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Edward 1st
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The Chillingham Wild Cattle
and the "wild kine"
descended from
"the ancient Kine of Araw"
In the Lord of the Rings, Boromir, the heir to the Steward of
Gondor, had a horn that came from a herd of wild kine
which was descended from “the ancient Kine of Araw”. This was an
ancient herd of cattle situated in the ‘North East between
Ettenmoors, the Weather Hills and the Misty Mountains’.
The herd of the Chillingham Wild Cattle, the only pure breed of medieval
cattle in UK, is less than
10 miles from Berwick, in the North-East of
England, in the eastern part of the border and the Cheviot Hills.
They date from 13th Century – the same century as
Edward 1st.
“Though their origin is uncertain, the existing herd is thought to
have been at Chillingham for at least the past 700 years. Before that,
it is probable that they roamed the great forest which extended from the
North Sea coast to the Clyde estuary; and it is presumed that when, some
time in the 13th century, the King of England gave permission for
Chillingham Castle to be "castellated and crenolated" and for a park
wall to be built, the herd was corralled for purposes of food. The
successful capture of a number of wild cattle in those days would not
only have eased the local food situation, but would also have made it
impossible for raiders to take such cattle back with them across the
border since, being wild and extremely fierce, they could not have been
driven like their domestic cousins”.
http://www.whitepark.org.uk/chillingham.htm
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