Bos primigenius in Britain: or, why do fairy cows have red ears?
Many medievalists, especially scholars of Celtic literature, have observed that red-eared white animals are associated with fairies and other supernatural beings. What has not been satisfactorily answered is why this should be so. This article offers a possible explanation, suggesting that this widespread phenomenon is rooted not in fantasy but in zoology. ********** It is a commonplace of Celtic [1] folklore that white animals with red ears come from the Otherworld. Cattle of this description occur in some of the earliest Irish sources, while similarly marked dogs accompany the king of Annwn (the Welsh Otherworld) in the Middle Welsh tale of Pwyll and are reported right into this century. In a presentation to the Folklore Society in 1928, Miss Moore Douglas said of the Isle of Man that “fairy dogs, usually white with red ears and feet, are frequently seen running across the fields in the evening” (Howey 1972, 350), and Marie Trevelyan reported that the Welsh Cwn Annwn were sometimes s
