THE GUINEA-FOWL
“Once upon a time—That begins, you see, like the stories of Cinderella
and of the Ass’s Skin. Are we going to spend our time in the recital of
the wonders of some fairy godmother? Not at all. I am simply going to
tell you the story of the guinea-fowl; and this story happens to be
connected, in its first part, with a certain fable told thousands and
thousands of years ago, in the evening by the fire-side, to little
boys, just as to-day you are told the tragic adventures of Hop o’ my
Thumb with the Ogre. I start again then.
“In that corner of the world known as Greece, a corner so illustrious
in ages long past, there was once upon a time a valiant young man, son
of the king of the country, whose favorite occupation was hunting. I
say occupation and not recreation, because in those hard times when
industrial pursuits were just beginning, the country was overrun with
wild animals from which one had constantly to defend oneself and one’s
flock, only recently herded together under the shepherd’s crook. At the
risk of their own lives brave men undertook this harsh duty. Many
succumbed to it, some acquired renown great enough to survive the lapse
of centuries and come down to our time. Surrounded by a heroic aureole,
the names of these ancient slayers of monsters have reached us. Such is
the name of Meleager, borne by the young man I just mentioned.
“The skin of a wild beast on his back for clothing, in his hand a stout
stake sharpened to a point and hardened in the fire, on his shoulder a
quiver full of arrows pointed with little sharp stones, in his belt a
bludgeon of hard wood and a stone hatchet sharpened on the sandstone,
the ardent hunter ranged over the country, tracking the formidable
animals to their very lairs in dark forests and mountain caves
overgrown with an impenetrable barrier of reeds.”
“Why didn’t those men,” asked Emile, “if they had to fight such
ferocious animals, use something better than sharpened sticks and
stone-pointed arrows? Why didn’t they take regular firearms?”
“For the very best of reasons: metals were unknown, and iron, one of
the latest to be discovered, was not used by man until long after this
time. Men armed themselves, therefore, as best they could, with the
point of a bone or the sharp edge of a broken stone.”
“I understand, then,” said Louis, “how dangerous such hunts must have
been, and how courageous the hunters. To-day one would cut a sorry
figure attacking a wolf with only a sharpened stake for a weapon.”
“And how would it be if one found oneself face to face with the wild
boar of which Meleager rid the country? According to the old writers
who handed down the affair to us, it was an animal such as had never
been seen before and will never be seen again. Heaven, in its wrath,
had sent it to ravage the fields. It surpassed in size, they say, the
strongest bulls. From its bloodshot eyes lightning darted; from its
horrible mouth exhaled a fiery breath that instantly withered the
leaves of trees; with a few blows of its snout it uprooted oaks; with
its tusks, more formidable than the elephant’s, it ripped up the earth
and sent great masses of rock flying like so much dust. What became of
the poor people when this brute rushed at them in all its fury? They
all fled, wild with terror, their hands upraised to heaven, their
voices choked with fright.”
“There must be some exaggeration there,” interposed Louis. “A wild boar
does not grow to such a size and such strength.”
“Yes, certainly, there is exaggeration in this as in many other stories
in which the real facts, coming down through long centuries, finally
become greatly magnified and take on most marvelous additions. Let us
bring things back to something like probability. An enormous wild boar
sets the country in a panic. For a people unprovided with good weapons
and having no refuge but fragile huts of reed, it must be a very
dangerous situation.
“To exorcise the common peril, Meleager calls together the best men in
the neighborhood and places himself at the head of the hunters, among
whom are to be found two of his uncles, his mother’s brothers, violent
men and very jealous of the fame their nephew has already acquired by
his valorous exploits. They go to meet the monster. The first to
approach the beast pay for their temerity with their lives. Already
several have been made to bite the dust, without any result, when
Meleager, more fortunate and no doubt also more skilful, succeeds in
stabbing the beast with his stake. Victory is his, and the boar should
belong to him, or at least the head, as a trophy of his courage; but
his uncles, furious at their nephew’s acquisition of a new title to
fame in addition to so many former ones, do not look at it in that
light. The dispute becomes heated, and, as usual in those brutal times,
the disputants pass quickly from argument to blows. Meleager, beside
himself with wrath, kills his two uncles with the same stake that has
drunk the blood of the beast.”
