The Fairy Cow of Mitchell's Fold, by Pauline Fisk

www.mythstories.com

Rural poverty it’s called. When you’ve got no work, bread or money for rent and the job-seeker’s allowance has been removed. There are folk up Mitchell’s Fold who don’t have fare money for the town bus, so God knows how they’re supposed to find work.  Things are desperate up there. If a fairy cow came along, begging to be milked, anybody could be forgiven for giving it a try.

That’s what happened to Angela.  Her cottage backs the wind and faces the standing stones of Mitchell’s Fold. She drew back her curtains one morning to find a cow between the stones, calling out to be milked. Now, Angela knew the legend of the fairy cow, but was a proud woman who’d never milked as much as the State in her life, so she ignored it. Every day the fairy cow called out; every day it sounded more desperately. And Angela was desperate too. She had mouths to feed, so in the end she decided needs must.

Angela placed a pot under the cow, hoping nobody would report her to the DSS. As in the legend, the milk came easily.  She filled her pot and every day afterwards, whatever its size, that got filled too.  Word got round and friends on benefit starting turning up. Ex-friends on benefit turned up too, and people whose benefits had been stopped.

Every day saw bigger containers placed under the cow.  Whatever the size, there was milk for all.  Pails to pots, couldrons to stone sinks, water tanks to Angela’s enamel bath that she yanked out without regret because she couldn’t afford to heat water anyway.

There was milk for everyone, and milk to spare. The spare became butter.  Churns were dug out. Cheeses were made the old-fashioned way. People milked all day and churned all night. Everybody was happy. There was a smile on every fat-filled, milky face.

But you know what it’s like.  Always someone begrudges someone else’s good fortune - in this case, the farmer who owned Mitchell’s Fold. He complained about riff-raff breaking down fences, leaving gates open and letting dogs run wild.  They’d worn a six-lane highway across his land, he said, taking home tanks of milk they’d got for free. And if there was one thing above all others that our good farmer friend couldn’t abide, it was the ‘something for nothing’ mentality.

Farmer Friend phoned the DSS. When he learned no rules prohibited magic cows from yielding milk to whomever they pleased, he decided to act.  In the wee hours before sun-up, he entered the stone circle with a three-legged stool. Before automated farming, he’d been good at milking.  Now, his crabby fingers remembered the knack.   

By nightfall, the fairy cow was dead, milked dry into a sieve which she could never fill, her river of wasted milk bled into the soil. Only then did the farmer stop. He walked away, and no one touched him.  No one needed to.  They left that to the avenging Angela of Mitchell’s Fold.

Within days the hill was empty, everybody down at the Job Centre accepting work at below minimum wage.  The farmer was delighted. He decided to abandon farming and go into politics.  But he never got the chance.      

There’s an extra stone at Mitchell’s Fold, in the centre where the cow once stood.  How Angela did it no one knows. No one was murdered there. The law couldn’t touch her. There’s no rule against turning fledgling politicians into stone.