Fables for the Frivolous/The Patrician Peacocks and the Overweening Jay

by Guy Wetmore Carryl

THE PATRICIAN PEACOCKS

AND

THE OVERWEENING JAY

THE PATRICIAN PEACOCKS

AND

THE OVERWEENING JAY

---

Once a flock of stately peacocks
 Promenaded on a green,
There were twenty-two or three cocks,
 Each as proud as seventeen,
And a glance, however hasty,
Showed their plumage to be tasty;
Wheresoever one was placed, he
 Was a credit to the scene.

Now their owner had a daughter
 Who, when people came to call,
Used to say, "You'd reelly oughter
 See them peacocks on the mall."
Now this wasn't to her credit,
And her callers came to dread it,
For the way the lady said it
 Wasn't recherché at all.

But a jay that overheard it
 From his perch upon a fir
Didn't take in how absurd it
 Was to every one but her;
When they answered, "You don't tell us!"
And to see the birds seemed zealous
He became extremely jealous,
 Wishing, too, to make a stir.

As the peacocks fed together
 He would join them at their lunch,
Culling here and there a feather
 Till he'd gathered quite a bunch;
Then this bird, of ways perfidious,
Stuck them on him most fastidious
Till he looked uncommon hideous,
 Like a Judy or a Punch.

But the peacocks, when they saw him,
 One and all began to haul,
And to harry and to claw him
 Till the creature couldn't crawl;
While their owner's vulgar daughter,
When her startled callers sought her,
And to see the struggle brought her,
 Only said, "They're on the maul."

It was really quite revolting
 When the tumult died away,
One would think he had been moulting
 So dishevelled was the jay;
He was more than merely slighted,
He was more than disunited,
He'd been simply dynamited
 In the fervor of the fray.

And the moral of the verses
 Is: That short men can't be tall.
Nothing sillier or worse is
 Than a jay upon a mall,
And the jay opiniative
Who, because he's imitative,
Thinks he's highly decorative
 Is the biggest jay of all.