The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

What Doth Hamlet Read....

Words, Words, Words

There’s a pond beyond the barn. I suppose it was originally used for watering

cattle on the farmstead. Now it’s just a bucolic landing field for migrant ducks and

geese. It’s late Summer so the birds are gregarious and approachable, within reason.

Every evening Geoffie and I take leftover bread to the haggle of ducks at the pond. I

don’t know what the collective noun for ducks is. I know flock of geese, flock of sheep,

herd of cattle. There’s probably a proper name for ducks by the dozen. (It’s called

“dinner” in France!) In the absence of knowledge I invented a haggle of ducks. If you’ve

ever fed ducks in a park in the city, you’ll know why it’s so descriptive. After all, aren’t

collective nouns supposed to be descriptive? Shouldn’t the wordsound evoke the

picture and be a metaphor for the group consciousness or character of the species in

question?

Some are, some aren’t.

A pride of lions sounds good. It might bea little anthropomorphic but it’s a good

visual. So is a swarm of locusts (even if it does give you yukkie frissons). I don’t think

barrel of monkeys is the correct, albeit familiar, term.

I’ve never much liked litter of kittens. I prefer a tumble of kittens. That’s the

picture. How about a scurry of mice. Or a frisk of colts? It makes me see them cavort

and kick up their heels. A thundering of horses. A circus of squirrels.

Whoever thought up some of these collective nouns wasn’t using their

imagination. Why a school of fish? A platoon of minnows wheeling in mysterious and

synchronous formation would be much more appropriate. So would a hurdle of salmon,

leaping over obstacles to mate and die. Whenever I hear the term pack of wolves, I

think “six-pack” and it seems too orderly for such independent creatures. I can’t help

picture them strung together with pulltabs. Sled-dogs maybe. A pod of peas makes

some sort of vegetative sense. It implies a husk-ness. But I don’t know what a pod of

whales would be like. (We don’t have any whales, so I suppose I have to leave that one

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Country Cooking