An Introduction to the Dovecote - Pigeons in History and Literature

E. S. Dixon

Description

This book explores pigeons and their use in literature. From the mediaeval period through Shakespeare to the modern era.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 17 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528764186
• Langue: English

Extrait

An Introduction to the Dovecote
Pigeons in History and Literature
By
E. S. Dixon
Copyright 2011 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
The Dovecote
THE DOVECOTE.
INTRODUCTORY.
Pigeons differently constituted to other domestic birds.-Interest attached to them.-Pets of childhood.-Paradoxical increase.-Effect of captivity on the productiveness of some birds.-Beauty of the Columbid .-Earliest history.-The olive brunch.-Arab legend.-Ancient domestication.-Feral pigeons.-Domestic pigeons long established in America.-Not found among the Egyptian monuments.-Ancient pigeon-fanciers.-Messenger birds.-Agents of superstition.-Misrepresentation.-Use during sieges.-Ancient pigeon-houses and fatting-places.-Cato a pigeon-fatter.-The Mosaic doves of the Capitol.-Friendship of the kestrel.-Charms for dovecotes.-Effectual attractions.-Patronized by commercial people.
W HAT a wide gulph separates the Pigeons from all our other captive or domestic birds! How completely discrepant are all their modes of increase and action, their whole system of life, their very mind and affections! Compare them with the gallinaceous tribes, and they scarcely seem to belong to the same class of beings. These walk the ground, those glide on air; these lazily gorge and fatten at home, those traverse whole districts and cross wide seas to obtain an independent supply of nutriment. The Gallinace are sensual and tyrannical; though gallant and chivalrous, yet they are faithless; they are pugnacious, even murderous; and life-destroyers for the gratification of their appetite merely. The Columbid are amorous, beseeching, full of affectionate attachment, quarrelling solely in defence of their mates or their young, content to subsist on fruits and grain, or tender herbs. Force, vanity, aggression and greediness pertain to the one class; grace, agility sentiment, devotion, and temperance to the other. The gallinaceous birds seem to be representatives of the fervid and selfish passions of the East; the Doves to have been created as types almost of Christian virtue. To suffer the onslaughts of the cruel; to beat, and, if possible, to escape, but neither to attack nor to revenge; to adhere to chastity, even when gratifying their natural affections; to submit to an equal division of the labour of tending the helpless young; to prefer a settled home to indulgence in capricious wanderings-these are a few out of the many attributes which have conciliated towards them the approving regard of mankind, and even perhaps caused them to be honoured by being mysteriously connected with some of the most meaning ceremonies and important events that are mentioned in sacred history.
And yet, at the present day, a love for Pigeons is considered rather low, a taste scarcely the thing to be indulged in, a study of a department of nature from which little can be learned, and, as a hobby, decidedly out of fashion. But any pursuit may be vulgarized and made the means of evil, by being taken up from base motives and in an unworthy manner; and, on the other hand, even an indulgence in the Pigeon fancy may be so regulated and conducted as to afford interest and instruction to the young, and a healthy relaxation and matter for speculative inquiry to their seniors.
What boy, whose parents permitted him to keep ever so few pairs of Pigeons, forgets in after days the pleasing anxieties of which they were the source-the occupation for spare half-hours which they never failed to afford? Well do we remember our first two pigeon-houses, of widely-diverse construction; the earliest effort of contrivance being an old tea-chest fixed against a wall, with the complicated machinery of a falling platform, or trap, in front, to be drawn up by a halfpenny-worth of string, so as to secure the inmates, or their visitors, for a learned inspection; the second, a more ambitious piece of architecture, namely, a tub mounted on the top of a short scaffold-pole, divided internally into apartments, each of some cubic inches capacity, and each with a little landing-place projecting for the birds to alight upon, after their meal on the ground, or their circling exercise above the housetops. And the wonderment to behold the process of fixing this lofty structure firm and upright in its site in the back-yard! How the man dug an awful hole in the ground, from which he could with difficulty shovel out the earth for the crowding, and the pushing, and the peeping in of us children and the maids-how the tall structure was, by the combined efforts of all present, slowly set upright-how three or four vast flint-stones (rocks they seemed to us to be) were jammed in at the foot with a beetle borrowed from the paviour that lived up a yard in our street-how, when earth and pebbles had been duly added to make all smooth and tight, we retired a few yards and looked up with admiration-and when at last the short ladder was brought wherewith to ascend, which we did without delay, and inspect the lockers, Smeaton, gazing from the top of the Eddystone Lighthouse, or Stephenson darting on a locomotive engine through the Menai Tube, might enjoy a pride higher in degree, but not stronger in intenseness!
And then, the strange events necessarily occurring to us. (The plural is used because no boy pigeon-keeper looks after his birds without a companion or two.) The severe countenance with which our neighbour and landlord, hitherto beaming with benignant smiles, now greeted us as we were walking over the tiles of the outhouses in pursuit of an old Duffer with a clipped wing; the astonishment of a respectable shoemaker on the other side of the street, to see a boy s face peeping over the ridge of the opposite roof, with the air of Cortes surveying the Pacific Ocean from the summit of the Andes, rather than with the consciousness of being the mischievous urchin that he was; the arrival of a strange Pigeon with a sore and naked breast; the bold resolve to use decisive surgery, and to decapitate it, lest the evil should prove contagious; the trepidation of the maid who held the body, while we secured the head and wielded the fatal chopper: the universal horror that the body should flap, and flutter, and palpitate for a while after the operation was complete; the enigmatical illustration from English history, King Charles walked and talked; half an hour after, his head was off, uttered without proper pause at the semicolon or comma-these, and a whole chronicle full of such-like accidents, soon showed us that life, to the young, is an onward journey through an unexplored country, every step in which leads to some discovery, and opens to us a pleasant or a repulsive prospect.