Don't Count Your Chickens

'Henwife'. Taken from the Luttrell Psalter c. 1330

Don’t Count your Chickens

I can often be heard saying that there are no new tales in the world and we storytellers simply grow new corn from old fields. We take those old tales and make them our own. We impose our culture and our beliefs on them and in that way they travel around the world. Don't Count Your Chickens is a story that is a good example of this, because it is an ancient tale in both the East and the West. In the East more often than not the main character is a young man who is the fantasist, but in West it is a woman who plays the fool (Although even here there are exceptions like Johnny Wopstraw and the Hare) There are then many different versions of this tale, some of which can be found in the Hindu Hitopadesa, The Arabian Nights, Rablais Gargantua and La Fontaine’s Fables. Enjoy...

Once there was young woman who was fair of face and soft of thigh and a girl who had many an admirer. But she cared little of the attentions of local lads, for with a purse full of naught but head full of dreams she was a flibberty gibbit. A lass who was never in the here and now, for she was always in next week, next month, next year… For she was a girl who always wanted more….

Well once a year she had to take her honey, or rather the honey of her mother’s bees she kept in her small garden to market. Once a year she carried that precious load from her mother’s hives to the autumn fayre to sell. The girl trudged the long road to market and as she walked on this fine late summers day with the pot of honey set with a basket upon her back, she began to dream of how she would spend her mother’s profits, the coin from the sale of the honey….

First, she thought to herself, I will sell my honey and this very day buy me a dozen fine and goodly eggs And I shall take those twelve eggs home and set them under my mother’s fat brown hen, and in time they will hatch and I shall have me a dozen little fine and goodly chicks. And when those chicks become chickens, perhaps two cockerels and ten hens, I shall sell them all and buy myself some fine and goodly lambs. And when those lambs become sheep, I shall shear their backs of wool. Fine and goodly wool it shall be. Wool to be spun into fine and goodly threads. Fine and goodly thread to be woven into fine and goodly cloth. That’s it yes, she thought, fine and goodly wool, which will bring a fair price at market and so lots more coin. And with that coin I shall buy myself some fine and goodly cows and they shall feast upon the lush, fine and goodly grass in the churchyard and their milk it too shall be fine and goodly and folks shall travel from miles around to buy my milk and I shall be rich!

And so it was she dreamt of how she would become richer than her neighbours, how she would, be able to marry the handsome son of a Lord from here or there or even somewhere else for that matter. How she would live in a fine house and marry her fine and goodly sons, all twelve of them to fine and goodly wives and how they would sing and dance each night to beat of the tabor and fine and goodly pipe….

But the young woman who fair of face and soft of thigh was so taken with her fine and goodly thoughts that she really did begin to dance… skipping this way and that, clapping her hands to the beat… she leapt into the air so high that suddenly the jar of honey was thrown from her basket. It flew high into the air and along with her dreams was smashed upon the floor. For want of honey she never did get her fine and goodly eggs, nor her two cockerels and ten hens, her sheep with fine and goodly wool, her cows, her handsome husband, twelve sons and their fine goodly wives. All were all lost. All were left naught but a sticky mess upon the road.