The Bull, the Girl, and the Red Shawl

"The Bull, the Girl, and the Red Shawl" by Charles Battell Loomis is a charming and whimsical tale that intertwines themes of love, courage, and adventure. Set against a vibrant backdrop, the story follows a spirited girl who embarks on a journey to rescue her beloved bull. With a vivid red shawl as a symbol of hope and connection, the narrative explores the bonds between humans and animals, and the strength found in courage and friendship. Loomis’s storytelling is infused with humor and heart, making it a delightful read that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit.

• Short story

								
There is no incident in all the realms of literature, from the “penny
dreadful” up to the three-volume novel, that has afforded so much
material for the pen of the writer of fiction as the delightful
episode of the bull, the young girl with the red shawl, and the young
girl’s lover. Sometimes the cast includes the lover’s hated rival,
but the story may be told without using him.

It is thirty-odd years since I first came across this thrilling
adventure in the pages of a child’s book, very popular at the
time. How well I remember how my young blood--to be exact, my
seven-year-old blood--thrilled as I mentally watched this frail
girl, with a start of just three feet, lead the tremendous and
horribly savage bull in a three-hundred-yard sprint, only to trip
at last on the only obstruction in the ten-acre field; how, just
as the bull reached her, she flung her red shawl a few rods to the
right; how the bull, leaving her, plunged after it; how she, weak
and trembling, ran to the stone wall and managed to vault it just
as her lover, a brawny blacksmith, who had seen the whole affair at
too great a distance to be of immediate service, reached the wall
and received her in his arms. “Oh, Kenston,” she murmured, “you have
saved my life!” And then she fainted, and I believe the bull ate up
the shawl; at any rate, its part in that particular story was ended.

I have always felt that, thrilling as this scene was, it had not been
worked for all it was worth; but an extensive reading since then has
brought me to the conclusion that, first and last, it has been worked
for its full value.

The next time that I read the enthralling narrative I was some years
older, but the memory of the other telling was still fresh within
me; and so, when, in the second chapter, I read about a savage old
bull, one Hector, the property of Squire Flint, the meanest man in
the county,--not that his meanness had anything to do with the story,
but it is one of the conventions that a savage bull shall be owned by
a cross, crabbed, and thoroughly stingy man,--I say, when I had read
thus far my pulse quickened. Inexperienced as I was, I somehow sensed
the coming situation. I seemed to know as by clairvoyance that,
however limited the heroine’s wardrobe might be in some respects,
there was one article of apparel that she surely possessed, or would
possess in time to meet the exigencies. True enough, in the very
next chapter her maiden aunt, a saintly old lady of ninety, died
and bequeathed to her sorrowing niece a red pongee shawl of great
value--as a bull-enrager. The book had seemed prosy at the start, but
now that I knew what was coming, and that it was that that was
coming, I read on breathlessly.

Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love
with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they
take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk
would lead them! The mad bull--in this case it was mad, although any
old bull will do, mad or not--was rampant in a lot a mile south of
the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I
knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture
before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing over
a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along,
intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,--in
the middle of a particularly hot July,--so that the girl could have
an excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the
actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a
moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their
feet, turned and saw Hector, his horns gyrating with rage, his eyes
bulging out, and his head lowered as he thundered along straight for
the pongee bequest. To take her under his strong arm and to rush
forward were the only things for the young man to do, and he did
them; and then the rest ran as per schedule. I believe that in this
case the young man threw the girl into a tree and then plunged down
a woodchuck’s hole. At any rate, the girl was unharmed. That is the
one unalterable formula in constructing these bull stories: save the
girl unharmed. You may break the young man’s leg or arm, and you may
do what you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through
unscathed.

It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and
in that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the
red shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to
be infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier
chapters, and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too,
the girl was in deep mourning--for her lover! But the ten-acre lot
was all right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he
would find a way to run the act with a small cast and no properties.
So I read on, and after wondering, together with the girl herself,
what could have caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up
and head down, the full length of a particularly long pasture, she
and I found out when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had
picked up her cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant
scarlet. She had no lover, for, as I say, he had died--two chapters
before the book was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so
she inserted the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then
opened it, and while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she
reached the fence and vaulted it in the usual way.

The possibilities of the incident are by no means exhausted, and so
far from “Amos Judd” being the last story in which it was used, I
saw it in a tale published this month, and this time with the full
paraphernalia of hated rival, lover, red shawl, and all; but for me
it had lost its zest. To be sure, if they would make the hero an
athlete, and have him bravely stand his ground while the girl climbed
to the top of an enormous elm, and then, just as the bull lowered
his head to toss him, have the hero jump high in the air and make
the bull pass beneath him, and as he reached ground again seize the
bull, not by the horns, but by the tail, and, swinging it three times
around his head, dash it against a tree and stun it,--that is, if its
tail were securely welded to its body,--there would be an original
treatment of the subject. And if its tail were but loosely fixed to
it, the hero could pull it out, and the bull, filled with chagrin,
would walk off, dismayed and humiliated.

But, pending that form of the story, I am studiously avoiding all
novels that contain heroines with red shawls, or that make early
reference to fierce bulls, or that speak of a certain ten-acre
lot peculiarly adapted for lovers’ peregrinations; for, like the
successful burglar, I know the combination.
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