FIGHTING COCKS

Evening Star, Issue 19444, 30 December 1926, Page 5

FIGHTING COCKS

MEMORIES OE OLD-TIME “SPORT.” English schoolboys used to spend many of their holidays attending cockfights, which wore organised by their masters, who received as reward tho dead birds. When wo are tempted to feel pessimistic about progress wo may fairly encourage ourselves by recalling such vanished amusements (says ‘The Times’). No doubt we arc no belter than wg ought to be, but we have got beyond the stage when to arm a highspirited bird with spurs and make it light a duel to the death came within the accepted definition of good sport. Jn Wales at an inn with the intriguing name of the “ Hawk and Ruckle,” a cockpit, many hundreds of years old, is now being scheduled for preservation as a monument of national importance, it is well that wo should keep such reminders before us. Cock-fighting was not prohibited by law until well within the lifetime of many still with us, and one does not have to delve any further into tho past to find parents expected to contribute to the expenses of tho “main” or fight at their children’s schools. The business—one cannot call it a sport—was undeniably fascinating, for it spread in early times from the. East into Greece and Rome and from Europe into America. Henry VJTI.’s Royal pit at Whitehall was one of several scattered over London. Stakes soared as high as a thousand guineas a match; trainers went to the length of sucking the wounds of their favorites; wingtrimming and tail-cutting, shortening the hackle and lowering the comb were reduced to a fine art, and rival breeds —Cheshire Piles, Irish Gilders, Gordons, and Warhorses—wore fiercely canvassed. Fond though our ancestors were of cocking they regarded it 'as the small beer of amusement; some of their stronger pastimes offered them vastly more promising opportunities of watching bloodshed. After seeing a wild bull loosed with a cat tied to his tail, or fireworks “ all over him,” to be attacked by dogs, or a “ large he tiger ” baited creatures so small as a pair of game birds must have seemed positively tedious. No doubt they made up in skill and deftness for their_ lack of size. Having lost the tradition of cocking, and being ignorant of its niceties, we concentrate naturally upon the cruelty that it involved, but no amount of technical charm would justify in modern eyes so disgusting a spectacle.