Black chicken is a mystical creature

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Chicken and chicken, only black - what's so special about her? However, so many interesting things are connected with the usual nigella that it's time to write a separate article about it. Say what you like, but the black chicken is a character of fairy tales, fortune-telling and superstitions.

A chicken is not a bird?

This disparaging remark does not apply to the black hen, although she also cannot fly, like her relatives. But, unlike other domestic birds, it is she who is considered a mystical bird. Examples? Please. Some Scandinavian peoples have a belief that the black chicken has a connection with the other world and even feels its vibrations. That is why she was allowed into the cemetery in search of vampires. The chicken sat down on the grave - which means that this is where the ghoul lies, all that remains is to prepare an aspen stake. Many dream books attach great importance to dreams in which there is a laying hen with black plumage. Most often, she warns of impending troubles in the family or with loved ones.

Some peoples of the Caucasus still have a tradition left over from pagan times to celebrate the New Yearspring. Circassians, for example, call this celebration none other than the day of the sacrifice of the black chicken. In every family, this bird is cut in honor of the holiday. It is the black chicken as a sacrifice that is most pleasing to the gods of the sun and fertility.

A little about the breed

Black chickens are not one breed. Poultry with dark plumage comes in many types and sizes. Corydalis are especially popular - laying hens beloved by housewives, which, in addition, are also meat. Austrolorps, Minorcas, Sumatras are all black chickens too. Of course, black in their plumage, their meat and eggs are the most common. Although not always.

There is, for example, a special breed of chicken with black feathers, beak, legs…and even black meat, bones and entrails! By the way, it was known back in the 16th century, so this is not the result of selection or mutation. One of the varieties of such a miracle is the Chinese silky chicken, which is bred with pleasure in Europe, however, more with a decorative purpose. And in China, its meat is considered a delicacy and sold at a very high price.

Fairy tale character

Written back in the 19th century, Anton Pogorelsky's fairy tale "The Black Hen, or Underground Inhabitants" is still popular today.

Books with colorful pictures were reprinted hundreds of times, cartoons appeared on the screen. Film critics called the film by Ukrainian film director Viktor Gres, filmed in 1980 based on the plot of the magic story "The Black Hen", a masterpiece of children's cinema. The content in a nutshell is this. BoyAlyosha, who lives in a boarding house away from his parents, once saved a nigella from a cook's knife. She, as usual, turned out to be not a simple chicken, but a magical one, even the minister of the underworld. This is where the adventure begins. For his courage, Alyosha receives a reward from the underground king: now he can know all the tasks without learning lessons. And then the boy experiences a real break in character: he begins to be cheeky to teachers, play pranks and arrogant. And then he will have to correct himself: his minister friend does not approve of such behavior and deprives him of his magical gift.

This is such an unusual character of fairy tales and superstitions - an ordinary black chicken.