Retold by Sue Bagust

This is an old teaching tale from Celtic lands and this is the way I choose to tell it today.

In a different time, in a different land, in a shire that was normally a green and growing place, there came the starving times. Nothing grew, the people and animals were thin and ill, and parents could only feed their children by bleeding their already skeleton thin farm animals and feeding their children the blood to keep them alive. Over this sad land, on one of the darkest nights, a great comet flicked its tail.

The people agreed that it was a sign, but could not agree on what sort of sign it was. The village wisewoman said it was a good sign and that something would happen to make things better. The wisewoman’s apprentice agreed it was indeed a sign but then warned it could be a sign that things would go from bad to worse. But as the apprentice had begun to always challenge the wisewoman’s words, the people waited to see who spoke truth.

The very next day a marvellous animal wandered down the village street – a huge glossy cow, fat as butter, big as a house, peacefully grazing the scarce grass. And wherever the glossy cow grazed, the grass sprang up immediately thick and lush and green and moist behind her so that the land once again became fertile and all the farm animals began to graze again, no matter how ill and starved they had become.

Even better, the kind cow allowed herself to be milked by anyone who came with a bucket. But when the bucket was full, the kind cow gently moved away and waited quietly until the next hungry family approached her with an empty bucket, when she would allow herself to be milked again.

The wisewoman saw that the kind cow was gently telling the people that they could take a bucket of milk for each family each day, but that greed would drive the holy beast away. She shared these thoughts with the people and suggested that they should thank the kind cow for her kindness every day, every time they milked her. The people agreed, and life was wonderful while the kind cow stayed with the village.

But the apprentice was not happy with this arrangement; she must find a way to get more, just to show that she was more powerful than her teacher. So the apprentice worked out a clever plan. She went up to the beautiful kind cow as usual the next day to claim her share, but instead of using her bucket she brought a sieve and a bunch of deep kettles which she hid behind her back. She milked the kind cow into the sieve, replacing a kettle as soon as it was full with an empty kettle.

When the apprentice was filling the seventh kettle, the wisewoman came by and warned If you don’t let that poor creature be the kind cow will not forgive you. Fiddlesticks said the apprentice and went on milking the kind cow. But the kind cow looked – and saw - and at that exact instant in time there was a great twinkling in the air and a sudden shifting in the energies and suddenly the great glossy cow was gone. The apprentice’s greed had driven the cow away forever.

Because the cow was kind, the grass grew lush wherever the cow had grazed and the other crops in the valley grew too, and all the animals and humans in the valley flourished from that time on. But when the people thought of the starving times, they remembered the apprentice’s unkindness and greed. And when they thought of prosperous days and happy times, they remembered their wisewoman and her lessons of gratitude, and sharing, and kindness.

And the great glossy cow smiled to herself as she grazed in the starry fields we humans call the Milky Way, because the people had learned her teaching well.

Bright blessings