Chapter VIII: Section III (4)

[347] A similar antithesis is found in a Hungarian proverb, communicated to me by my learned friend Count Geza Kunn, together with other notices of Hungarian beliefs relating to animals. This proverb is as follows: "Even the black cow's milk is white." The black cow is spoken of in two other Hungarian proverbs; one says, "The black cow has not trodden upon his heel," meaning that no misfortune has happened to him; it is the usual vulnerable heel, the heel of Achilles, the posterior part, for which is substituted sometimes, as we shall see in the chapter on the Fox and the Serpent, the tail or extreme hind part. Another proverb is, "In the dark all cows are black;" but it does not seem to have any mythical importance.