THE COW OF DUNS MORE HEATH. 57 



Stanza 14. 

 " On Dunsmore lieath I also slew 

 A monstrous wild and cruel beast, 

 Called the dun cow of Dunsmore heath, 

 Which many people had oppressed," &c. 



The ballad proceeds to state that some of the bones of 

 both boar and cow still lie in the Castle of Warwick, 

 but one of the boar's " shield bones " 



" Hangs in the city of Coventry." 



I am quite willing to allow that much of this story may- 

 be mythical, and many of its circumstances fabulous. 

 That matters not to my argument, which only requires 

 this to be conceded : that the memory of the wild boar 

 and the wild cow existed at a very early period in this 

 country, and that local traditions and histories clustered 

 round them. Had the animals been themselves suppo- 

 sititious, like the dragon, the case would have been 

 altogether different; but as it is, I take it to prove just 

 as clearly the existence in very ancient times of the 

 dangerous and ferocious wild cow as the popular ballads 

 about Eobin Hood prove the existence of fallow deer in 

 Sherwood Forest in the time of King John : as clearly 

 as the possibly exaggerated strains of some Eastern 

 poet, recapitulating in extravagant terms the hunting 

 exploits of the Prince of Wales in India, may prove 

 centuries hence to the then perhaps regenerated 

 Orientals that their country once had pathless jungles 

 infested by elephants and man-devouring tigers. " It 

 proves," say the learned editors of the English trans- 

 lation of Cuvier's " Eegne Animal," "that in the tenth 

 century such actions were still in the memory of the 

 people, if not actually common."* 



* Griffith's " Cuvier," vol. iv., p. 416. 



