For the benefit of Gaelic scholars who may read this, I wish to explain that my Gaelic is a mixture of Argyllshire and Inverness, with a touch of bad spelling added. The interpretation of this proverb is:
"How can a cow take to her calf when she is still in love with her yearling?"
Well, that was exactly the state of affairs that met the red calf when she came into the world. Her mother was still in love with the yearling that had been allowed to run with her in the pasture on the previous summer. She had no welcome for the newcomer; in fact, she never looked at it from the hour when it was born, and to this day the unnatural mother has to be kept away with a club when her neglected offspring is being fed. If the poor little thing gets an apple and tries to eat it, her own mother is the first to bunt her aside and take it away from her. At the same time that cow goes frantic if her yearling gets out of her sight. They are seldom a rod apart in the pasture field, and they invariably get into mischief together. I use the same club on both of them when they find a gate open and get into the orchard.
About the only creature on the farm that pays any attention to the calf is Sheppy, the collie dog. He stands in front of her by the hour, growling and barking, while she keeps her little sprouts of horns towards him and goes on feeding. I wish I could understand dog language well enough to know what Sheppy is saying to her, for he seems to be dreadfully in earnest, even though he never ventures near enough to give her a nip. As a matter of fact, Sheppy is cow-shy, and it is all due to the capable mother of this calf. When he was in the puppy stage, and beginning bravely to learn his work in the world, she reached him with a swinging kick that knocked him heels over head across the barn yard, and took all the spunk out of him as far as cows are concerned. He will drive a horse or pigs, and the turkey-gobblers have no terrors for him, but I can't make him go after the cows. She taught him a lesson that he hasn't forgotten. Possibly that is why he snarls so much at her calf. If he knew how to quote Shelley, he would probably be saying:
"Loathed image of thy mother,
Thy milky meek face makes me sick with hate."
In spite of all this bluster, Sheppy is thoroughly afraid of the calf. One day, when I was watching them, the calf coughed unexpectedly, and Sheppy fell over backwards in his hurry to get out of the way. He evidently thought that she was going to bite him. She knows that he is afraid of her, for after she has listened to all the barking she thinks she can stand, she shakes her head at him, and he makes off instantly with his tail between his legs.
I sometimes wonder if our scientists have observed the calf as carefully as they should. Every one who has fed calves knows their tendency to bunt unexpectedly when feeding. They do the same when feeding from the cow, and it is just possible that there is light and leading in this fact for our inventors of milking machines. It is well known that incubators were a failure until some one noticed that sitting hens always turn their eggs at regular intervals. This hint led him to turn the eggs in the incubator in the same way as the hen does, and from that hour dates the success of artificial incubation. Perhaps, if some one would invent a milking machine that would bunt the cow at regular intervals, it would be a complete success. It is worth thinking about. Possibly, also, if we studied calves a little, the job of feeding them would not be so trying on the temper and damaging to our clothes. I have noticed that, when it is feeding, a calf always wiggles its tail, and it has occurred to me that there may be some connection between this and its bunting. Mark Twain once showed that a donkey couldn't bray if it couldn't lift its tail at the same time. He tied a brick to the tail of one that was serenading him, and it stopped at once. Perhaps if one tied a brick to a calf's tail, it wouldn't bunt over the pail when learning to feed by itself. The co-ordination of actions is one of the mysteries of nature. Some one who has a young calf might try it and report the result. The calf I have under observation is too far advanced to be experimented on in this way. It is passing from the milk stage, and now has a preference for harness straps, and it seems to positively relish a yard or two of night-shirt when it can get near the clothes-line.
The lonesome calf has convinced me that there is something in the law of heredity. Its mother is probably about as impudent a piece of cow-flesh as ever was allowed to live. She was raised as a pet, and human beings have no terrors for her. Nothing ever proved more clearly than she does that familiarity breeds contempt. I could safely defy any one to carry a pail across a field that she is in without having her get her nose in it. If a gate or door shows a crack an inch wide, she will work it open, and, followed by her darling yearling, will proceed to get into mischief. If she happens to be in the lane when some one comes along in a buggy, she will stand right in the middle of the path and stare in the most unmannerly way. It is useless to yell at her. The only thing to do is to get out and use the buggy whip on her and her yearling. Now, I have noticed that the calf is developing along the same lines. Every day I have to push it out of my way, and it has the same investigating spirit. It pokes its way into everything, and then looks surprised and hurt when it is reproved. Sometimes it is hurt, too, for some people inherit hasty tempers. But the point I want to make is that the calf has really inherited its exasperating ways. It hasn't learned them from its mother, because they are seldom or never together. They are bred in its bones. I hope that her good qualities, as the producer of a liberal supply of milk, rich in butter-fat, are also inherited. If they are, I shall forgive much. Anyway, I have learned that heredity is a real thing, and if I ever go in for a herd of cows, I shall take care to get a few that will have all the good qualities that a cow should have, in the firm belief that their offspring will inherit their virtues. It seems to me it should be just as easy to have good cows as poor ones, if one started right.