Precis Paragraph 1

A bird of many legends is the cock, considered almost universally a sun-bird and the enemy of ghosts and spirits. Once sacred to the god of war, the cock was said to have been the herald of Christ’s birth and one superstition had it that all cocks, including the metal and wooden ones on church spires and towers, would crow loudly on the last Day to awaken the dead. A cock crowing at mid-night was taken to mark the passing of a spirit, and if it crowed three times at a house, the Angel of Death himself was about. A cock’s crowing at a house door foretold the coming of strangers and if one perched on a gate to crow at night the next day would surely be wet. (130 words)