“A cock and a bull”

“A cock and a bull” is Yorick’s closing name for an elaborate and rambling story whose comic force comes from its collision of parish business, marital coincidence, and dubious animal blame. The phrase does not merely dismiss Obadiah’s complaint: by calling it one of the best of its kind, Yorick makes the absurd case a compact emblem of the novel’s digressive storytelling.

The Parish Complaint

Obadiah interrupts the room with a matter he insists needs immediate attention. His complaint concerns the bull that Walter Shandy is obliged to keep for parish service, whether under an ancient manor custom or in his capacity as impropriator of the great tithes. The case begins with Obadiah having brought his cow to the bull sometime during the previous summer.

The timing gives the transaction its first comic complication: the visit happened on the day Obadiah married Walter’s housemaid. When Obadiah’s wife later gives birth, he thanks God and expects that his cow will produce a calf as well. He visits the cow daily, but she does not calve; the delay stretches on until the sixth week, when his suspicions fall on the bull.

A Bull on Trial

The accusation acquires a second layer when the bull’s standing is questioned. Walter’s parish is large, and the bull, by the narrator’s account, is not really equal to the demands of his office. Yet he has somehow secured the position, and Walter thinks well of him because he goes about the business with a grave face. Obadiah reports that most of the townsmen blame the bull, turning a private suspicion into a broader parish judgment.

The tale then widens beyond the evidence of the case. Obadiah praises his bull as an exceptionally good one and imagines that, in purer times, the animal might have served Europa herself. He adds that, had the bull possessed two fewer legs, he could have been taken into Doctors' Commons and lost his character—which, for a town bull, would be equivalent to losing his life. The complaint has moved from a delayed calf to reputation, legal implication, and mythic comparison, without resolving whether the bull is at fault.

Yorick’s Name for the Story

Mrs. Shandy asks what the story is about. Yorick answers with the phrase “A COCK and a BULL” and calls it one of the best of its kind he has ever heard. His judgment supplies a punchline rather than a verdict: the animal case is not settled, but its wandering, improbable construction has become unmistakable.

The exchange closes the fourth volume. Its placement gives the phrase a structural force beyond Obadiah’s particular grievance. A seemingly urgent case expands through coincidence, delay, communal suspicion, and extravagant analogy; then Yorick names the resulting form in a single sentence. The ending makes the story’s digression part of its subject: a complaint about a bull becomes a story about the comic abundance of storytelling itself.