Talk:Der Großmann/@comment-25041416-20140630152213

No 18th century German peasant (or even landowner) would ever shrug off a dead cow. A dead cow would lead to histrionics, to pyrotechnics of religious fervor unseen since Luther left the monastery, and to panicked trips to friends and neighbors to try to divine just what was going on. Throw in an element of the supernatural (even if that element is just the word of a silly child) and the farmer would have been out of his mind.

The author of your scrap may be a very sophisticated man, a bona fide free thinker. Maybe that's what you're trying to convey. Even then, though, a dead cow is nothing to sneeze at.