Home to Roost

"Cock a doodle do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master's lost his fiddlestick,
And knows not what to do."
I remember this nursery rhyme from my childhood .I would recite it but never really considered what it meant. So ,I decided to investigate its origin.
Four centuries ago,in 1606,this rhyme was the first miraculous utterance of a little girl who had no tongue. The story is told in a black-letter murder pamphlet entitled 'The Most Cruel And Bloody Murder committed by an Innkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell, and her Son George Dell.' The murder was of a three year old boy, Anthony James, at Bishop's Hatfield, in Hertfordshire. The deed appears to have been seen by his sister, then around four years of age, and the perpetrators, to silence the witness, cut her tongue out of her head .
What happened thereafter is obscure, but three years later she reappeared at Bishop's Hatfield on her own, was recognised as the sister of the murdered boy ( whose body had been found ), and was put in the care of a foster mother.
Some month later , she went out to play and a cockerel nearby crowed. The girl she was playing with mocked the cockerel with the words found in the first two lines of the nursery rhyme.(to mock the cockerels by giving words to their crowing was a common game with children at that time.)She asked if Bess could say the rhyme and miraculously,she did.
'This wonder,' continues the account, 'caused all the townsfolk to gather in flocks '. The girl was immediately taken before the justice, Sir Henry Butler, and she was able to recount the story of her brother's murder by Annis Dell and her son. At the subsequent trial there was much marvelling at how 'it pleased God to reveal the offenders by giving speech to a tongueless child' and it was noted that when the jury looked into her mouth they saw nothing but a cavity. A gruesome story indeed.
We just so happen to live directly across from some allotments and are awakened each morning by the crowing of these pompous birds.It is however, a popular misconception that they only crow to greet the dawn.In some cases,roosters,depending on their breed and personality, can stand aloft and send out their message loud and clear , proclaiming their territory throughout most of the day.Fortunately, I, unlike the children all those years ago, love the sound. It certainly lets me know I am alive and kicking!