THE FABLE OF THE DUCKS AND HENS

George Lincoln Rockwell (1966)

Many, many years ago,
When animals could speak,
A wondrous thing the ducks befell,
Their tale is quite unique.

Down by a pond dwelt all these ducks,
Ten thousand at the least.
Their duckish joys were undisturbed
By any man or beast.

One day, down near the entrance gate,
There was an awful din.
A hundred hens all out of breath
Were begging to come in.

"Oh, let us in!" the poor birds cried.
"Before we do expire!
'Tis only by the merest inch
That we escaped the fire."

Their feathers singed, their combs adroop,
They were the saddest sight.
They'd run a hundred miles or more,
All day and then all night.

"Come in! Come in!" the ducks all quacked,
"For you our hearts do bleed!
We'll share our happy lot with you,
Just tell us what you need!"
  
And so the poor bedraggled hens
Among the ducks moved in.
"For, after all," the ducks declared,
"We're sisters 'neath the skin."

Before too many months had passed,
The hens were good as new.
They sent for all their rooster friends,
And these were welcomed, too.

To please their hosts, the chickens tried
To waddle and to quack.
To simulate the duckish ways
They quickly learned the knack.

This pleased the flock of ducks, because
It gratified their pride.
But hear my tale, and learn how they
Got taken for a ride.

The ducks, it seemed, spent all their time
In fixing up the place,
In growing food and building homes
And cleaning every space.

They asked the hens what they would do
To earn their daily bread.
"We'll teach and write and entertain,
And buy and sell," they said.

And so the hens began to teach
The baby ducks and chicks.
They traded food and eggs and things,
With many clever tricks.

They wrote great books and put on shows;
Of genius they'd no lack.
It wasn't long 'til chickens owned
The Duckville Daily Quack.

One day a mother duck, who took
Her ducklings to the lake,
Was flabbergasted when one said,
"A swim I will not take!"

"Why, ducklings always swim!" she gasped.
"It's what you're built to do!
Like bunnies hop, and crickets chirp,
And cows 'most always moo!"

"You're nuts!" her little son replied,
"That stuff is all old hat!
It's wrong for birds to swim; besides,
it's damned cold on my pratt!"

"Oh, fie!" the mother duck exclaimed,
"You're talking like a fool!"
Up quacked the other ducks and said,
"He's right! We learned in school!"

"Such things must stop!" the mother cried,
"Those hens can't teach such lies!
For sheer ingratitude and nerve,
I'm sure this takes the prize!"

But she was wrong, for even then
The hens did thump the tub,
Demanding they be let into
The Duckville Swimming Club.
  
"But you don't swim!" the ducks exclaimed,
"To join, why should you care?"
"That's not the point!" the hens replied,
"To exclude us isn't fair!"

The younger ducks, who'd been to school,
Agreed right there and then:
"To keep them out is bigotry!
'Twould just be anti-hen!"

Outnumbered by the younger ducks,
The old ducks soon did lose.
They agreed to let the hens all in,
If they would pay the dues.

That night The Duckville Daily Quack
Contained this banner spread:
"Reactionary Ducks are Licked!
Duckville Moves Ahead!"

Down at the Duckville Gaiety,
The young set laughed with glee,
At cracks about "old fuddy ducks"
In burlesque repartee.

Next day the hens were at the club.
A petition they'd sent 'round;
They objected to the swimming fund
With fury and with sound.

"You use our dues to fix the pond,
To keep it neat and trim,
And this is wrong," they said, "because
You know we do not swim!"

"God help us!" cried a wise old duck,
"These chickens have gone mad!
We'll take this thing to court, by George!
And justice will be had!"

But when they went up to the judge,
Imagine their dismay!
A chicken-judge decreed that they
A heavy fine must pay!

"Minorities must have their rights,"
The judge declared right then.
"To use hens' dues to fix the pond
Is very anti-hen!"

Once more The Duckville Daily Quack
Emblazoned 'cross the page:
"Old-Fogey Ducks Refuse to See
The Great New Coming Age!"

In Duckville's church on Sunday morn,
The preacher spoke these words,
"Discrimination's got to stop!
Remember, we're all birds!"

The wisest duck in all the town
Sat down in black despair.
"I'll write a book," he thought, "and then
This madness I will bare!"

"Let swimmers swim, let hoppers hop,
Let each one go his way.
Let none coerce a fellow bird!'
Was what he had to say.

"'Twere wrong to force the hens to swim,
So, here's the problem's crux:
It's just as bad for hens to try
To chicken-ize our ducks!"

"I can't print that," the printer said,
"'Twill put me in a mess!
My shop is mortgaged to the hens;
The chickens own my press!"

