ENGLISH OXEN. wvii 



cattle. The conquest of Normandy, for example, was the indirect result of the banishment 

 of Rollo for cattle-lifting in Norway. The pirates in those days were in the habit of 

 taking on shipboard live oxen, and especially if they intended not merely a descent but a 

 settlement. The Norwegian settlers in Iceland, in 874, must have conveyed oxen along 

 with them, since we read of herds in that desolate island in the ninth century. At the 

 beginning of the eleventh century Thorsin, 1 a wealthy Icelander, arrived in Greenland 

 from Norway, and thence founded a colony in Vinland, taking with him sixty sailors, 

 much cattle, and implements of husbandry. There he found pasturage so plentiful that a 

 bull grew exceedingly strong and fierce, and frightened the Skraelingues (probably the 

 Eskimos) with its roaring to such a degree that they burst open the doors of Thorsin's 

 house and crowded into it in terror. 



The fact that cattle were thus transported over wide and dangerous seas by the Nor- 

 wegian and Icelandic colonists renders it in the highest degree improbable that their 

 English cousins, who colonised Britain, did not also bring along with them whatever cattle 

 they possessed. The three keels which landed at Richborough full of armed men from 

 Jutland was the advanced guard of a great migration, which was so complete that, ac- 

 cording to the ' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle/ 2 the ancient home of the old race was left desolate 

 for four centuries afterwards. Our forefathers came with their wives and their children, 

 and their household stuff and their cattle, and most certainly caused as great a revolution in 

 the farming of the country, which they conquered by the sword, as. in its language and 

 politics. Unfortunately, we do not know for certain what kind of ox they possessed in 

 their native country, but the fact that the district between the Rhine and the Elbe is 

 now famous for the large oxen, which are descended, according to Professor Nilsson, from 

 the Urus, and are, therefore, cognate with those of Chillingham, coupled with the appearance 

 of the latter animal in Britain about the time of the English conquest, renders it extremely 

 probable that white cattle with red ears were imported into this country by its conquerors. 



If this view be accepted we must show what breed of ox was possessed by the 

 farmers during the Roman occupation, and fortunately the accumulation of bones left 

 behind by the Roman provincials affords conclusive proof on the point. 



The 'Romano- Celtic or Br it- Welsh Breed. 



The remains of the smaller shorthorned ox, the deer-like Bos lowgifrons of Professor 

 Owen, or the Celtic shorthorn, have been found, without exception, in every refuse-heap 

 accumulated in Great Britain during the Roman age, that has been scientifically 

 examined. So far as I know, it is the only breed which has left traces of its existence in 



1 Mallet, 'Northern Antiquities,' p. 291, 1/70. 



2 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' ' Monumenta Historica Britannica,' p. 298, a.d. 449. "From Anglia, 

 which has ever since remained waste betwixt the Jutes and Saxons, came the men of East Anglia, Middle 

 Anglia, Mercia, and all North-humbria." The MS. 'A,' from which this was taken, ends in a.d. 975. 



C 



