Happy Tale of Archie’s Coo

Archie Black, sadly late, was the last surname bearer of a long line of Blacks who are recorded as crofting in Keills on the island of Jura for over 300 years. A native Gaelic speaker living alone, Archie had no electricity in his house, listened to classical music on a battery radio and was an acknowledged connoisseur and the island authority on the subject. Archie never married, instead he had seven cows on his croft and he loved them all. I have heard stories that when the time came for the cows to ‘go down the road’, Archie would agree to his cows going, only at the last moment, chickening out because he couldn’t bear the thought of his precious friends being sold for slaughter.

One day in 1993 one of his cows went missing; Archie searched for a day and a half all round Keills until he eventually found her. Then the problems started. The cow, whose name was something Gaelic, had been grazing peacefully beside the back road that led from Keills to the manse and, if anyone had been watching, suddenly disappeared from sight as if by magic.

The explanation was this: there was a concrete water tank with a wooden lid which time had disguised as a flat piece of grass indistinguishable from its surroundings. The cow was no better than humans at foreseeing the potential dangers and, in the process of meandering around grabbing breakfast, fell through the rotting lid and ended up almost invisible in the tank. Archie had eventually found her. From five yards away you couldn’t see her, but there she was, a ton of cow unable to move, touching all four sides of the tank, only the ridge on her back above water and up to her neck in it.

The word went rapidly round the island (the shop and the pub actually) that Archie needed help to get the cow out of the tank and everyone nearby with a Land Rover (the road was pretty rough) turned up to help. The problem was this: you could not get a piece of paper between the cow and the tank so no-one was going to climb in and be able to pass a rope round her to pull her out and anyway they would have been squashed/drowned in the process.

So versatile and resourceful Jura minds were applied to the problem while Archie stotted about, visibly anxious about his precious and much loved cow and whether she would survive her ordeal. The solution arrived at was a rope round her neck and gentle first gear traction with a Land Rover. This was a good idea except that the person tying the knots, obviously not a mensa member and one who should remain nameless, constructed a knot that would have resulted in strangling the cow or pulling her head off. A microsecond before the cow’s fate was sealed in this manner, the fault was noticed, the knot changed, and Archie’s cow gently pulled out with the Land Rover, complete with head.

Archie was dancing around clad in his old Macintosh, tears streaming down his old and weathered face, consumed with uncertainty as to whether or not the cow would recover. The rescued cow was now standing bemused, wet through and cold, doleful and head-lowered, showing all the signs of feeling ‘that’s it, I’ve had it.’ The cow with the Gaelic name then resolved the crisis; remembering she was having breakfast when she fell in, she got wellied in to the grass round about, doubtless wondering what all the fuss was. Then the sun broke out and so did the smiles on all the assembled faces, including Archie’s. The moral is:

Jura coos are robust beasts! Some cows are loveable. Don’t let anything interrupt your breakfast!

Reference

 * Lindsay Neil. March 2005