workings of the inner lives of polar bears, of anteaters, hummingbirds, frogs. They’ve seen unfurled before their eyes the most intimate transactions in the lives of other creatures, wooing, mating, birth, all in magnificent colour and irresistible detail, each undreamt-of habit, each hitherto opaque, obscure aspect of nesting or feeding or defecation, but will say, ‘What is it?’ when confronted with the one bird they see every day, making me reflect yet again on the oddness of humanity, which, in its desires and its yearnings, wishes to find life on other planets, other civilisations, but knows so little of the civilisations around it. Implicit too in the question about what Chicken is, I realise, is the unspoken word ‘why?’
It’s not only that people don’t know what Chicken is, they don’t know what she does. The question ‘What is it?’ is prompted not by curiosity alone, but also by fear. People are scared of Chicken, unlikely people: huge men see her and instantaneously a shadow of anxiety alters their faces.
‘What is it?’ they say, hoping only that I’ll take it away. Lads only a generation or two from Aberdeenshire farming life hover nervously until, on shutting the door to the study or kitchen, danger is past. What is it? A rook, my boy, a rook, a bird of the kind by which, every day and in every place, on every roadside verge, overhead in every tree, you are surrounded. A rook, the like of which your farmer grandfather in Strathdon or the Mearns will have waged daily (if unnecessary and futile) battle. I want to ask them what they’re afraid of but don’t. I was frightened of birds, at the beginning, not simply ignorant. I remind myself that I was afraid not only of corvids but of doves too, of all birds, for I shared what now appears to me to be this near-universal apprehension, one that lies in not knowing what birds may do or wish to do, an unfamiliarity with their habits, their ability suddenly, terrifyingly, to fly. The history is too long, the fears and superstitions too deep-rooted for flippant questions.
The name of James I of Scotland is one we seldom mention in Chicken’s presence, because, for all the worthy civic efforts he undertook on his return to Scotland in 1424 after eighteen years of captivity in England (his visionary enterprise in rebuilding the palace at Linlithgow, recently destroyed by fire, his enthusiastic, new-broom frenzy of legislation relating to governance, law, the ownership of mineral rights, and the imposition of restrictions on playing football), among the many laws he passed in 1424 was one decreeing that rooks,for their alleged damage to cornfields, should be killed in their nests, any farmer being found with nesting rooks at Beltane being obliged to give up the relevant trees to the king, until payment of a fine:
Item, for they that men considderes that Ruikes biggard in Kirk Yardes, Orchardes and Trees, dois great skaith upon Cornes; It is ordained that they that sik Trees perteinis to lette them to big & suffer on na wise that their birdes flie away … and the nest be funden in the Trees at Beltane the trees shal be foirfaulted to the King …
Doves, on the other hand, were given special protection, penalties being imposed on anyone who destroyed dove cotes.
Linlithgow Palace would, at the hands of James’s descendants, become one of the finest of Renaissance palaces, a gorgeous construction, galleried and fountained, embellished and carved and barrel-vaulted, the favourite of queens, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots.
Whilst his son James II took no interest in the rebuilding of the palace, he appears to have inherited the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice against rooks, because on ascending the throne after the murder of his father he enacted further anti-bird legislation in 1457, widening the scope of the law to include other species:
Pertrickes, Plovares, and sik like foules … eines, bissettes, gleddes, mittalles, the quhik destroys,
It’s not only that people don’t know what Chicken is, they don’t know what she does. The question ‘What is it?’ is prompted not by curiosity alone, but also by fear. People are scared of Chicken, unlikely people: huge men see her and instantaneously a shadow of anxiety alters their faces.
‘What is it?’ they say, hoping only that I’ll take it away. Lads only a generation or two from Aberdeenshire farming life hover nervously until, on shutting the door to the study or kitchen, danger is past. What is it? A rook, my boy, a rook, a bird of the kind by which, every day and in every place, on every roadside verge, overhead in every tree, you are surrounded. A rook, the like of which your farmer grandfather in Strathdon or the Mearns will have waged daily (if unnecessary and futile) battle. I want to ask them what they’re afraid of but don’t. I was frightened of birds, at the beginning, not simply ignorant. I remind myself that I was afraid not only of corvids but of doves too, of all birds, for I shared what now appears to me to be this near-universal apprehension, one that lies in not knowing what birds may do or wish to do, an unfamiliarity with their habits, their ability suddenly, terrifyingly, to fly. The history is too long, the fears and superstitions too deep-rooted for flippant questions.
The name of James I of Scotland is one we seldom mention in Chicken’s presence, because, for all the worthy civic efforts he undertook on his return to Scotland in 1424 after eighteen years of captivity in England (his visionary enterprise in rebuilding the palace at Linlithgow, recently destroyed by fire, his enthusiastic, new-broom frenzy of legislation relating to governance, law, the ownership of mineral rights, and the imposition of restrictions on playing football), among the many laws he passed in 1424 was one decreeing that rooks,for their alleged damage to cornfields, should be killed in their nests, any farmer being found with nesting rooks at Beltane being obliged to give up the relevant trees to the king, until payment of a fine:
Item, for they that men considderes that Ruikes biggard in Kirk Yardes, Orchardes and Trees, dois great skaith upon Cornes; It is ordained that they that sik Trees perteinis to lette them to big & suffer on na wise that their birdes flie away … and the nest be funden in the Trees at Beltane the trees shal be foirfaulted to the King …
Doves, on the other hand, were given special protection, penalties being imposed on anyone who destroyed dove cotes.
Linlithgow Palace would, at the hands of James’s descendants, become one of the finest of Renaissance palaces, a gorgeous construction, galleried and fountained, embellished and carved and barrel-vaulted, the favourite of queens, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots.
Whilst his son James II took no interest in the rebuilding of the palace, he appears to have inherited the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice against rooks, because on ascending the throne after the murder of his father he enacted further anti-bird legislation in 1457, widening the scope of the law to include other species:
Pertrickes, Plovares, and sik like foules … eines, bissettes, gleddes, mittalles, the quhik destroys,
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