'he skies became meadows, and the 

 firmament a cattle-yard. 'I'iiunder lowed, and the hurricane 

 bellowed. The lightning was horned, and the storm, rat- 

 tling overhead, went on hoofs. Black and white, red, dun, 

 and dappled, the clouds went grazing or ramping across the 



