[Sca-cooks] Burt Wolf venting

[Ron Carnegie]

At 01:05 PM 10/10/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Cattle is the generic for members of genus Bos.  Oxen is often used a
>synonym.  Technically, an ox is a castrated male commonly used as a draft
>animal.  A steer is a young ox (with conotations of castration before sexual
>maturity and being used as a food animal rather than a draft animal).  Since
>steer derives from the Old English "steor," I would say the term was used in
>period even thoguh none of us have come across it.
>
>As a small afterthought, all those Irishmen in the Tain Bo Culain must have
>starved to death, since according to the article, they didn't know how to
>raise cattle.
>
>Bear

      Cattle was one of the primary cash crops of the Scottish Highlands
untill  the coming of the sheep, and the highland clearances of the 18th
and 19th centuries.

Ranald de Balinhard
Ron Carnegie
r.carnegie at verizon.net
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	"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that
	 once on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground walked
	 other men and women as actual as we are today, thinking
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	 ourselves shall be gone like ghosts at cockcrow."
				G.M. Trevelyan
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