ENGLISH OXEN. wv 



descended from the wild Urns, taking as a type the living semi-domesticated white oxen 

 with red ears which are preserved in Lord Tankerville's park at Chillingham, near 

 Berwick. The earliest record of the animal is to be found in the Venedotian code of 

 laws/ ascribed to Howel Dha, and which probably is of the tenth or perhaps eleventh 

 century, the usage implied by the laws being probably much earlier than the codification. 

 The fine to be paid for injury done the King of Aberfraw is a hundred cows for each 

 hundred townships, and " a white bull with red ears to each hundred cows." In the later 

 Dimetian code the Lord of Denevwr is to have for the infringement of his prerogative 

 as many white cattle with red ears as shall extend in close succession from Argoel to the 

 Palace of Denevwr, with a bull of the same colour with each score of them." In the still 

 later Latin translation of the Welsh laws one hundred white cows with red ears were con- 

 sidered equivalent to a hundred and fifty black cattle. The specification of white with 

 red ears in these passages is considered by Mr. Youatt and Mr. Darwin 2 to denote merely 

 a difference of colour and not of breed. From, however, its continual occurrence, and 

 from its agreement with characters of the Chillingham ox, there can be little doubt that 

 it denotes a difference of breed ; and this conclusion is rendered almost certain since, 

 in comparison with the Welsh black cattle, it denotes the most prominent features. The 

 size also of the Chillingham ox is about one third greater than that of the black Welsh 

 and dark-coloured Highland cattle, the ratio between them being the same as that 

 between the hundred white cattle and the hundred and fifty black of the 'Leges Walliae.' 

 The regular presents of cattle made by the Cambrian princes to the kings of England 

 contain the same distinct specification of colour. White, too, with red ears, was the herd 

 of four hundred oxen from the wilds of Brecknock with which Maud de Breos purchased 

 peace, for her offending lord, of King John, through the intercession of his queen. 3 In the 

 early Irish records white cattle are frequently mentioned. 



The Chillingham cattle are very generally considered to have been once living in 

 Britain in a wild state, because of their shyness and their aversion to man. These two 

 characteristics, however, seem to me to be the natural result of the conditions under which 

 they and their ancestors have lived. Because our flocks and herds, accustomed for the most 

 part to the small fields, and housed during the severity of winter, are tame, it by no 

 means follows that those which were turned out into the unenclosed and common lands 

 would be equally tame. As Lord Macaulay has forcibly pointed out, our trim hedge 

 rows and enclosures were very few and far between, even as late as the latter half of the 

 seventeenth century. " At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was 

 a region of five and twenty miles in circumference, which contained only three houses and 

 scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as free as in an^ American forest, wandered there 



1 ' Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales.' 



2 Youatt, ' Cattle,' p. 49 ; Darwin, ' Variation,' vol. ii, p. 209. 



3 Youatt, ' Cattle, p. 48. I have been unable to find the authority for this in Speed's * History of 

 Great Britain.' 



