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The Partridge and the Cockerels It’s hard when messed-up people treat you badly, but if you take it personally it only makes it worse. Music: Franz Joseph Haydn

© FokusNatur, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

A beautiful Rock or Greek Partridge (Alectoris graeca). On a rock, appropriately enough.

The Partridge and the Cockerels

ONE day a man who kept cockerels was busy about his yard when a salesman came to the gate and offered him a tame partridge. So he bought it, and let it fend for itself among his other birds.

When the cockerels immediately pecked it and chased it, the partridge became very downcast, thinking it was all because he was a different kind of bird.

Soon, however, he noticed that the cockerels were always fighting each other, and did not leave off until at least one of them was stained with blood.

So he said to himself, “I am not going to let myself get depressed over their pecking, now that I see that they never let one another alone either.”

That is why sensible people readily put up with mistreatment by their neighbours, once they see that they do not spare even their own family.

Précis

A farmer who was more used to keeping cockerels added a partridge to their coop, and immediately they started attacking it. The poor bird thought he was being picked on, until he realised that the cockerels treated each other just the same. So he decided it was silly to get depressed just because badly-behaved people behave badly. (57 / 60 words)

Source

Based on Aesop’s Fables as collected in the 1920s by French translator Émile Chambry.

Suggested Music

Symphony No. 83 in G minor (‘The Hen’)

1. Allegro spiritoso

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Performed the Hamburger Camerata and Ralf Gothoni.

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