Whilst re-reading Kipling’s Puck Of Pook’s Hill the Girl is using a slingshot, and hits someone in a bush. She says she thought it was a “Gleason Cow”?
Google has failed me.
What is a Gleason Cow?
It’s a cow owned by a farmer named Gleason, looks like. The relevant sentence is just before:
"Una took Dan’s catapult from its secret place, and made ready to meet Lars Porsena’s army stealing through the wind-whitened aspens by the brook. A gust boomed up the valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully:
'Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain:
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.'
But the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside and shook a single oak in Gleason’s pasture. Here it made itself all small and crouched among the grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail before she springs.
‘Now welcome - welcome, Sextus,’ sang Una, loading
‘Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome.’
She fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture.
‘Oh, my Winkie!’ she said aloud, and that was something she had picked up from Dan. ‘I b’lieve I’ve tickled up a Gleason cow.’
‘You little painted beast!’ a voice cried. ‘I’ll teach you to sling your masters!’"
My thanks.
A cow that jumps itself over the moon.
No, two people named Alice & Norton (the last of which is a mental case) are there to help.
“Over the moooooon!”
And ah “A way we go!”