Man-Shy by Frank Dalby Davison

First published: 1931

Type of work: Adventure tale

Themes: Animals, nature, and jobs and work

Time of work: The early twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Western Queensland, Australia

Principal Characters:

• The white Cow, which, in a gesture rare among animals, adopts the calf of an old red cow
• The red Heifer, a high-spirited animal that values its freedom and refuses to view men as invincible
• The old roan Bull, the patriarch of the wild herd, which must defend its position against the younger animals
• Black, the profit-motivated manager of the farm on which the wild cattle graze
• Ned Berry, the head stockman of the farm, Mirramilla
• Joe, the horsebreaker, who finds the wild cattle in the hills

The Story

AlthoughMan-Shy is straightforward in its plot, it addresses issues that are of significance and that raise it almost to the level of an allegory: the rights of the excluded to live freely on the fringes of the society to which they formerly belonged; the rights of the owners of the land to dispossess the fringe-dwellers in the interests of commerce and legitimate development of property; and the integrity of the social unit. In each event there is an implicit parallel between animal and human life.

The “scrubbers,” cattle that have escaped from herds and have established their own life in inaccessible hills, live precarious lives away from the plains and waterholes of the managed herds. One of these, an old red cow, “a shocking old bag of bones...a doddering old granny,” drowns in a muddy waterhole, leaving a four-day-old heifer calf, which is (contrary to normal cattle behavior) adopted by a “plump, placid, matronly white cow” that was “something of a success in the field of maternity,” having given birth to seven calves in eight years. The white cow “spoke—just a low, reassuring croon” to the heifer: This act, as clearly as any other in the story, suggests the close affinity between human and animal emotions and relationships as both are developed throughout the book.

When the stockmen round up the range cattle with the regular herd, the red heifer, now a yearling, is bitten by a heeler (a cattle dog), is identified as a “troublemaker” by the stockmen, and is branded. The heifer escapes from the pens, however, by jumping a five-foot fence—the first display of its independence of spirit and opposition to confinement. Though it has a “fine satiny skin, broad back, and deep body,” the heifer is seen by the stockmen merely as potential beef-on-the-hook, a source of income rather than a fine beast.

After two years on the range, the heifer is rounded up but cuts loose and heads again for the hill country and the independence that it values. Yet Black, the manager of the station (ranch), decides that the scrubbers are a source of income that should be garnered. His head stockman, Ned Berry, selects Joe, a skilled horsebreaker and bushman, to locate the scrubbers in the ranges of the thirty-thousand-acre farm property, a task equivalent to finding “a dozen dried peas in a mountain of straw.” Joe and his horse, Red Danger, face extreme danger driving the scrubbers down to Crooked Creek, where the other stockmen are waiting. Yet the danger of the ride (which is described in great detail and with considerable suspense) is seen by Joe as merely another of the duties of his position—though one that reinforces his status and self-image.

Corralled again, the red heifer is upset by the docility of its companions, who refuse to eat; the heifer again jumps the fence and escapes rather than be shot for the value of its hide. The old roan bull, the leader of the herd, is inspired by the example; he leans on the fence and breaks it, and the scrubbers escape into the night. Splinter, one of the ranch hands, who sees the escape, passively watches: He seems to empathize with the animals, risking the censure of Black and the other stockmen.

The old roan bull is challenged as leader by a young red-and-white bull, but the former maintains his position in the herd (now numbering thirty). Now middle-aged, the red cow is the matriarch and leads the herd to more remote regions as professional hunters seek them out for their commercial value as beef and hides. The station is subdivided into “selections” (small farms), which are fenced; watering holes are no longer available. The “chieftainess” and its calf are pursued ever farther from water and pasture until their death from thirst brings an end to the scrubbers. The ensemble of cattle and nature has been destroyed by industry and the subdivision of the vast landholdings of the Queensland plains.

Context

Frank Dalby Davison’s first book, Forever Morning (1931), is the story of an orphaned boy, Andy, who works on a farm in the northern area of the state of New South Wales, near Queensland, the locale of Man-Shy; it reveals the author’s deep interest in nature and especially in the relationship of people and animals to their environment—a continuing theme in all of his work. In The Wells of Beersheba: A Light Horse Legend (1933), a novella, he captures the interdependence of men and horses in time of war and reveals his close understanding of the psyche (if one might call it that) of animals. The Woman at the Mill (1940) is a collection of short stories about life in the small farms carved out of the expansive stations such as Mirramilla that once provided shelter and succor for scrubbers. Dusty (1946) is the story of a mongrel sheepdog that reverts to the sheep-killing of its dingo (wild dog) forebear. Rather than part with it, its owner changes his occupation; however, the dog is hunted as an outlaw and, ironically, is killed by a falling branch. In all these books, Davison seems to understand and sympathize with the “outcast,” the individual straining against the demands of conformity and the forces of fate.

Man-Shy can be compared favorably with works of its genre that are better known, and within the context of Australian literature it may be considered a prose equivalent of Henry Lawson’s or A. B. Paterson’s ballads—especially of Paterson’s “Clancy of the Overflow” and “The Man from Snowy River,” which sing the prowess of the stockmen in the high country.

Yet Davison’s story has special qualities: It is rich in aphoristic prose (“time hastens to heal the hurts of those who are young and vigorous,” for example, and “haste is a thing unusual among stock”); it constantly develops the analogy between human and animal life (the young heifers are said to share an affinity with youth); and it is rich in poetic prose—characterized by alliteration, apt epithets, and finely worded phrases and parallel constructions. These many qualities earned for Man-Shy the Australian Literature Society’s medal in 1931.

The 1949 British edition of Man-Shy was given a new title, The Red Heifer, which suggested a comparison to John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony (1937), which depends in great part on the development of empathy between the boy Jody and the cattleman Billy Buck. In Man-Shy, however, Davison attempts the more difficult task of gaining the reader’s sympathy for the red heifer and its fellow scrubbers without the mediation of a young boy, and in this he largely succeeds. In writing about the deaths of his principal animal characters, Davison is as masterful as Steinbeck: He evokes sympathy, compassion, dignity, and even tragedy. It is no mean achievement to master conflict, suspense, celebration, and defeat in a novella whose focus of attention is a red heifer. Davison’s signal achievement can be measured by the continuous popularity and republication of this, his major contribution to the literature for young readers.