“Oh, wretched man!” cried Jules.
“Evil overtook him. On hearing of the death of her two brothers,
Meleager’s mother loses her reason from grief. She draws from a
cupboard, where she has kept it with the greatest care, a firebrand
blackened at one end. With a hand trembling with anguish, she takes
this firebrand, this precious firebrand for which hitherto she would
have given her very eyes, life itself, and throws it into the fire,
where it is straightway consumed. Ah, what has she done, the unhappy
mother, what has she done! At that moment her son Meleager is dying,
consumed by an inner fire; he is dying, he is dead, for the firebrand
has just given its last flicker. In her despair the poor mother kills
herself.
“The connection between this firebrand that was reduced to ashes and
Meleager’s end escapes you; I hasten to throw some light on this point.
I will tell you then that at Meleager’s birth a firebrand suddenly
sprang from beneath the ground and began to burn in the middle of the
room, while a voice from the depths, like an infernal rumbling, said:
‘This child will live until the firebrand is consumed.’”
“Why, this is nothing but a fairy tale!” Jules exclaimed.
“Very true. History here gives place to fable. Now the firebrand was
burning on the floor and threatened soon to be entirely consumed. They
hastened to pick it up and extinguish it with water. From that time the
mother preserved it with the greatest care, as the most precious thing
she had, persuaded that her son would live to a great age, when, crazed
with grief at the news of her brothers’ death, she threw it into the
fire. As the subterranean voice had said, the moment the firebrand was
consumed Meleager succumbed, devoured by an inner fire.”
“It’s a good story,” was Emile’s comment, “but I don’t at all see what
it has to do with the guinea-fowl.”
“You will see in a minute,” his uncle reassured him. “Inconsolable at
the death of their brother, Meleager’s sisters unceasingly shed tears
that rolled like pearls over their mourning garments; night and day
they filled the house with their distressing sobs. Heaven had pity on
them and changed them into birds until then unknown, into guinea-hens,
whose plumage is still sprinkled with the tears of the unhappy girls,
and whose unceasing cries are the continuation of their sobs. Such,
according to the ancients, is the origin of guinea-fowls, called by
them Meleagridæ in honor of the hero of the legend.
“The childish imagination of the ancients elaborated this story of the
metamorphosis of Meleager’s sisters out of the two most prominent
traits of the guinea-fowl, its plumage and its cry. On a background of
bluish gray, the color of mourning, are sprinkled innumerable round
white spots. Those are the tears, running in pearly drops over the bird
as they ran over the somber garments of the inconsolable sisters. The
guinea-fowl’s voice is a discordant, continuous, unendurable cry, in
which the fable recognizes, unquestioningly, the painful sobs of
Meleager’s sisters.”
“Those resemblances are ingenious,” said Louis, “but they do not take
the place of real knowledge of the guinea-fowl’s origin. Not even in
those old days could every one have believed in the singular tale you
have just told us.”
“Many were satisfied with it and sought no further information. And
even in our day, my friend, in this so-called enlightened century, is
it so unusual that the more absurd a thing is the more easily it takes
root in our minds? Many were satisfied with the story, but the wise
knew well that the bird came to us from Africa, and for that reason
called it the African fowl.
“These old names are now out of use and are replaced by the word
guinea-fowl, or pintade, which some, not without reason write peintade
(painted). In fact, the white spots, spread over the bluish-gray ground
of the plumage, are so round and so regularly distributed that one
might say they were traced with a brush by a painter. The bird looks
painted; hence its name.
“The guinea-fowl has rounded outlines. Its short wings, its drooping
tail, and the general arrangement of the feathers on its back give it a
deformed appearance, which is misleading, for when plucked the bird
shows none of its former gibbosity. The neck is lank. Imitating in that
respect its compatriot, the camel, the guinea-fowl straightens it up
and stretches it out when it runs away, and then it looks like a
rolling ball. The head is small and partly bald, like the turkey’s. Two
wattles, tinted red and blue, hang from the base of the beak. The top
of the skull is protected by dry skin, which rises in the shape of a
helmet and is perhaps not without use when in their quarrelsome moods
the guinea-fowls have a trial of skill in splitting one another’s head
with blows of the beak.
