MOTHER CAREY AND HER CHICKENS.
Who was Mother Carey the appearance of whose 'chickens' is supposed by
the mariner to foretell a coming storm? This question is often asked,
but seldom answered, and so a little light on the subject is desirable.
Charles Kingsley gives a very vivid picture of her. In his charming book
about The Water-Babies, he tells how little Tom, in search of his old
master, Grimes, is instructed to find his way to Peacepool and Mother
Carey's Haven, where the good whales go when they die. On his way he
meets a flock of petrels, who invite him to go with them, saying: 'We
are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she sends us out over all the seas
to show the good birds the way home.' So he comes to Peacepool at last,
which is miles and miles across; and there the air is clear and
transparent, and the water calm and lovely; and there the good whales
rest in happy sleep upon the slumbering sea.
In the midst of Peacepool was one large peaked iceberg. 'When Tom came
near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he had ever seen--a
white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And from the foot
of the throne there swam away, out and in, and into the sea, millions of
new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than man ever dreamed.
And they were Mother Carey's chickens, whom she makes out of the
sea-water all the day long.'
Now, this beautiful fancy of Kingsley's--and how beautiful it is can
only be realized by a reading of the whole story--is based upon fact, as
all beautiful fancies must be.
The fundamental idea of Kingsley's picture is that of a fruitful and
beneficent mother. And Mother Carey is just the Mater Cara of the
medieval sailors. Our Mother Carey's chickens are the 'Birds of the Holy
Virgin,' of the South of Europe, the 'Oiseaux de Notre Dame' of the
French seamen.
One reason for associating the petrel with the Holy Mother may possibly
have been found in its supposed sleeplessness. The bird was believed
never to rest, to hatch its eggs under its wings, and to be incessantly
flying to and fro on the face of the waters on messages of warning to
mariners. Even to this day sailors believe that the albatross, the
aristocratic relative of the petrel, sleeps on the wing; and the power
of the albatross, for good and evil, readers of the Ancient Mariner will
remember. We say for good and evil, because opinion fluctuated. Thus:
'At length did cross an albatross,
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.'
When the mariner with his crossbow did shoot the albatross, the crew
said:
'I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work them woe;
For all averred I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
"Ah, wretch!" said they, "the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!"'
And once more, when the weather cleared, they changed:
'Then all averred I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist;
"'Twas right," said they, "such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist!"'
Coleridge got his idea from Wordsworth, who got it from a passage in
Shelvocke's voyages, where a long spell of bad weather was attributed to
an albatross following the ship.
The poet who sang,
'Oh, stormy, stormy peterel!
Thou art a bird of woe,
Yet would I thou could'st tell me half
Of the misery thou dost know!'
has, however, misunderstood the feeling with which that little harbinger
is regarded. So have many other persons. The petrel is not a bird of
woe, but a bird of warning.
The Virgin Mary--Mater Cara--was the special protectress of the early
Christian seamen, just as Amphitrite had been the tutelary genius of
his Greek, and Venus of his Roman, progenitors, and just as Isis, the
moon goddess, had been the patroness of the Egyptian navigators. The
Catholic mariner still believes that the Virgin has especial power over
the winds and the sea.
At Marseilles is the shrine of the Notre Dame de la Garde, greatly
venerated by all the Provencal sailors; at Caen is the shrine of Notre
Dame de Deliverance; at Havre, that of Notre Dame des Neiges. Brand
tells, in his book of Antiquities, that on Good Friday Catholic mariners
'cock-bill' their yards in mourning and hang and scourge an effigy of
Judas Iscariot. The practice still continues, and as recently as 1881 a
London newspaper contained an account of the ceremony performed on board
several Portuguese vessels in the London Docks. The proceedings always
closed with a Hymn to the Virgin Mary.
In Rome, at the Church of Santa Maria della Navicella, there is a small
marble ship which was offered by Pope Leo the Tenth in execution of a
vow after his escape from shipwreck. The first thing done by Magellan
and his crew after their safe return to Seville was to perform penance
barefooted, clad only in their shirts, and bearing lighted tapers in
their hands, at the shrine of Our Lady of Victory. And it is related of
Columbus, that on safe arrival after a storm at the Azores, 'The Admiral
and all the crew, bearing in remembrance the vow which they had made the
Thursday before, to go barefooted, and in their shirts, to some church
of Our Lady at the first land, were of opinion that they ought to
discharge this vow. They accordingly landed, and proceeded, according to
their vow, barefooted, and in their shirts, toward the hermitage.'
Countless instances might be cited, but these will suffice to show the
estimation in which Mater Cara was held by Catholic seamen.
How it came to be supposed that the smaller _Procellariae_ are only
visible before a storm is not very apparent. In point of fact, there is
no more reason for associating the petrel specially with storms than
there is for the belief expressed in the old Scotch couplet quoted in
the last chapter:
'Seagull, seagull, sit in the sand;
It's never good weather when you're on the land!'
