A clattering or train of jackdaws on the tower of St Michael and All Angels Church in the Somersetshire village of Haslebury Plucknett. The cockerel weathervane is a tradition going back to Pope Gregory the Great, who regarded the cockerel as a key symbol of the faith because of the story of Peter’s denial in Mark 14:27-72. Cockerel weathervanes thereafter became cheerfully popular, but Pope Nicholas I (r. 858-867), displaying that curiously Continental belief that nothing is done properly until it is officially regulated, ordered a cockerel weathervane to be mounted on every church steeple. The Bayeux Tapestry, made just after the Conquest of 1066, records that one was placed atop Westminster Abbey.
Part 1 of 2
‘The Jackdaw’
THERE is a bird who,*
by his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.
Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate
From what point blows the weather.
Look up - your brains begin to swim,
’Tis in the clouds - that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.
Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the raree-show,*
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.
Like his fable The Nightingale and the Glow Worm, this poem is a translation from the Latin of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747). The original was titled ‘Cornicula’.
A raree-show (rarity show) was a large box typically carried about on one’s back, popular from the 17th century. Inside were scenes of life which might be viewed by opening the box out or through a peep hole. The term was gradually extended to mean any curious spectacle or sideshow.
Précis
The jackdaw, said poet William Cowper, makes him home in the roof of the parish church in a position that would make us dizzy simply to look at it; and from there, atop the weathervane, surveys the bustle of human activity in comfort, like someone watching a show at a Georgian fun-fair. (52 / 60 words)
Part Two
“Billy’s Raree-Show or John Bull enlighten’d.” This cartoon from 1797 shows Prime Minister William Pitt as a raree-show man in a blue coat, with John Bull (the ordinary British man) taking a peek at ‘Billy Hum’s Grand Exhibition of moving mechanism or deception of the Senses’. While John Bull is thus engrossed, Pitt helps himself to the poor fellow’s savings.
YOU think, no doubt, he sits and
muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.
He sees that this great roundabout,*
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic,* law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says - what says he? - Caw.*
Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen ’em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine
And such a head between ’em.
Not the road junction, but a merry-go-round, an item of playground furniture in the form of a large circular plate for children to stand on, which can be made to spin like a carousel.
Medical science.
It is tempting to think Cowper intended a wordplay on the exclamation ‘cor!’, but that dates back no further than the twentieth century.
Précis
As he perches on his weathercock, the jackdaw not troubled by heights, says Cowper, nor by the everyday things that bother mankind as he scuttles about far below. And that is something to envy: nice as it would be to be able to fly like the jackdaw, it would be a still greater liberation to be as free from care. (60 / 60 words)
