Perplexing Proverb

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:
> Â  Â  Â It is a factual statement that the amount of light is at its
> least point (i.e., it is darkest) just before it begins to grow lighter
> again. Â Of course, this implies an understanding of "dawn" that is
> closer to "just after midnight" than to "sunrise."
>

Is "at cock-crow" considered to be synonymous with "at dawn"?

I ask because my experience is the following.

My internal understanding of the word _dawn_ is that it refers to that
moment in time when the horizon becomes "un-dark," so to speak.
However, when I had the misfortune to be living where everybody
routinely kept chickens, I was most unpleasantly surprised to discover
that roosters have some sixth sense, such that they are able to intuit
the instant of dawn and to begin to crow at a time when I was unable
the descry upon the horizon even the least hint of what, according to
my internal semantics, is "dawn."

The problem for me was that it goes like this. The first rooster to
see the dawn crows. Then the nearest rooster to that rooster crows,
Then the next nearest. Then the next nearest, ad finitum. When that
first rooster is finally unable to hear the echoing crows of his
fellow roosters, he crows again. And, again, he is echoed down the
line, until, finally, the point arrives at which any fool can plainly
see the dawn and the crowing ceases.

In my birthplace of Marshall, Texas, in the colored part of town,
there was no part of any other kind of light beyond the moon and
stars, once that everyone had gone to bed. My assumption is that, at
one time in past, if not currently, the peasantry of Europe likewise
enjoyed a somewhat-similar experience.

The crowing of roosters signals the dawn. But, in point of fact, at
the time that the first rooster crows, it's still pitch-fucking-black
on the eastern horizon, as far as a random human eye can see.

A random example from the way people looked at the dawn in the United
States, as recently as 1913, taken from a WTF search in GB:

"_[T]he moon had set, all was *pitchy* dark_ [precisely], except that,
far in the east, just a tinge of grayness signaled the approach of
dawn." And, had the author not been on the chicken-less western
plains, cock-crow would long since have "signaled the *approach* of
dawn.

People say that "It's always darkest before the dawn" because, in
fact, it so clearly is.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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