Part 2 (1/2)
”A game-c.o.c.k clipped and armed for fight, Doth the rising sun affright.”
Yet Professor Wilson (Christopher North), also a Christian poet, wrote of c.o.c.k-fighting with enthusiasm, and pictures of birds thus hideously disfigured are still shown in London shop windows with other sporting prints. Sir Thomas More is farther off, but it is recorded that he was an expert in the detestable game of tying a c.o.c.k to a post and throwing sticks at it.
A c.o.c.k without spurs has the same name as a tuskless elephant,--_makhna_.
The old Joe Miller of the roast-fowl with only one leg, of which, when the master remonstrates, the servant said it belonged to a breed of one-legged fowls, is also an Indian story with the same conclusion. The servant shows the master a fowl standing on one leg. The master cries sho! and the fowl runs away with two. ”Ah,” says the servant, ”you did not cry sho! to the fowl in the dis.h.!.+” Of a man who gives himself airs they say: ”Can you have no daylight without c.o.c.k-crow?” An Afghan proverb quoted by Professor James Darmesteter says: ”Though the c.o.c.k did not crow the dawn would still come.”
”A hen dreams only of grain” is applied to a sordid person. ”A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for G.o.d nor men,” is a mild English saying, but the Indian version is infamous, for it says, ”A hen's crow and a woman's word no one trusts.” If one Hindu wants to insult another (he has of course an infinite variety of ways) he calls him a poulterer. A Bengal proverb says the Bengal landlord treats his farmer tenants as the Muhammadan treats fowls, feeds them only to kill them in the end. A Muhammadan way of expressing that one is dissatisfied with his own havings, is: ”A house fowl (one you have bred yourself) is no better than pulse.” To one who hesitates to chastise a child they say: ”The chick doesn't die from a hen's kick.” Domestic duties are regularly taught to the girls of a household, so they say: ”When the hen scratches, the chickens learn.”
Poultry of all kinds are most cruelly handled by dealers and market people, who never seem to think that a bird can feel. Turkeys are left to bleed to death half a day by native servants with intent to bleach the flesh. A Hindu would be shocked by such treatment of a parrot, but fowls are outside the pale of regard.
The Goose.--A bird that seems to have lost some of its ancient repute is the goose, which, though sacred in Buddhist and early Hindu times, finds only a vague and legendary place in modern degradations of Hinduism.
The popular legend is that the goose was the _Vahan_ of Brahma, on whom fell the curse of s.h.i.+va, that henceforth he should not be an object of popular wors.h.i.+p. The gait of the goose or the swan (for the two birds seem to be considered the same in the slip-shod talk of the people) is reckoned as next graceful to those of the elephant or the partridge. They say in serious praise of a lady's carriage that she walks like a goose. In Europe we seem to look closer and discriminate the sort of lady with a goose gait, nor do we count it for praise.
The Brahminy Duck.--The note of the ruddy sheldrake or Brahminy duck (_Casarca rutila_) has won for this bird, which is always seen in pairs, a place in Indian cla.s.sic poetry as the type of longing but divided lovers.
Every night across the river the male cries, ”Chakvi, may I come?” and the female responds, ”No, Chakva.” Then the female mourns, ”Chakva, may I come?” and the answer is, ”No, Chakvi.” (The open Indian vowel sounds give the plaintive bird's cry better than the English ”May I come?”) With a super-subtle elaboration of the idea of nightly separation, the birds in some verses I have heard, but cannot fully recall, are dolorously apart in spirit even when put in the same cage. The simile was originally good in a poetical sense, and is still alive to the Indian mind, which loves familiar and accustomed turns; but its constant recurrence gives it a mechanical creak to English ears.
The Peac.o.c.k.--The peac.o.c.k is the _Vahan_ or vehicle, of Karttikeya, a G.o.d of war, and also of Saraswati, G.o.ddess of learning, and is sacred. Many of the troubles between villagers and English soldiers out shooting have arisen from the ignorance of the latter of the veneration in which peac.o.c.ks are held.
