Cowboy bowline so easily pushed back by accident. However, there is no documentation to confirm this claim, and some Dutch knot tyers outright deny it. Another piece of unverified lore is that it is called a winter bowline because the exposed working end on the outside would blow in the wind and prevent it from freezing to the loop on ships in the north Atlantic during winter. (This suggests that the standard bowline would be the summer bowline.) "The Ashley Book of Knots" states that it is "distinctly inferior" to the standard bowline because of its similarity to the left-hand sheet bend.
Overhand knot There are a number of ways to tie the Overhand knot. In heraldry, the overhand knot is known as a "Stafford knot", owing to a representation of it being used first as a heraldic badge by the Earls of Stafford, and later as a general symbol of Staffordshire. As a defensive measure, hagfishes, which resemble eels, produce large volumes of thick slime when disturbed. A hagfish can remove the excess slime, which can suffocate it in a matter of minutes, by tying its own body into an overhand knot, then sliding the knot from its head down to the tail.