The habits of the kite have suggested one or two sayings, as: "When do you find meat in a kite's nest?"—a Hindu sneer at Mussulman spendthrifts; when do you find money in a Mussulman's house? Of a lover devoted to a gay lady the same expression is used. The pâras or philosopher's stone is said in a proverb to be in the kite's nest, a dark saying based on the kite's trick of sometimes carrying off gold ornaments, or on the Muhammadan women's superstition that young kites cannot see until there is gold in the nest. The kite has some of the crow's delight in bright objects, and this belief may be based on observation. A person who loiters round or hangs about a house is said to hover like a kite. The word "hover," by the way, is, or used to be, common for "wait" in North Yorkshire, as,—"If tha'rt titter up t'sprunt, hovver,"—"If you get first up the hill, wait." A Delhi street-cry raised by ragged fowlers is—"Free the kite on Tuesday." The notion that it is auspicious to set captured birds free has been noticed above. The practice in the Delhi region is for a mother to pay a pice to the fowler, who swings the kite round over her child's head and lets it go. This ceremony is thought most lucky when performed on a Tuesday or Saturday. One of the Indian boys' games is called the kites' swoop; a foolish person is styled a kite's chick, which really has a most gawky air; and a child always running out in the street is spoken of as a noonday kite, which still hovers in the heat when all sensible folk are indoors.
The kite is a notorious thief; no other creature is so splendidly equipped for larceny, for no other can snatch so unerringly and escape so securely. The confectioner's tray of sweetmeats, the dishes on their way from kitchen to mess or dining-room, the butcher's shop, and the kitchen itself are all liable to his sudden swoop. A recent case occurred of a registered letter containing money being snatched from a postman's hand. I was once feeding a pair of tame ravens from a plate in my hand when a kite, to their loud and deep indignation, cleared and broke it and nearly knocked me over forbye. This habit is made in a country story to point one of the hundred gibes at the tricks of Indian goldsmiths. Four brethren of the craft were overheard by a Wazir debating their business. Said one: "I always take four annas toll out of every rupee's worth of gold in addition to the labour charge." Said another: "I take eight annas," or half the value; the third said, "I always take twelve annas," or three-quarters; but the fourth cried,—"You are three fools, I always take all." The Wazir reported this to his Raja, who said he should like to see how it could be done. So he sent for that fourth goldsmith and ordered him to sit in the palace verandah and make a necklace for the Queen. Three or four ounces of gold were given to him and he set to work. But first, he drove a nail in the verandah post, and when no one was near, he placed bits of meat on it and a kite promptly learned the way thither. Then, in the evenings when he went home, he made a brass chain exactly like the gold one and put it in his pot of acid water. And one day in the presence of the Raja, who was on the watch for deception, he placed the real chain there and presently took out the false one and hung it on the nail to dry. The kite came and took it as the craftsman was speaking to the Raja, who saw the theft. The goldsmith made a great outcry, and bewailed the loss of so many days' labour, and the Raja made it up to him handsomely and gave him gold to make another. When the Raja's back was turned the goldsmith fished up the real chain from the pickling pot and carried it away. Then the goldsmith repeated the trick; which he finally confessed to the Wazir. And the Raja, being amiable, like most princes in stories, was amused and generously rewarded the goldsmith for his knavery.
Cranes and Herons.—The Sarus Crane (Grus antigone) is with some reason regarded as a model of conjugal fidelity, from a belief that, if one of a pair of these handsome birds is killed, the other pines and never mates again. A Spanish proverb says the crane danced with the horse and got a broken leg, but the dancing propensities of cranes and other long-legged birds are seldom noticed in Indian talk, though the birds are common and are often kept in public gardens and by Europeans as pets, and behave in the fantastic fashion well observed and described in the American novel East Angels. (The author of that excellent book speaks of the "candid eyes" that taxidermists give to stuffed parrots. Indian observation notices a want of candour in the living parrot's eye.) For grotesque devilry of dancing, the Indian Adjutant beats creation. Don Quixote or Malvolio were not half so solemn or mincing, and yet there is an abandonment and lightness of step, a wild lift in each solemn prance, which are almost demoniacal. If it were possible for the most angular, tall, and demure of elderly maiden ladies to take a great deal too much champagne and then to give a lesson in ballet-dancing, with occasional pauses of acute sobriety, perhaps some faint idea might be conveyed of the peculiar quality of the adjutant's movements. Such a conception is, of course, outrageously impossible to a well-regulated Western mind, for it is only the French who have thought of calling a lady a "grue." It is notable that of late years Calcutta, which used to be regularly visited by adjutants, has been deserted by them. I have heard natives say that they assemble in waste places to hold councils and to dance.
