In the Irish Calendar The Old Cows Days/The Days of the Brindled Cow are the last days of March and the first three days of April; in Irish: Laethanta na Bó Riabhaí.
The term comes from a folk tale, illustrating the unpredictability of the weather at this time of year in Ireland. The tale relates how the bó riabhach, "the brindled cow", complained at the beginning of April to her companions in the herd of the terrible harshness of the previous month of March. As the grumbling of the cow continued, the at first uninterested March began to take umbrage and decided to teach the speckled cow a lesson she would never forget. So March "borrowed" the first three days of April but made them so bitterly cold and miserable that before they were ended the unlucky bó riabhach had died. These "days of the brindled cow" are still with us, or so the story goes, to remind us that we complain about the harshness of the weather at our peril.
The same story can be found in different versions all over Europe.
Famous quotes containing the words cows and/or days:
“It seems only yesterday that we saw
The movie with the cows in it
And turned to one at your side, who burped
As morning saw a new garnet-and-pea-green order propose
Itself out of the endless bathos, like science-fiction lumps.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)