Since 1979, the artwork "Herr'n Pastor si'n Kau" has been located on the Schlachtermarkt, consisting of a brick-built fountain basin, a brick-built column with a surrounding bronze relief band, topped with an animal sculpture – a cow, also made of bronze.

The relief depicts motifs from the eponymous Low German folk song "Van Herrn Pastor siene Kauh," whose oldest source dates back to the first century. Its origin stems from the literary episode "The Banquet of Trimalchio" from the satirical novel Satyricon, written by the Roman senator and writer Titus Petronius.
The Low German folk song is a cheerful to sad, mischievous, and mocking round song and tells of a deceased cow owned by a pastor. The individual parts of the animal are distributed to the residents of a village. The song is said to consist of more than a hundred verses.
The carillon of the Schwerin Town Hall plays the beginning of the melody of the folk song.