This worried duck then tried to warn
His friends by speech and pen.
But young ducks fresh from school just jeered,
"He's a vicious anti-hen!"

Now up the stream a little way
Was Gooseville, on the lake.
The hens had come to Gooseville, too,
But the geese were more awake.

When the hens began to spoil the young,
And Gooseville's laws to flout,
The geese rose up in righteous wrath
And simply threw them out.

Of course, you know where they all ran;
On Duckville they converged.
"We've got to take these refugees,"
Was what the hens all urged.

The Duckville Daily Quack declared:
"These geese will stop at naught!
They plan to conquer the world!
Atrocities they've wrought!"

"That's right!" the young ducks all agreed,
"We'll help our fellow birds!
These geese have plans to conquer us!
We've read the Quack's own words!"

They let the hens from Gooseville in,
The whole bedraggled pack.
And every hen took up a job
On Duckville's Daily Quack.

When Duckville's mayor's term was up,
The Quack put up its duck.
A vain and stupid duck was he,
A veritable cluck!

But when he praised the wild young ducks,
And cursed the evil geese,
The Quack declared he was all-wise;
His praise would never cease.

The hens chipped in to help this cluck
Give grain away for free.
The old ducks sadly shook their heads;
The writing they could see.

And, sure enough, this stupid duck,
He was elected mayor.
From this point on, the Duckville ducks,
They never had a prayer.

The mayor said, "Gooseville must go!
We'll wipe them off the map!"
While Duckville slept, the scheming hens
For Gooseville set a trap.

They called the geese by filthy names:
They filled their pond with sticks.
They helped the weasels catch the geese,
And played other hennish tricks.

The geese got mad and threw some rocks.
"It's war!" the Quack announced.
"We ducks must fight these evil geese
'Til they've been soundly trounced."

The ducks (who knew not of the tricks
Indulged in by the mayor)
Were filled with patriotic zeal,
And pitched right in for fair!
  
Now when the ducks had whipped the geese,
The mayor called, "Retreat!
Our hennish friends should really take
Gooseville's big main street!"

The hens were back in Gooseville now.
They starved and beat the geese.
They prayed for peace - but organized
The "Hennish Thought Police!"

They drained the Gooseville swimming pond;
They de-goose-ified the schools;
They wrung the neck of Gooseville's mayor
On lately made-up rules.

They formed a council of the hens:
"United Birds" the name.
The other birds who joined the thing
Did not perceive the game.
  
No sooner had they set this up,
Than they announced their plan
To seize Swanville as a home
For all their hennish clan.

They took a vote amongst the hens,
And every one approved!
"Swanville was for hens!" they said,
"Way back, before we moved."

And so they kicked the swans all out
With Duckville's help and power,
And Duckville couldn't understand
Why swans on them turned sour.
  
By this time, Duckville was a mess;
  The young ducks had gone mad.
  They stole and laughed at truth and law;
  They went completely bad.

The hens were selling loco weed
In every nasty den.
But ducks who dared to mention this
Were labeled "anti-hen."

The hens all preached of tolerance.
They invoked the Golden Rule,
But they subsidized the indigent,
The greedy, and the fool.

At last, the very dumbest ducks
Began to smell a rat.
"This mayor is no good!" they cried,
"And we will soon fix that!"

But the hens had planned for even this;
A candidate they had
Whom even wise old ducks believed
Just never could be bad.
  
This hen-tool duck had whipped the geese;
A soldier duck was he.
Although the hens had set him up,
The ducks all thought him free.

This hen-tool got elected,
Through ignorance and greed,
Through hennish lies in press and speech,
Through bribes of chicken feed.
  
The hens now kicked the ducks around
Without a blush of shame,
Until the mayor ran the town
In nothing else but name.

They pumped the swimming pool all dry;
They taught the ducks to crow.
While duckish numbers dwindled,
The crows' began to grow.

The hens stirred up the happy crows
From out the piney wood,
To come and mix with all the ducks
In the name of brotherhood.

Things got so bad that fifty ducks
Who knew of days gone by
Took up their wives and children
And decided that they'd fly.

They flew through storm and tempest;
They froze, and many died.
But on they drove, until, at last,
A lovely lake they spied.

They settled down exhausted,
But soon went straight to work
To build and clear and cultivate.
No danger did they shirk.

Now, after many years of toil,
This little town had grown.
The fields around were full of grain
From seeds that they had sown.
  
The first ducks now were long since dead;
Their struggles long had ceased.
Through hard work and suffering,
Their joys had been increased.

One day near the entrance gate
There was an awful din;
A hundred hens, all out of breath,
Were begging to come in.

"Oh, let us in!" the poor birds cried,
"Before we do expire!
'Tis only by the merest inch..."
And now our tale repeats itself entire.

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