In Guzerat, throughout Rajputana, and in many parts of the Central and North-West Provinces, peac.o.c.ks run wild, and are as common as rooks in England. A rhyming proverb says, ”The deer, the monkey, the partridge, and the peac.o.c.k are four thieves,” but they are never punished for their thefts. They are, however, sometimes caught alive by out-caste jungle folk and brought to market with their eyes sewn up with filaments of their own quills in order to prevent them fluttering and spoiling their plumage.
Solomon rebuked the vanity of the peac.o.c.k's tail by an ungenerous and not particularly apt reference to the ugliness of its legs, and his gibe is still in men's mouths. They are in reality good legs, strong and capable; but it is said, ”The peac.o.c.k danced gaily, till he saw his legs, when he was ashamed and wept bitterly.” In some places this saying is accounted for by a story. The peac.o.c.k and the partridge, or, as some say, the maina, had a dancing match. In those days the peac.o.c.k had very pretty feet. So when he had danced, the partridge said, ”Lend me your feet and see _me_ dance.”
They changed feet, but instead of dancing, the deceitful partridge ran away and never came back again. The saying is used as an expression of regret for a foolish bargain. Ancient European bestiaries say when the peac.o.c.k wakes it cries and mourns its lost beauty. In a.s.sam they say with reference to vain people: ”If I must die, I must die, but don't touch my top-knot, said the peac.o.c.k.” Women when they dislike a sister woman call her a peac.o.c.k-legged person, and sometimes after sickness speak of their own limbs in humorous disparagement as like those of the peac.o.c.k, where an English countrywoman would refer to pipe-stems or bean-sticks. Yet ”peac.o.c.k gaited” is a poetical expression for a graceful carriage, and ”a neck like a peac.o.c.k” is a common compliment to a beautiful woman.
The peac.o.c.k is credited with a violent antipathy to snakes, and is said to dance them to death, but a vigorous cobra is scarcely likely to be tired out by a bird. In the excitement of a fight the peac.o.c.k would probably dance round its enemy, and the engagement would be long and doubtful. That the bird is a recognised enemy of snakes in England as well as in India is shown in the interesting volume _On Surrey Hills_, edited by Mrs. J. A.
Owen, where gardens and grounds infested by vipers are said to be infallibly cleared by peac.o.c.ks.
This bird is said to scent the coming rain, and to scream and dance with delight at its approach. ”Frogs and peac.o.c.ks are refreshed by the rain.” In Europe the bird's cry is a rain sign, but we do not credit it with a longing for moisture.
In London drawing-rooms peac.o.c.k feathers are considered unlucky. In India it would seem to be otherwise. I once saw a Hindu servant limping round with a peac.o.c.k feather tied on his leg. ”Yes, sir, I have a bad pain in my leg and this is very good for it.” A spell or _mantra_ must have accompanied the tying, but this I was not privileged to learn. _Taus_, the Arabic (and Greek) word for a peac.o.c.k, is current as well as the Hindi _Mor_. A pretty form of guitar, shaped and painted like a peac.o.c.k, is known as a taus.
The Owl.--There are birds of evil as well as of good omen, and the owl is here, as elsewhere, a byword of ill luck. ”Only owls live alone,” is a proverb flung at unsociable people, and a man is said to be as drunk as an owl, while a stupid fellow is most unjustly described as ”A son of an owl.”
Of humble folk and their obscure lives it is said, ”Only an owl knows the worth of an owl.” ”What does a phnix know of an owl?” It has not occurred to the Oriental jester to speak of a boiled owl in connection with intoxication, but when a husband is abjectly submissive to his wife her friends say she has given him boiled owl's flesh to eat. There are owls of most varieties in India, but a small owl like the cue owl of Italy is the most common and raises a cheerful chuckle at twilight.
In Ceylon the cry of a large owl known as the Devil bird is believed to be a certain herald of death. Nocturnal habits are all that the universal world, including Hindus and Muhammadans, can bring against the owl as a bird of fate. In India, however, though the owl's cry may be dreaded as portending a desolate home, n.o.body is idiotic enough to kill so valuable a vermin destroyer. That pinnacle of stupidity is the exclusive right of English game preservers.
