The Two Cocks

The Two Cocks (commonly rendered in English as The Farm-Yard Cock and the Weather-Cock, also translated as The Barnyard Cock and the Weathercock) is a short satirical fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1860 in Copenhagen in New Fairy Tales and Stories, Volume 1, Part 4. The story opens in a farmyard: a wooden board fence separates the yard from the neighboring courtyard, where a large cucumber grows on a dung heap. The cucumber considers itself a hothouse plant by birth, yet it deeply admires the farm-yard cock perched on the fence, finding its walk like a dance and its crowing like music. The weather-cock high on the roof, though prominently placed, can neither crow nor sing; it thinks only of itself and is covered in a coat of verdigris. A storm breaks out at night, the fence is blown down and roof tiles fall, yet the weather-cock does not stir. It thinks highly of itself and looks down on the sparrows and swallows that come and go, scorns the pigeons as fat and clumsy, and tires of the migratory birds repeating the same foreign news, finally concluding that the whole world is not worth a straw. After the fence collapses, the farm-yard cock intrudes into the cucumber's yard, calls it a garden plant, and pecks it to pieces; then he announces to the hens and chicks that he can lay eggs with a basilisk inside, and the hens are shaken and proud. Hearing this, the weather-cock finds it utterly tedious and simply tumbles down from the roof. The tale closes with the moral that it is better to crow a little than to grow tiresome and fall down, satirizing pompous, self-important, empty-talkers who accomplish nothing real.