“Offspring are able to recognize their mother by no other way
And neither may a mother know her children—a thing which we can see
No less than people may clearly be known among themselves.
For often before the sacred shrines of the gods a calf falls
Slaughtered alongside the incense-fuming altars,
Breathing out a warm river of blood from her chest.
The mother wanders in grief through the green thickets
And recognizes the prints pressed into the ground by cloven feet
As she examines every place open to her eyes if she can see
Anywhere her lost child, only stopping in the thick woods
To fill the world with her mourning. How often she returns
To the stable, broken with longing for her child.
Tender shoots of willow and new-grown grass soft with due
Are not able to relieve her spirit or lighten anxiety’s burden.
And the sight of other calves amid the happy fields
Can neither distract her spirit nor touch her worries—
This is how much she longs for something her own and known.”
nec ratione alia proles cognoscere matrem
nec mater posset prolem; quod posse videmus
nec minus atque homines inter se nota cluere.
nam saepe ante deum vitulus delubra decora
turicremas propter mactatus concidit aras
sanguinis expirans calidum de pectore flumen;
at mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans
novit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis,
omnia convisens oculis loca, si queat usquam
conspicere amissum fetum, completque querellis
frondiferum nemus adsistens et crebra revisit
ad stabulum desiderio perfixa iuvenci,
nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes
fluminaque ulla queunt summis labentia ripis
oblectare animum subitamque avertere curam,
nec vitulorum aliae species per pabula laeta
derivare queunt animum curaque levare
usque adeo quiddam proprium notumque requirit.
An number of these are very close to their Greek equivalents
Aelian Varia Historia 5.52
“Nature has produced animals which have the greatest range of voices and sounds, in the same way, in fact, as she has made people. Just as the Skythian speaks one way and the Indian speaks another, or the Aithiopian has his own language and the Sakai have theirs. And the language of Greece is different from Rome. Indeed, it is the same with animals who in various ways utter the a sound or an song native to their tongue. One roars, another moos, a neigh comes from another, a bray from one, a bleat or maaaa from another. A howl is dear to one; a bark to another; while some growl. There are those who scream, whistle, hoot, sing, croon and tweet. There are endless gifts proper to different animals by nature.”
“Snorting is neighing. A snorting echo. This, I believe, means neighing. But neighing is not the same as snorting. It is the sound that comes through horses’ noses when they prance.”
We also have independent confirmation that cows may have said mu as early as the Mucynean period:
The Linear A (l) and B (r) sign AB23 had the value mu in LB. It's also used as the ideogram for ox, suggesting Myc. and Min. cows went mu. pic.twitter.com/K2PtFLlDnJ
This nominal root, likely onomatopoetic from the sound of animals, has a few verbal reflexes in Greek, including μυκάομαι and μύζω. There are additional derivatives: μυκητής (“bellower”, μυκήμων “bellow”, μύκημα (“lowing, bellowing”; used of lions and thunder too). The upsilon is long to contrast with the short vowel in μύκης (“mushroom”) and Μυκήνη (Mycenae). Here’s Beekes again:
Perhaps this is not a sound exclusive to cattle, however. Consider Suda mu 1390:
“Mycalê and Mukalêsos: name for a city. It comes from the fact that the Gorgons bellowed here.”
The verb is also used to indicate the low sound of objects or the roar of a lion. See Suda, mu 1394
“Mukêsantos: “after it sounded”—Homer has “on their own, the gates of heaven sounded, the gates the seasons hold” and in the Epigrams, “after the drum sounded deeply, the boldest of the rest of the animals ran off faster than a deer.”
And the sound moo seems to be used for non-verbal soundmaking for humans too:
Aristophanes, Thesm. 231-231
Kê: Moo, Moo
Eu: Why are you mootering? Everything has been done well.
ΚΗ. Μῦ μῦ.
ΕΥ. Τί μύζεις; Πάντα πεπόηται καλῶς.
There might be multiple layers of onomatopoetic derivatives here—one for the cow and another for the human moan, and even this is probably a simplification.
Zonaras, s.v. Μῦ (=Etymologicum Magnum s.v)
“Moo: a simple sound, this utterance imitates a moan. A moan is an echo of moo, a sound coming from the nose.”
