44 



BIRDS IN LEGEND 



Plutarch, in his biography of Caius Marius, describes 

 the Kymri fought by Marius, years before Caesar's 

 campaigns, as wearing helmets surmounted by animal 

 effigies of various kinds, and many tall feathers. 

 Diodorus says the Gauls had red hair, and made it redder 

 by dyeing it with lime. This fierce and flowing red head- 

 dress must have appeared much like a cock's comb, to 

 which the vainglorious strutting of the barbarians added 

 a most realistic touch in the eyes of the disciplined legion- 

 aries. Later, the Roman authorities in Gaul minted a coin 

 or coins bearing a curious representation of a Gaulish 

 helmet bearing a cock on its crest, illustrations of which 

 are printed by G. R. Rothery in his A B C of Heraldry. 

 Rothery also states that the bird appears on Gallo-Roman 

 sculptures. Another writer asserts that Julius Caesar 

 records that those Gauls that he encountered fought 

 under a cock-standard, which he regarded as associated 

 with a religious cult, but I have been unable to verify this 

 interesting reference. Caesar does mention in his Com- 

 mentaries that the Gauls were fierce fighters, and that 

 one of their methods in personal combat was skilful kick- 

 ing, like a game-cock's use of its spurs — a trick still em- 

 ployed by French rowdies, and known as la savate. In 

 the Romance speech of the south of France chanticleer 

 is still gall. 



The question arises here in the mind of the naturalist: 

 If the aboriginal Gauls really bore a "cock" on their 

 banners and wore its feathers in their helmets (as the 

 Alpine regiments in Italy now wear chanticleer's tail- 

 plumes), what bird was it? They did not then possess 

 the Oriental domestic fowls to which the name properly 

 belongs, and had nothing among their wild birds re- 

 sembling it except grouse. One of these wild grouse is 



