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Bos primigenius in Britain: or, why do fairy cows have red ears?
Folklore, April, 2002 by Jessica Hemming
The Chillingham Wild White Cattle
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The other compelling reason to suppose that the fairy cattle are based on real ones is that red-eared white cattle still exist today. Up until the last century there were several herds, including one at Dinefwr as the Welsh laws suggest, but now there is just one, at Chillingham in Northumberland. [6] Although a fair amount has been written on these cattle (much of it simply repeating Storer), trying to get any scientifically sound information about the Chillingham herd leads one into remarkably convoluted myths of origin and purity, evidently bound up with the prestige of the noble family to whom the animals belonged until a private association was formed in 1939 to manage the stock. However, there are a few basic, uncontroversial facts. First of all, I visited these cattle in 1997 and can confirm that they are quite clearly white with surprisingly red ears. The other obvious feature is that they are a primitive, unimproved breed, not specialised for either beef or dairying. Proper records only go back to 1689 when a steward's account notes the purchase of a white calf (perhaps with red ears, perhaps not). The next mention is in 1692: the same steward counts "Beasts in ye Parke my Lords--16 white wilde beasts, 2 black steeres and a quy [heifer], 12 white read and black eard, 5 black oxen and browne one" (Mackenzie 1825, 390). [7] It is noteworthy that of the twelve with coloured ears, some have red and some black ears. There are still a number of herds of White Park Cattle scattered around the country and these typically have black ears. The White Park is a registered breed and, despite some popular confusion, is genetically distinct from the highly inbred Chillingham herd. The latter are distinct from everything, a fact which many have regarded as proof of their ancient origin. However, it may have as much to do with their long enclosure and the bad winter of 1947 when the herd was reduced to thirteen individuals, thus creating a genetic bottleneck from which the animals were lucky to recover.
The uniqueness of the herd in the view of the Chillingham Wild Cattle Association, is that they are genetically pure, ancient, and wild. They certainly are wild in temperament now and may have been so since the park was enclosed in the 1220s, which may or may not be when the ancestors of the present herd got locked in. However, I should stress that their origin is still entirely unknown. And this is where the pseudo-magical Chillingham foundation myth comes in.
To provide some background, in the Upper Palaeolithic, after about 13,000 B.C., humans and large land mammals crossed the then-existing land bridge from the Continent into Britain in the wake of the retreating ice (Grigson 1982, 47). Among these large animals was the prehistoric forerunner of all domestic humpless cattle: the aurochs (Bos primigenius). Cave paintings and archaeological finds of aurochs remains in association with human settlements make it abundantly clear that Palaeolithic people hunted these wild cattle. About the sixth millennium B.C., some aurochsen were domesticated in the north-west Mediterranean, and by the early Neolithic period (probably in the fourth millennium B.C.), domestic cattle were introduced into Britain (this happened in the late Neolithic in Ireland). These very early domesticated beasts looked much like aurochsen; they were large and of very similar morphology. Cattle then diminished in size steadily right through the Iron Age (probably due to the human population's poor knowledge of husbandry). In the meantime, the aurochs disappeared from Britain c. 2000 B.C., never having made it to Ireland at all. Aurochsen lingered on in continental Europe until the seventeenth century, when the last one was shot in Poland. The points to bear in mind about British cattle are: (1) aurochsen disappeared well before the insular Iron Age; (2) Iron Age (so-called "Celtic") cattle were very small and probably represent the parent stock for all modern British and Irish breeds (Grigson 1982, 47); (3) after the demise of the aurochs there were never again any truly wild (as opposed to feral) cattle anywhere in Britain.
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