ke hold with the English majority. By 1835, cock fighting was reduced to the rank of a cruel and capricious sport and was, once again, driven underground.
In spite of being prohibited in England, after 1835 cockfighting found a new home in America. Ships that carried English settlers to America also carried chickens and fighting cocks. Cock fighting was frowned upon by the Puritans but it still flourished from New York to Georgia. Before and after the Revolution, New York was the center of cockfighting in the East. Here the sport was dominated by freed slaves and Irish immigrants.
Before long, the sport spread west and became most popular in areas settled by Southerners and the Irish. As in England, reformers moved quickly to force legislation to outlaw cock fighting but it soon became obvious that there was little sentiment for this type legislation on the national level, so the individual states were left to pass there own laws. But even on the state level, very little anticocking legislation was passed until early in the 20th century. While visiting friends in Florida, in 1971, I was surprised to find that cockfighting was still legal in that state.
Outlawing cockfighting in this country has had the same effect as Prohibition. As you read these words somewhere in this country, loyal members of a tight fraternity of cockers is gathering around a pit, anxiously waiting to place their bets on the outcome of the main event.
The chicken has influenced our languages and cultures. From ancient times to the present, if two people look or act the same, they are said to be hatched from the same egg. The ancient Greeks compared poor writing to chicken scratches. Using the word chicken to describe a coward has been popular since Shakespeare's time and the proverb, I would not have him count his chickens so soon before they hatched, was found in a collection of proverbs published in 1579.Superstitions surrounding chickens are also alive and well in both urban and rural areas. One superstition declares that there will be sickness in the house if a hen crows. Another claims that a farmer's chickens will be like the first person who comes to his house on New Year's morninga stout and prosperous person meant plump chickens while a poor meager person meant scrawny chickens.
Make a wish
Two people tugging on the magic clavicle, or wish bone, until it breaks, dates back almost 2,500 years to the ancient Etruscans. Chickens were kept in Etruscan temples to answer questions by pecking at corn kernels in a circle marked with letters of the alphabet. When the bird was through eating, a priest would enter the circle and interpret the results. When one of these sacred birds died, its collar bone was dried and believers were allowed to stroke it and make a wish. When the custom was passed to the Romans, people started tugging on the bone until it broke. The wish of the person holding the half containing the head would be granted. I've heard it suggested that the phrase, to get a lucky break, came from this ancient custom.
Before trained physicians came on the world scene in 18th century, chickens provided a living drug store of remedies for everyonerich and poor. In the practice of folk medicine, people were inclined to reach for a chicken to cure almost any malady of the body or the spirit. In ancient Greece, as well as other parts of the world, fever, arthritis, colic, dysentery, epilepsy, headache, constipation, and cough were all treated with various parts of the chicken. The remedies are endless and most are far too complicated and absurd to mention here. But some made sense and are still used today: a bowl of homemade chicken soup has always been, and probably always will be, prescribed as a comfort and cure for many maladies, real and imagined.
The modern world, with its fast-paced industrial technology, has nearly turned the chicken into a man-made living machine, existing solely to lay eggs and be eaten.
The end of the chicken's role as a sideline element of farm economy started to change near the end of the 19th century. Industrial te