Dun Cow - Dunsmore Heath

Dunsmore Heath

The Dun Cow of Dunsmore Heath (an area west of Dunchurch near Rugby in Warwickshire, England) was a savage beast slain by Guy of Warwick. A huge tusk, probably that of an elephant, is still shown at Warwick Castle as one of the horns of the Dun Cow.

The fable is that this cow belonged to a giant, and was kept on Mitchell's Fold (middle fold), Shropshire. Its milk was inexhaustible; but one day an old woman who had filled her pail, wanted to fill her sieve as well. This so enraged the cow, that she broke loose from the fold and wandered to Dunsmore Heath, where she was slain by Guy of Warwick.

Isaac Taylor, in his Words and Places (p. 269), says the dun cow is a corruption of the Dena Gau (Danish region) in the neighbourhood of Warwick. Gau, in German, means region, country. If this explanation is correct, the great achievement of Guy of Warwick was a victory over the Danes, and taking from them their settlement near Warwick.

(From the 1898 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).