As a matter of fact, seagulls do fly far inland in fine weather, and
especially during ploughing-time. And also, as a matter of fact, the
petrel lives at sea both in fine weather and foul, because he is
uncomfortable on land. It is only the breeding season that he spends on
shore; while the seagull is just as much at home on the land as on the
sea.
The scientific name of the petrel tribe is _Procellariae_, from the Latin
_procella_--a storm. It is a large family, all the members of which are
distinguished by a peculiar tube-like arrangement of the nostrils. Their
feet, also, are peculiar in being without any back toe, so that they can
only with great difficulty rise on the wing from dry land.
Mother Carey's chickens are among the smaller species of this family,
and they have both a shorter bill and a longer leg than their relatives.
But all the _Procellariae_ are noted for ranging further from land than
any other of the sea-birds. Thus they are often visible from ship-board
when no other animal life can be sighted; and thus it was, doubtless,
that their appearance suggested safe harbour, and consequent thanks to
Mater Cara, to the devout seaman.
Why the petrels are associated with storms is thus not easily explained,
seeing that they are abroad in all weathers; but a feasible suggestion
was advanced by Pennant. It is that they gather from the water
sea-animals which are most abundant before or after a storm, when the
sea is in a state of unusual commotion. All birds are highly sensitive
to atmospheric changes, and all sea-birds seem to develop extra activity
in threatening and 'dirty' weather.
There is another interesting thing about Mother Carey's chicken, and
that is, that he is also called petrel, from the Italian 'Petrello,' or
Little Peter. This is because he is supposed to be able, like the
apostle, to walk on the water, and as in fact he does after a fashion,
with the aid of his wings.
Now, St. Peter, both as a fisherman and for his sea-walking, was always
a favourite saint with sailors, and was often invoked during storms. He
was the patron saint of Cortez, as he was also of the Thames watermen.
There is an old legend that St. Peter went on board a fisherman's boat
somewhere about the Nore, and that it carried him, without sails or
oars, to the very spot which he selected as the site for Westminster
Abbey.
In the Russian ports of the Baltic there is firm belief in a species of
water-spirits called Rusalkas, who raise storms and cause much damage to
the shipping. The great anniversary of these storm-spirits is St.
Peter's Day. The John Dory is St. Peter's fish, and it is said that the
spots on each side of its mouth are the marks of the apostle's thumb and
forefinger. It was called 'janitore,' or doorkeeper, because in its
mouth was found the penny with which the temple-tax was paid. Now, St.
Peter also was the doorkeeper of heaven, and from janitore to John Dory
was an easy transition.
With fishermen, as was natural, St. Peter was held in high honour; and
in Cornwall and Yorkshire, until recently, it was customary to light
bonfires, and to hold other ceremonies, on St. Peter's Day, to signalize
the opening of the fishing season, and to bespeak luck. An old writer
says of these customs at Guisboro', in Yorkshire, that:
'The fishermen, on St. Peter's daye, invited their friends and kinfolk
to a festivall kept after their fashion, with a free hearte, and no show
of niggardnesse. That day their boats are dressed curiously for the
showe, their masts are painted, and certain rytes observed amongst them
with sprinkling their bows with good liquor, which custome or
superstition, sucked from their ancestors, even continueth down unto
this present tyme.'
Perhaps at 'this present tyme' the ceremonies are not so elaborate; but
survivals of the 'custome or superstition' are to be found yet in our
fishing villages.
It is probable that the observers of St. Peter's Day do not know the
origin of their curious customs. It is certain that sailors, as a class,
do not now know why their favourite little bird is called petrel. We
have tried to remove the stigma which in modern times has come to rest
upon Mother Carey's chickens. Let us no longer do them wrong by
supposing that they are always the harbingers of woe. They have a busy
and a useful life, and it is one, as we have seen, with tender, even
sacred, associations.
It may be recalled as an interesting, although not an agreeable item,
that in the days of the French Revolution there was a notorious brood of
Mother Carey's chickens in Paris. They were the female rag-tag-and-bobtail
of the city, whose appearance in the streets was understood to forebode
a fresh political tumult. What an insult to our feathered friends to
bestow their honoured name on such human fiends!
The real Mother Carey is she who appeared to Tom and Ella in Peacepool,
after they had learned a few things about themselves and the world. They
heard her voice calling to them, and they looked, crying:
'"Oh, who are you, after all? You are our dear Mrs.
Do-as-you-would-be-done-by."
'"No, you are good Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did; but you are grown quite
beautiful now!"
'"To you," said the Fairy; "but look again."
'"You are Mother Carey," said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice, for he
had found out something which made him very happy, and yet frightened
him more than all that he had ever seen.
'"But you are grown quite young again."
'"To you," said the Fairy; "but look again."
'"You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I went to Harthover!"
'And when they looked again she was neither of them, and yet all of them
at once.
'"My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there."
'And they looked into her great, deep soft eyes, and they changed again
and again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond.
'"Now read my name," said she at last, and her eyes flashed for one
moment, clear, white, blazing light; but the children could not read her
name, for they were dazzled, and hid their faces in their hands.
'They were only water-babies, and just beginning to learn the meaning of
love.'