falconry

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An item in a recent Bulletin reported how the commune of Schaerbeek is to use falcons to police its pigeon population. They have too many pigeons in Schaerbeek, too many crazy people feeding them, not enough alley-cats to keep them down, and the aldermen are complaining the birds are shitting on their cars while they’re parked outside hotels de passe of a lunchtime, ruining the paintwork.

It’s a fine idea. The falcons would act as sheepdogs, and keep the pigeons confined to something like five municipal dovecots, where their feeding would be controlled, maybe a touch of contraceptive dosed out (pigeons aren’t too handy with condoms, but they’ll gulp down the Pill like they were Smarties), eggs culled and so on. No question of the rapacious birds of prey actually slaughtering the pigeons, worse luck. If it were up to me, I’d happily have them go up against each other in the Communal Colosseum for the sake of a bit of panem et circenses.

There are a couple of the flea-infested creatures haunting our back garden at the moment, dive-bombing the cats for no better reason than to annoy them. That’s a sign of how cocky they’ve become.

So anyway I’m so impressed by this falcon idea, which has a certain dashing panache regardless of its effectiveness, that it occurred to me: perhaps we need to revive some other medieval practices that have fallen out of favour in recent times.

Trial by ordeal, for example. Who, like me, is sick to the back teeth of this whole Dutroux business, with its seven-year inquiry, its parliamentary commission shown live on TV, and the utter shambolic circus the trial itself has turned into? Trial by ordeal involved either fire or water, with the accused passing barefooted and blindfolded over nine hot glowing ploughshares, or carrying burning irons in their hands, and being acquitted if they had no injury. The water ordeal saw parties adjudged innocent if they didn’t float when chucked in the drink; and if, after putting their bare arms or legs into scalding water they came out unhurt.

Now doesn’t that sound like a more expeditious sort of solution? And how much less costly would it be to heat up nine ploughshares, as opposed to nine (or more) inflated and over-heated defence attorneys? Not to mention the vastly improved conviction rates.

Trial by combat is another old notion that needs looking at afresh. In that case, the aggrieved party could challenge the accused to combat, or pay a champion to fight on his behalf. But on second thought, where would you ever find an adult male in the whole of Belgium, willing to go into the arena with Michel Nihoul, say, as Laetitia’s champion?

It’s not only the courts that would be changed. Think how much more wholesome the press would be if they were writing about jousting heroes instead of footballers. Who ever heard of a Knight of the Round Table having it off with his PA? Well, yes, there was Lancelot, obviously, but he was a Frenchman, remember. Troubadors and lute-players were, I’m sure, unlikely to set such a bad example as the flashing Janet Jackson, or the foul-mouthed Edward de Bono of U2.

I’m not sure I can see an immediate application for such old ways as stylite-sitting or Irish sailing monks – the first involved the devout climbing a pole, kicking the ladder away and living there in contemplation for the rest of their days, while the second had monks setting themselves adrift in a small boat or coracle in the hope God would see them safely to a desert island, like Rockall, or Iona. But let’s face it, the clergy has little or nothing to do these days anyway, and the Devil makes work for idle hands, so it couldn’t do any harm to revive the practices, could it?

It’s a thought to keep in mind. I’m off now to have a monk start copying this out for readers, so we can get it to the colporteur in time for Thursday.