The Hornless Cow, Rasoalavavolo’s Mother

Overview

The hornless cow lives alone in a carefully kept hut, speaking like a human, weaving cloth, making mats and sleeping in a bed. She grazes but also cooks rice and cultivated vegetables, returning with firewood on her back. The narrator describes a womanlike household life combined with hair, a tail and four legs. She finds a large white egg, protects it inside nested baskets and eventually discovers that it has hatched into a little girl. She raises the child as Rasoalavavolo, the beauty with long hair. Several royal suitors refuse her after learning that the mother is a cow who can lick the girl’s face down to bare bone when angry.

The central king nevertheless chooses the girl. They depart secretly with the household’s seeds, tools and utensils. A tremendous whirlwind signals the pursuing cow, whose large red eyes appear to throw flames. The fugitives scatter beans, then other seeds and possessions, and the cow stops to collect each batch. Once everything has been discarded, Rasoalavavolo sends the king and his companions into hiding. The cow catches her and strips her face with its rough tongue, taking away the skin and leaving white bone. She hangs the skin above her own hearth. The girl survives speaking, but the king hides her from public view.

When the bride weeps over demands that she make mats and a salaka for the wedding, tears flow from the separate hanging skin and extinguish the cow’s fire. Her mother arrives in pity. By chewing rushes she produces finished mats, and by chewing silk she makes a shining salaka. On the next occasion, fear of public shame makes the daughter weep again. The cow returns and licks her face a second time, causing flesh and extraordinary beauty to reappear. Rasoalavavolo triumphs in the public comparison with the king’s two other wives. The mother’s tongue therefore both inflicts the loss and restores the body; the daughter does not heal through an unspecified spell of her own.

The jealous rivals collude with diviners and feign illness. Their agreed diagnosis demands the cow’s sacrifice, and she accepts death while warning her daughter not to eat her flesh. Rasoalavavolo gathers the bones into seven nested baskets and buries them in the north-east corner of her house. A tree grows there, bearing white flowers that become pearls and silver fruit. The daughter harvests them and becomes wealthy. The rivals grasp its branches roughly, bringing a shower of fruit and pearls over themselves and an incurable affliction described in the French text as leprosy. They are expelled to a distant reed hut and die, leaving Rasoalavavolo the king’s only wife. The cow is not bodily resurrected; her posthumous benefaction and revenge take the form of the bone-grown tree.

Origins & earliest records

Renel 1910, tale 6, pp. 35–45, regional and local collection heading. Individual teller unnamed; introduction V–VIII gives teacher-mediated collection and translation context.

Records & interpretation

Complete tale 6, pp. 35–45, including final outcome and relevant notes read. Narrative representations distinguished from present-day community generalizations.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Contes de Madagascar, première partie: Contes merveilleux

   Charles Renel, editor and translator; Malagasy collection intermediaries · 1910

   Tale 6, pp. 35–45, complete.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Historical collected French narrativeRenel 1910, tale 6Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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