They came with empty stomachs, pails in their hands,
all the peasants in walking distance of Moher.
You can read about the famine in history books,
About how the blight-prone lumper potato failed
while the rest of Ireland’s produce was shipped to England.
Landlords evicted tenants, who dropped by roadsides
with nettle-stained mouths.
One third of the people starved or died of typhus,
but briefly there was milk near the Cliffs of Moher,
just at the bay’s edge—at Kilconnell, Liscannor—
where the shore rises gradually up to the cliffs.
For one morning a marvelous cow appeared
as if in answer to the people’s prayers,
and she gave an inexhaustible supply of milk.
Perhaps the history books don’t tell about her,
but there stood this cow, day and night,
for as many to milk as lined the shore with their pails.

I wish the story had a happier ending,
but this is how it was told me.
For a while they had pails of milk to raise to their lips
or to carry off and ladle out to the children,
the boon of the beautiful, white cow.
But if you don’t believe in such milk, you may sympathize
with the cynic who came along and ruined it all.
His pail was a pail with a bottom like a sieve,
to prove a point, I suppose, though somewhat obscure.
Perhaps he intended to test the patience of providence.
However that was, the cow disappeared in air,
proving to him the miraculous no doubt
but concluding the milk supply.
And the people who sought the cow went away sadly
to resume their briefly interrupted dying.
The cynic probably starved along with the rest
(take that for cynicism)
or his neighbors may have dealt with him more abruptly.

The beast?  She never made a second appearance,
prayers notwithstanding; but she hasn’t been forgotten.
And if you’re on holiday at Liscannor Bay
on a day when the beach is cold or the golf links crowded,
you may wish to look at the spot where the white cow stood.
Some descendant of those who survived
might show it to you.

by Knute Skinner