True Blue --now "CHICKEN"

[Jim Parish]

Charles Doyle wrote:
> I think, in my colonial taxonomy, (even after Bethany's posting) the term
> "fowl" could include ALL domesticated birds raised for food--
> pheasants, pigeons, maybe fat swans (to accommodate the palate of
> Chaucer's pilgrim-monk)--and perhaps even game birds.  Not sure
> about ostriches.

There's a passage in one of Sir Walter Scott's novels - _Heart of
Midlothian_, perhaps? - in which a Scottish magistrate, having been
called down to London to testify before the House of Lords about a
recent riot, gets into trouble by describing a certain gun as "sic as ane
uses to shoot dooks and fools". The Earl of Argyll rescues him by
explaining that he meant "ducks and fowl". The events in question
occurred, IIRC, in the early 1700s. That suggests, I think, a fairly broad
extension for the word "fowl", at least at that time (and possibly also for
Scott's time).

Jim Parish

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