An article written by Victor Strode Manley, 23rd January 1931:
The Gilded Cock In Folklore
Apropos the Supper of the Cock Inn Sick Benefit Club [Warminster] last week, the following notes should interest many. Fortunately, the beautiful gilt Cock still adorns the entrance to the Inn [at West Street, Warminster], and Mr. John Price, whose family so honourably upheld the best traditions of the hostelry for two hundred years, still treasures the other and also the last silk banner.
A recent visit from a former resident, a native of Warminster, enables me to give details of the former glory of the Club, which seems to have been inaugurated in 1820, the year of accession of George IV, but the Club Day was, with one exception, always on Whit Tuesday. In 1873 a junior branch was started, the senior branch then removing the Cock from the entrance to carry it aloft at the head of the procession, whilst the smaller one was borne by the junior branch. It was compulsory at first to wear top hats adorned with a cockade and streamers of purple and orange, but about 1860 the colours were changed to patriotic red, white and blue, and, lastly, in 1873, white favours were adopted instead. Members were then mostly content to adorn their “Jim Crow” hats. Each carried a halberd tipped with a spear-head in brass of a special pattern, until 1872. The first banner required two men to carry it, and bore a device of the Good Samaritan with the motto – “Go and do thou likewise.” The next banner, still retained by Mr. Price, has a blue silk field on top with the words in gilt, “Success to the (here follows a centre picture of a gilt fighting cock without comb) Club.”
The Wilts Friendly Society, patronised by the nobility and gentry, joined their procession until a dispute arose, as the Cock Club claimed precedence, since the Society only dated from 1830. The Oddfellows and Foresters, all in their regalia, also joined in, a gay scene being presented when all the banners hung from the old gallery in the Parish Church. Owing to the dispute with the Wilts Friendly Society and class bias, for several years the Club attended Christ Church, but space proving insufficient, a return was made to the Parish Church. The preacher of the special sermon on these occasions was presented with a guinea which he touched and returned.
The Nonconformists objected to the conviviality of the proceedings, and, as a counter demonstration, solemnly paraded the Town on Whit Mondays.
The Cock procession danced in front of various taverns en route, and by the time it reached headquarters its members were decidedly lively, and so the sports were held on the following Wednesday.
The Club Walk, called “beating the boy,” is no longer. It began in a time when there was a superstitious custom of beating the bounds to drive evil influence from the district and to establish proprietary rights; it continued as a social institution for mutual assistance in sickness and at death. With better wages than the eight to twelve shillings a week of former days, the insurance agent partly usurped the purpose of the Club, but there are still old members who sigh with regret when they think of the processions with band, banners and gaudy streamers, and the happy gathering when the Cock was toasted so uproariously, the same custom which Kim saw in the Officers’ Mess of the Irish Regiment with its Red Bull.
Origin of the cock
The symbolism of the Cock has come down to us from immemorial antiquity when it was the totem of a nation. We see it in the Gallic Cock which is still remembered in France, the animal-familiar of the harvest deity. Thus, religion is at the bottom of it all. Most probably it originated in Ancient Egypt, where first Horus and then Ra was the Sun God, both symbolised by the Hawk because that bird was supposed to reach the Sun to convey the souls of the righteous thither. At his temple at Heliopolis, near Cairo, I saw the obelisk engraved with hieroglyphics of birds on a single stone seventy feet high. And this was the now solitary companion, in 14 B.C. of “Cleopatra’s Needle” on the Thames Embankment. At Stonehenge the same idea is embodied in the Heel Stone. Heol being the Sun. These standing stones were phallic symbols of fecundity. Surmount the obelisk with the Sun Bird and one has the church steeple with its weather-cock facing heaven, showing the continuity of religious symbolism, the gilding representing the sun’s brilliance. With the Cock Club, the gilded Cock was raised high on a pole, carried at the head of the procession, a religious idea employed for a secular purpose.
In parts of Austria the figure of a cock is borne in front of the harvest wagon, when Cock Beer is served, which gives another clue to the religious idea of the bird.
Ancient religious rites have often degenerated into games and sports, and so Caesar has observed that the Britons were much addicted to cock-fighting, although it was impious to eat the bird. Perhaps some augury was deduced from the result. Tradition still speaks of the cock-fights at Cley Hill on Palm Sunday in times past. So popular must the cruel sports have been that Acts of Parliament were passed against it in 1365, 1654, and 1849, though it continued in secret. The fighting changed to throwing sticks at cocks in Lent, the “cock-shy,” a sport called La Jouote in Jersey. Wishford supplies evidence of this.
Curious are various stones said to crow when they hear a certain hour strike, just as the phoenix eagles at Portway House come down to feed when they hear the one o’clock hooter!