The Dun Cow Rib. John Lister-Kaye

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      The Dun Cow

      It was in the oldest Jacobean quarter of the house that one of the most mysterious relics of local legend, the Dun Cow rib, was permanently housed. On a few links of rusty chain at either end the rib was slung from two square iron spikes driven into a black beam crossing the ceiling of the servants’ hall. Like all ribs, it was curved with an angled head at one end, but this rib was exceptional. It tapered through four feet eight inches in an arc of dark, heavy bone. No one knew how long it had hung there. Some said 400 years, from the time of King James I, others claimed a much more ancient origin stretching back through former dwellings now crumbled into history, back a thousand years to the misty days of peasants, feudal overlords and Saxon kings. As a child I stood and stared up at it with a mixture of fear and awe.

      I was first told its unlikely legend by my father when I was five. He picked me up in his arms. ‘Run your fingers along it,’ he whispered, as if to heighten its mystery. It was as rough as the ancient oak beam from which it hung, and patchily dark, its many centuries staining it almost black in places, quite unlike any bone I had seen before. And it was heavy, heavier than me at that age, although I would not hold its full weight in my arms for many years to come.

      It was an inauspicious moment. George VI had just died on 6 February 1952. The whole nation was in mourning, the national newspapers edged in black. I can clearly recall the bold headline ‘THE KING IS DEAD’ and the chill of shock and disbelief permeating round the entire house. Across the lane the church bell tolled, and from its tower the St George’s Cross rippled at half-mast in the winter breeze. My grandfather and father dressed in black suits. They wore black ties for days. With long faces and lowered voices the grown-ups talked of nothing else. Around the kitchen table Nellie, Mrs Barnwell, Sally Franklin and Ada pored over the newspapers, and special issues of Picture Post and the Illustrated London News. On the day of the funeral, 15 February, they crowded around the old wireless set on the sideboard to listen to the Home Service coverage, the doleful brass bands, wailing pipes and muffled drums of the procession from Buckingham Palace to Windsor, and the sombre commentary by the young Raymond Baxter. Nellie was in tears most of the day, sobbing into her tea.

      It was only a few days later that my father took me to see the rib. The funereal mood and pall of death seemed to lurk in the darkest corners of the house. He told me that it had never been taken down since an unknown hand nailed it there all those centuries ago. His words struck chill into my heart: ‘It must never be moved, and when it is, there will be bad times, and death will visit the family,’ – although I’m sure he added that bit for dramatic effect. It worked. My imagination whirled like a top. I could see the headline, YOUR FAMILY IS DEAD, with a black edge all its own. The rib’s image, hanging there on its old chains, went in deep and has remained, stark and vivid, to this day.

      The legend of the Dun Cow is well known throughout middle England. There are many pubs called the Dun Cow; villages such as Dunchurch and Ryton, Bourton, Stretton and Clifton, all still have the historical appendage ‘-on-Dunsmore’ attached to their names. They surround a once wild and barren heath known as Dunsmoor, bisected by the Roman Fosse Way. A second almost identical rib hangs in Warwick Castle ten miles away, and to this day many versions of the legend persist throughout the Midlands. Our own family narrative, written up by a Victorian maiden aunt in the mid-nineteenth century, runs like this:

       About 900 years ago, in the reign of the Saxon King Athelstan, a herd of wild cattle roamed a heath in the middle of England. The Dunsmoor villagers lived in fear of these ferocious beasts. One cow grew to enormous size; four yards high it stood and six in length. This monstrous beast took to raiding villagers’ crops and gored anyone who stood in its way. When several folk had been killed, the villagers turned to the lord of the manor. ‘You must rid us of this menace,’ they cried angrily. Straightaway the noble knight mounted his charger and set out for the heath with his lance and his broadsword. But when the great cow loomed out of the mist it was so huge, and so terrible was its bellow, that he turned and galloped away as fast as he could.

       Greatly humiliated, he set off for Warwick Castle to find another knight who was renowned for slaying giants and dragons. Together they rode out to kill the cow. But when the beast flared its nostrils and tossed its huge horns at them, once again they fled. Concerned for their reputations, the two knights hit upon a plan. Off they went to find an old witch who lived in a cave on the edge of the moor. They plied her with gold until she agreed to cast a spell on the cow.

       In the evening twilight the witch appeared from behind a rock and muttered her incantation. The great beast fell quiet beneath the spell. She produced a sieve from under her skirts and began to milk the cow into it. The cow turned its huge head and saw its precious milk draining away into the moor. Slowly it lumbered away into the mist and died of a broken heart.

       Both knights took a rib from the dead cow and returned to their villages, each claiming that he had slain the cow, but the witch had cursed them for their lack of courage, saying that if ever they parted with the ribs their families would die out. So to this day one rib hangs in Warwick Castle and the other remains in our family.

      It’s a con. The ribs are not ribs at all. They are the two sides of a minke whale’s lower jaw: two very large and uncannily rib-like bones. When in the 1970s we had ours carbon dated, it proved to be over 950 years old. Far from illuminating the Dun Cow legend, this revelation greatly deepened its mystery. It would appear that at some point in the far distant past some wag or prankster thought the legend deserved to be immortalised by producing the hard evidence of the cow. It was a cunning ploy. The ribs were very convincing – they could only have come from a huge beast – and for many centuries local people had believed in the colossal cow, utterly convinced by those awesome bones.

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      Separating the servants’ quarters from the formal dining room was a long disused butler’s pantry. During the war years it had become a cluttered store for a random miscellany of intrigue, like a bric-a-brac shop. Running the full length of one long wall were full-height, built-in cupboards, floor to ceiling. Teasing open their cobwebby doors was like opening huge windows into a distant past. Carefully and dutifully arranged on plain pine shelves was the china and glass of an Edwardian era of extravagant house parties, grand dinners and hunt balls.

      There were Coalport and Dresden tea sets, whole Crown Derby and Minton dinner services with vast meat platters – big enough, I gaily imagined, for a glazed boar’s head with an orange in its mouth, steaming haunches of venison or a whole salmon with a cold, staring eye, such as I had seen in illustrations of medieval banquets. There were soup tureens, sauce boats and vegetable dishes with ornate porcelain arrangements of tomatoes, marrows and turnips bulging across their lids, and an ancient, chipped and faded, blue and white service of family crested ware.

      When I opened those cupboard doors, I fancied I could hear the bustle and hustle of a busy household, the laughter of family and guests, the merry gossip of servants, and the chink of china and glass. When I closed them, the silence of the empty house settled around me again so that I hurried to open the next one.

      It held rows of dusty cut-glass tumblers, twisted champagne flutes, sherry, port and wine glasses and rummers; ranks of decanters, carafes, claret jugs with silver lids and handles, Bacchus’ bearded face glaring from their lips like gargoyles; glass flagons and demijohns encased in woven wicker; flower vases of every configuration and size, and then, in the end cupboard, several large, plain blue-and-white or floral-patterned china pitchers and ewers for marble-topped bedroom washstands.

      On a last lower shelf stood a row of large china slop buckets with wicker-bound handles and lids smothered all over with brightly coloured rosebuds, as if they might somehow divert attention from their practical function. At floor level, tucked away, there were rows of floral potties and heavy bed-warming bottles