A really fine expression is the ironical Indian phrase: "The saintly heron," or "saintly as a heron." A heron poised on one leg in a remote corner of a pool is the very image of a Hindu Sādhu or Muhammadan faqir, pretending to be absorbed in holy meditation, while all the time he is intent on the next fish or frog that may come within reach, the next piece of fraud or villainy he can compass. The phrase is common, for there is much of the hypocritical "meditation of the heron" in India as elsewhere.
Poultry.—The Brahma fowl of Western poulterers must have been named in Europe, and is counted one of the unclean things in which those unaccountable people, the English, take an unintelligible pleasure. Hindus hear of its name with more surprise than satisfaction. It is amusing, by the way, to note the easy confidence with which French and English writers on India use the word Brahma, and speak of his temples. There are scarcely any temples to Brahma in India, and his name is very seldom heard. Hindus, as a rule, do not care for domestic poultry which are Levitically unclean, nor for eggs which are not eaten by people of high caste. Rajputs are passionately fond of cock-fighting, but do not fit steel spurs on their birds; indeed, they blunt or dub the spurs which nature has given. The fights are thus of interminable length, the poor creatures staggering round each other, blind with blood round after round, long after they are too much exhausted to strike a blow. The ring attendants fancy it restores the creatures to put their heads into their mouths, a sickening detail not unknown in the cock-pits of our English grandfathers. The Goanese (Portuguese) and many Muhammadans, with some Hindus, are also fond of cock-fighting, and daily large sums of money change hands over this sport. Denunciation of a diversion of this kind is of little use, nor is it easy to fix a point at which legislation can effectively intervene. Little by little the barbarity will die out before the changes now taking place in Indian civilisation. Moreover, although we English are apt to denounce and preach, it does not lie in our mouths to say much. There are many Englishmen who would be glad to take up cock-fighting, and it is only a generation since a large number of good husbands and tender fathers were ready to declare it the finest sport in the world. Blake indignantly wrote—
"A game-cock clipped and armed for fight,
Doth the rising sun affright."
Yet Professor Wilson (Christopher North), also a Christian poet, wrote of cock-fighting with enthusiasm, and pictures of birds thus hideously disfigured are still shown in London shop windows with other sporting prints. Sir Thomas More is farther off, but it is recorded that he was an expert in the detestable game of tying a cock to a post and throwing sticks at it.
A cock without spurs has the same name as a tuskless elephant,—makhna. The old Joe Miller of the roast-fowl with only one leg, of which, when the master remonstrates, the servant said it belonged to a breed of one-legged fowls, is also an Indian story with the same conclusion. The servant shows the master a fowl standing on one leg. The master cries sho! and the fowl runs away with two. "Ah," says the servant, "you did not cry sho! to the fowl in the dish!" Of a man who gives himself airs they say: "Can you have no daylight without cock-crow?" An Afghān proverb quoted by Professor James Darmesteter says: "Though the cock did not crow the dawn would still come." "A hen dreams only of grain" is applied to a sordid person. "A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men," is a mild English saying, but the Indian version is infamous, for it says, "A hen's crow and a woman's word no one trusts." If one Hindu wants to insult another (he has of course an infinite variety of ways) he calls him a poulterer. A Bengal proverb says the Bengal landlord treats his farmer tenants as the Muhammadan treats fowls, feeds them only to kill them in the end. A Muhammadan way of expressing that one is dissatisfied with his own havings, is: "A house fowl (one you have bred yourself) is no better than pulse." To one who hesitates to chastise a child they say: "The chick doesn't die from a hen's kick." Domestic duties are regularly taught to the girls of a household, so they say: "When the hen scratches, the chickens learn."
Poultry of all kinds are most cruelly handled by dealers and market people, who never seem to think that a bird can feel. Turkeys are left to bleed to death half a day by native servants with intent to bleach the flesh. A Hindu would be shocked by such treatment of a parrot, but fowls are outside the pale of regard.
The Goose.—A bird that seems to have lost some of its ancient repute is the goose, which, though sacred in Buddhist and early Hindu times, finds only a vague and legendary place in modern degradations of Hinduism.