Buddy the talking Starling

["Stephen Ambrose" <>]

Geoffrey Chaucer perpetuated the cruel myth (in Maunciple's Tale, written in
1390) that if a Jackdaw's tongue was split at the tip with a silver sixpence
ground to a knife edge, then it would talk better. As a young child I
remember reading a novel (can't remember which one, but it may have been an
Enid Blyton novel) in which a Gypsy family in the English countryside had a
pet Common Mynah whose tongue had been split to enable it to talk. Reference
to this myth in classic English literature has, unfortunately, led to some
people believing it to be true (as I discovered during a brief search of the
internet this morning).

Stephen Ambrose
Ryde NSW


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