Chicken and chicken, only black suits - what is so special about it? However, so much interesting is connected with the ordinary chernoshka that it is time to write a separate article about it. Whatever you say, the black chicken is a character in fairy tales, fortunetelling and superstition.
Isn't chicken a bird?
This dismissive remark does not apply in any way to the black chicken, although she, too, does not know how to fly, like her relatives. But, unlike other domestic birds, it is she who is considered a mystical bird. Examples? You are welcome. Some Scandinavian peoples have a belief that 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 landed on the grave - which means that it is here that the ghoul lies, it remains only to prepare an aspen stake. Many dream books attach great importance to dreams in which there is a layer 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 New Year in spring. Adygs, for example, call this celebration nothing more than the day of the black chicken sacrifice. In every family, this bird is slaughtered in honor of the holiday. It is the black chicken as a victim that is most pleasing to the gods of the sun and fertility.
A little bit about the breed
Black chickens are not one breed. Poultry with dark plumage can be of different types and sizes. Corydalis are especially popular - beloved by the mistresses, who are also meat lovers. Austrolorps, minor, sumatras are all also black hens. Of course, black with their plumage, meat and eggs are the most ordinary ones. Although not always.
There is, for example, a special
breed of chickens with black feathers, beak, legs ... and even with black meat, bones and entrails! By the way, she 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 happily bred in Europe, however, more with a decorative purpose. And in China, its meat is considered delicious and sold very expensively.
Fairy tale character
Written back in the 19th century, the story of Anton Pogorelsky's "Black Chicken, or Underground Residents" is popular to this day.
Books with colorful pictures were reprinted hundreds of times, cartoons appeared on the screen. Film criticism was named a masterpiece of children's cinema by the film of Ukrainian film director Victor Gres, filmed in 1980 on the plot of the fairy tale "Black Chicken". The content is briefly as follows. Alyosha’s boy, who lives in a guesthouse away from his parents, once saved a little black girl from a cook’s knife. She, as usual, turned out to be not a simple chicken, but a magic one, even the minister of the underworld. From this begins a fabulous adventure. For his courage, Alyosha receives a reward from the underground king: now he can know all the tasks without learning the lessons. And then the boy is experiencing a real breakdown of character: he begins to dare teachers, to be naughty and skid. And then he will have to correct himself: his friend-minister does not approve of such behavior and deprives him of a magical gift.
This is such an extraordinary character of fairy tales and superstitions - an ordinary black chicken.