In Portugal’s medieval legend of the Barcelos rooster, an innocent man is found guilty of theft and sentenced to hang. But before the execution, the guy persuades the authorities to let him see the judge while the latter is having dinner.
As Portugal’s official tourism website tells it, the condemned man points “to a roast chicken on the table” and exclaims, “As surely as I am innocent will that cockerel crow if I am hanged.”
Evidently, that puts the judge off on eating the bird, for the thing is still on the table by the time the prisoner has been taken to the gallows. And wouldn’t you know it, at that very moment the rooster does indeed stand up and cock-a-doodle-doo his little undead heart out (so I guess the cook left the head on?).
The astonished judge manages to stop the hanging in the nick of time, the grateful freed man sculpts a famous stone crucifix incorporating poultry, and the rooster proves itself a righteous cock blocker of injustice.
Nowadays, souvenir iterations of the rooster are ubiquitous throughout Portugal—not only in the northern city of Barcelos, where the folktale is set, but everywhere trinkets are sold. My husband, Frank, purchased a wine stopper version during our Portugal vacation back in 2017.
The colorfully painted rooster is made of metal and, well, roosts on a piece of cork you’re supposed to jam into the opening of any unfinished bottle of wine in order to help preserve the contents.
It so happens that for the last few weeks I myself have become a different kind of wine stopper, in the sense that I have stopped drinking wine. (Was that my worst segue of all time?)
And not just wine, either. I’ve decided to take a break from alcohol of any kind. I’m on a healthy eating kick, you see, and I think maybe ingesting lighter fluid on a semiregular basis for 20 years, give or take, wasn’t the healthiest dietary choice.
I’ve only been abstaining since the end of October, but according to National Geographic, “When you go sober for even a month, your body will change.” I don’t know in what ways because the story is exclusively for Nat Geo subscribers, but I feel like the magazine wouldn’t go to the trouble if the only changes were, like, a sharp uptick in not knowing what to do with your hands in social settings and a 78% decline in 3am taco cravings.
I do feel better physically, and though at times I miss the fun that booze can unleash, I take solace in the sense of moral superiority accompanying sobriety. Besides, let’s face it: I was never that fun to begin with.
Ever a sucker for a self-improvement project, I would like, ideally, to undo any damage that liquor has done to my system. For all my skepticism, I do believe in redemption. I have that in common with the falsely accused thief in the tale of the Barcelos rooster. Isn’t that story essentially about the possibility of what has gone wrong being made right, however late or unlikely salvation may seem?
The guy in the story chooses to believe his innocence will prevail; I choose to believe my liver can reset to factory settings.
Perhaps a Nat Geo subscriber could tell you whether that’s scientifically possible. But science doesn’t know everything. After all, if you don’t have at least a tiny bit of faith that the dead cock will crow on your behalf (so to speak), how are you supposed to go on? Hope is the thing with rooster feathers.
Indirect Objects 