»cow-byre

I came across this word, distinctively hyphenated, in a translation from the German original of "The Confusions of Young Törless". It struck me not only because I had never before seen it, but in using this word -- from the English byre, "a building for sheltering cattle; a barn", the translator's art impressed me. The choice of words in German must also have reflected a certain time, for in these times one would never write "cow-byre" where one might instead write "cow-barn" or simply "barn". A byre might also be a shed or other generic outbuilding, but the emphasis on cow-byre seems unusual and significant. I could not glean the shade of meaning from the context in which the novel presented it, however (and have lost the note in which I jotted down the page number).