You may remember an item here asking how Yeats hypnotised hens? It came from an account of Sundays spent by various friends of Katherine Tynan on her father's farm at Whitehall, Clondalkin. A bald statement, requiring some development, you'd think: "Here" wrote John Cowell in his Dublin's Famous People, "on Sunday afternoons there would be a stream of callers with endless talk of poetry and Willie Yeats would hypnotise the hens."
Just that, no explanation. Now Dr Cowell writes to expand on, if not to explain, what it was all about. "I grew up in County Sligo where I often saw it done. And, very likely, that's where Yeats learned about it. You gently fold a hen's head be neath a wing, then hold the hen in both hands and rock it from, side to side for a minute or two. Then just put it on the ground. It will remain in that position until you waken it. Hindsight provides an idea: the cochlea (which Y finds in the dictionary as the spiral cavity of the inner ear) of the human inner ear influences postural activity. It can be disturbed by swings, rough sea crossings and the like. Assuming the hen has an inner ear of some similar design, this may be the explanation. At any rate, it doesn't seem to do the hen the least harm."
How do we know that making a hen seasick, as it were, does it no harm? Today Yeats might's have the cruelty people after him, if that's what he did. And when you see a hen with her head tucked under a wing that is, if you ever see a live hen at all what is she doing? Thanks, anyway, to Dr Cowell for his explanation of a parlour/barnyard act of long ago. But is hypnotising the word? Ah, Sligo.
Interesting, by the way, when the paucity of hens around the yard, or seen rooting along the hedges, was mentioned here not so long ago, how many people got in touch to say that they still kept them, free range, as we now say. From personal experience, their eggs taste as no eggs today taste. Even when they have to be crocked, according to season. Friendly, nice things, hens. Postscript. Notice in meat and poultry, shop: FREE RANGE PHEASANTS.