The Pigeon.--The pigeon, the bird of Mecca, is almost as much a Hindu as a Muhammadan bird, and was chosen by s.h.i.+va, the third person of the Hindu Trinity, for Incarnation as Kapoteshwara. I was a.s.sured not long ago by a Hindu devotee that in a small temple near the Kashmir frontier, the image of Mahadeo at times takes life as a pair of pigeons which flutter and disappear in the roof. In cities where Hindus preponderate, large flocks of pigeons are regularly fed by Hindu merchants and shopkeepers. The traveller is reminded, by the roar of their wings, of Venice and Constantinople, and if he went farther north he would find them cherished in the villages of Kabul, where they are supposed to pay for their keep by fertilising the soil. Pigeon fanciers are to be found in most towns of Northern India and are generally Muhammadan. They talk of various breeds, and especially prize the s.h.i.+razi and the small strutting white fan-tail, on whose coral-coloured legs they frequently fasten jingling bangles of bra.s.s; but they seem to have little of the English skill and care in breeding varieties which Darwin found so full of suggestion. The flight is pretty to watch; it is possible to bet on some incidents of it, and it is also possible to beguile some of a neighbour's to join your own flock. But, like quail fighting, it is not considered a respectable pursuit; and though most boys would like to keep pigeons, respectability is in India as stony and implacable as in the West. A popular proverb says the housewife keeps the parrot, the lover keeps the avadavat, and the thief keeps pigeons. In the English Midlands, thirty years ago, pigeon-flyers were (and are still) called disreputable, and you were supposed to be able to distinguish the scamp from his respectable fellow-workmen by the drake's-tail curl of his hair at the back, the result of continually looking aloft at his birds. It is curious that precisely the same notion obtains here in India.
Although the ”homing” propensity of the pigeon is not systematically cultivated and the bird is not regularly employed as a messenger, there are many stories to show that this characteristic trait is recognised. Nor are they always sentimental love tales. A Bengal legend tells the pitiful fate of a Hindu Raja, the last of his race, attacked by Muhammadan invaders. He went bravely out to meet them, carrying with him a pigeon whose return to the palace was to be regarded by his family as an intimation of his defeat, and a signal to put themselves to death and to burn their home. He gained the victory, but while he stooped to drink in the river after the fatigues of the battle, the bird escaped and flew home. The Raja hurried after, but was only in time to throw himself on the still burning pyre.
A common object on the low sky-line of Indian towns of the plain is a light bamboo lattice about six feet square on the top of a tall bamboo pole. This is a pigeon perch, and in the early mornings unkempt pigeon-flyers are seen on the house roofs waving a lure made of rag tied to a stick and whistling through a mouth-call (like that of the English Punch and Judy men) to attract to their roosts the flock of pigeons circling overhead. The evolutions of pigeons in the air, their wheeling and turning on the wing, and the pretty manner of their settling from flight are all so beautiful that it seems stupid to a.s.sociate a taint of human blackguardism with them.
The Koel.--We English call the cuckoo a blithe newcomer and a vernal harbinger, but we do not, because of the bird's a.s.sociation with the sweet o' the year, consider his song the perfection of all music. A Western ear finds no more in the tune of that cuculine bird, the Koel (_Eudynamys honorata_) than a tiresome iteration of one or two clear, high, and resonant notes. Yet Oriental poetry, algebraic in its persistent use of a limited number of symbols, has officially adopted the Koel as the figure for exquisite sound; so the voice of your beloved, the performances of a musical artiste, and all best worth hearing in life are posted under this heading. A Delhi shoemaker or a Lucknow embroiderer can tell you of other bird music, but they have not read much cla.s.sic poetry and hear with their ears. The Englishman in India has a grudge against the Koel; listening with modified rapture to notes that warn him to put up his punkah, overhaul his thermantidote, and prepare for the long St. Laurence penance of an Indian summer. And he thinks longingly of an English spring.
”Ah! Koel, little Koel, singing on the _siris_ bough, In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell-like speech is, Can you tell me aught of England or of spring in England now?”
Natives say crows hate the Koel because it selects their nests for its foundling eggs, which is very probable. I have seen crows mobbing a Koel, but then crows are like London street boys, and will mob anybody of unfamiliar aspect.
The Coppersmith.--The Coppersmith bird is another noisy herald of spring.