Note 27 — Chapter VI · SOME RURAL FESTIVALS AND CEREMONIES.
Reading edition
The custom of the silent tending of cattle has been already mentioned. At the cattle festival in Râjputâna, in the evening the cow is worshipped, the herd having been previously tended. “From this ceremony no rank is excepted; on the preceding day, dedicated to Krishna, prince and peasant all become pastoral attendants of the cow in the form of Prithivî or the Earth.”27 In some places the flowers and other ornaments of the cattle, which they lose in their wild flight, are eagerly picked up and treated as relics bringing good fortune. We have a similar idea in the blessing of cattle in Italy,28 and this is probably the origin of the observance described by Aubrey, when “in Somersetshire, where the wassaile (which is, I think, Twelfe Eve), the ploughmen have their Twelfe cake, and they go into the ox-house to the cattle, and drink to the ox with the crumpled horn that treads out the corne.”29