Milking the bull
{{Short description|A proverb indicating a fruitless task}}
Milking the bull is a proverb which uses the metaphor of milking a bull to indicate that an activity would be fruitless or futile.{{citation |journal=Folklore |volume=100 |issue=2 |year=1989 |title=Folklore Motifs in Late Medieval Art I: Proverbial Follies and Impossibilities |doi=10.1080/0015587X.1989.9715766 |author=Malcolm Jones |pages=201–217}}{{citation |title=Milking the Bull and the He-Goat |author=Edgar Wind |journal=Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes |year=1943}}
In the 16th century, the German painter Hans Schäufelein illustrated the proverb on the eight of bells in a deck of playing cards.{{citation |title=The Proverbial Pied Piper |author=Malcolm Jones |chapter=Lively Representing the Proverbs |page=5 |isbn=9781433104893 |publisher=Peter Lang |year=2009}}
Dr Johnson used the proverb to criticise the work of David Hume and other skeptical philosophers.{{citation |page=192 |title=Macaulay's and Carlyle's essays on Samuel Johnson |author=Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle |editor=William Strunk |publisher=H. Holt & Co. |year=1895}}{{citation |author=Peter Ryan |title=Milking the bull |journal=Quadrant |volume=44 |number=11 |year=2000 |pages=87–88}}