Cow.

The cow that nourished Ymir with four streams of milk was called Audhumla. (Scandinavian mythology.) (See Audhumla.)

Curst cows. (See under Curst.)

The whiter the cow, the surer is it to go to the altar. The richer the prey, the more likely is it to be seized.

“The system of impropriations grew so rapidly that, in the course of three centuries, more than a third part of all the benefices in England became such, and those the richest, for the whiter the cow, the surer was it to go to the altar.”—Blunt: Reformation in England, p. 63.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.