Milking the bull

The proverb illustrated on a playing card in about 1535 by Hans Schäufelein.

Milking the bull is a proverb which uses the metaphor of milking a bull to indicate that an activity would be fruitless or futile.[1][2]

In the 16th century, the German painter Hans Schäufelein illustrated the proverb on the eight of bells in a deck of playing cards.[3]

Dr Johnson used the proverb to criticise the work of David Hume and other sceptical philosophers.[4][5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Malcolm Jones (1989), "Folklore Motifs in Late Medieval Art I: Proverbial Follies and Impossibilities", Folklore 100 (2): 201–217, doi:10.1080/0015587X.1989.9715766
  2. ↑ Edgar Wind (1943), "Milking the Bull and the He-Goat", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
  3. ↑ Malcolm Jones (2009), "Lively Representing the Proverbs", The Proverbial Pied Piper, Peter Lang, p. 5, ISBN 9781433104893
  4. ↑ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle (1895), William Strunk, ed., Macaulay's and Carlyle's essays on Samuel Johnson, H. Holt & Co., p. 192
  5. ↑ Peter Ryan (2000), "Milking the bull", Quadrant 44 (11): 87–88