HOW COWSLIP SAVED HIM by Watchman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 23, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 30.

HOW COWSLIP SAVED HIM.

By Watchman

In the Highlands of Scotland is a kindly custom to give names to the cows as well as to other animals. A Scotch lad had three to care for, and all three had names. The red cow was Cowslip, and the dun was Bell, and the black was Meadow Sweet.

The cows knew their names like three children, and would come when called.

"One day," the boy tells us, "I was not with them, but had been given a holiday and gone up on the side of the hill. I climbed until I was so high that I got dazed, and lost my footing upon the rocks, and came tumbling down and snapped my ankle, so I could not move.

"I was very lonesome there. It seemed to me that it was hours that I lay there, hitching along among the bracken. I thought how night would come, and nobody would know where I was. I could not move for the anguish of my foot. It was no use to call, for there was naught in sight save the crows, skirting against the sky. My heart was fit to break; for I was but a lad, and mother looked to me for bread. I thought I would never see home again.

"After a while I spied a cow beneath, grazing on a slip of turf just between a rift and the hills. She was a good long way below, but I knew her. It was Cowslip.

"I shouted as loud as I could, Cowslip! Cowslip! When she heard her name, she left off grazing, and listened.

"I called again and again. What did she do? She just came toiling up and up till she reached me. Those hill cattle are rare climbers.

"She made a great ado over me; licked me with her rough, warm tongue, and was as pleased and as pitiful as tho I were her own. Then like a Christian, she set up a moan, and moaned so long and so loud that they heard her in the vale below.

"To hear a cow moaning like that they knew meant that she was in trouble. So they came a-searching and seeking. They could see her red and white body, tho they could not see me. So they found me, and it was Cowslip saved my life."