The Lost Cows Of Pabbay

The tiny isle of Pabbay sits almost at the very southern tip of the Outer Hebrides and while now unpopulated, it was once able to support a handful of islanders. One of those families was famous for the quality of their calves and that all came down to one special black cow.

She had been there when the family took over the croft and nobody knew how old she really was, but as the years passed, she was beginning to look past her best. The farmer wanted to take her along to the market on one of the bigger islands, sell her off before she began costing more to feed than she was worth in milk and calves. His wife wouldn’t hear of it.

If they couldn’t keep her, then they should at least be the ones to see out her final days, slaughtering her themselves. That evening, the couple made plans for how much meat there would likely be and therefore the number of barrels and weight of salt required to store it for winter. The farmer sharpened his knives and laid them on the table, ready for the morning.

Rising with the dawn to get the grisly act over with before his wife woke up, the husband marched to the steading to find the door broken open and nothing inside. Every single cow had disappeared. The farmer followed the footsteps from the steading, through the mud and over the machair to the beach where they all disappeared into the sea.

It seems that his prized cow was a mysterious Tarbh-Uisge who had overheard their conversation about becoming dinner. After leading all of her children to safety in the water, she was never seen on Pabbay again.