“Many qualities recommend this bird to our notice. The eggs are
excellent and numerous, a hundred and more annually. They are a little
smaller than the hen’s, with remarkably thick shells of a yellowish or
dull reddish color. Its flesh is superior, veritable game, nearly equal
to that of the pheasant and partridge; and yet the guinea-fowl is rare
almost everywhere. Three great faults are the reason: its cry, its
quarrelsome disposition, and its wandering habits.
“First, its cry. He who has not had, for hours and hours, his ear
tortured by the satanic music of the bird is ignorant of one of the
most irritating of minor torments. The rasping of a file upon the teeth
of a saw in process of sharpening, the discordant screech of a
strangling cat, the final roulade of a braying donkey, are trifles in
comparison. And this charivari goes on from morning to night with a
reënforcement of the orchestra when the weather is about to change or
something unexpected happens to worry the performers. If one is not
blessed with a special ear, if the head is not void of all
preoccupation, one simply cannot stand this deafening racket. They say
the guinea-hens have inherited the wailings of Meleager’s sisters; but
I like to think that the poor girls put a little more reserve into the
heartbreaking expression of their grief. In short, never tell Uncle
Paul to have guinea-hens under his window; he would flee to the
farthest depths of the forest, never to return. There are others, and
they are numerous, whose nerves are irritated just as much by the
insufferable bird; that is why the guinea-fowl is rare in
poultry-yards, and by reason of its music escapes the spit.
“Second, its love of fighting. The parchment helmet standing up on top
of the head betrays at the first glance the quarrelsome mania of the
bird. The guinea-fowl is the bully of the poultry-yard; it domineers
over the others and for a mere nothing will pick a quarrel. Hens and
chickens are tormented for the possession of a grain of oats; the cock
must on all occasions have a trial of skill with the beak to make his
and his family’s rights respected; the turkey-gobbler himself, the
burly gobbler, must reckon with it. The guinea-cock, quick at attack,
delivers ten assaults and twenty blows of the beak before his big
adversary can put himself on the defensive. When at last the gobbler
parries and thrusts, the turbulent aggressor makes use of tactics that
he seems to have learned from his compatriot, the Arab. He turns his
back on the enemy, flees in haste, then abruptly returns to the charge
and hurls himself suddenly on the gobbler at a moment when the latter
is off his guard. The beak having dealt its blow, the flight
recommences. Nearly always the gobbler is forced to capitulate. I leave
you to imagine what sort of harmony must prevail in a poultry-yard
harboring such disturbers of the peace.
“Third, its wanderlust. The narrow limits of the poultry-yard are
irksome to guinea-fowls. They are glad enough to be on hand at feeding
time, but, their crops once full, they must have a long walk across
country. Off they go, always by themselves, without ever admitting the
common poultry to their ranks. To the music of its harsh chatter the
flock goes on from one hedge to another, one bush to the next, snapping
up insects. The distraction of the hunt makes them forget distance, and
soon they are beyond supervision. Let a dog appear, and these
half-tamed game-birds are seized with a foolish panic. They fly in all
directions, with a cry of alarm resembling the harsh note of a rattle.
The disbanded flock will have much trouble in getting together again;
perhaps when they do come together one or two will be missing. Another
inconvenience no less grave: during these excursions the eggs are laid
almost anywhere, in the wheat-field, on the broad meadow, amid the
tangled underbrush. Except by attentive watching at the moment of
laying, it would take a sharp eye to find the nest of the suspected
bird.
“The guinea-hen broods in about the same manner as the common hen, but
it is preferable to set the eggs under a common hen; she will perform
the imposed task perfectly and make no distinction between her own eggs
and those of a stranger. The hatching takes place about the
twenty-eighth or thirtieth day. On coming out of the shell, the little
guinea-chicks can walk and eat alone quite as well as the other
chickens. They need warmth and assiduous care. The first week they are
fed with a pap of bread-crumbs and hard-boiled eggs, to which are added
ants’ eggs or at least a little chopped meat. After that they have the
same diet as ordinary chickens. Like young turkeys they pass through a
critical period, the time when the red begins to show on the bald skin
of the head. To pass through it well, the best way is to give them
strengthening food and shelter them from all dampness.”