The Cockfight: A Casebook

The Rules of Cockfighting

JIM HARRIS The Rules of Cockfighting The "human" cockfight-as opposed to cockfights which occur naturally-like any othertraditionalgame orsport isguvernedby rules. The rules ofcockfightingvary uver time andfrom place to place. However, there is a kind ofhard-core set ofregulations which arefoirly consistent. These have to do with how the cockfight is to commence, how the rounds orintermissionsare to bemeasured, andhow itis to end, that is, how to determine the winner ofa cockfight. Whatever the local rules may be, these are absolutely binding upon the participants. Part ofthe unofficial code ofcondua ofcockfighters is not to argue with the decision ofthe referee-just as it is considered totally inappropriate and dishonorable to reneg on a bet made on a cockfight. In order to acquaint the reader with the basic rules and terminology of cockfighting-at least as it is customarily praaiced in the United States in the late twentieth century, we havechosen "TheRules ofCockfighting"byJim Harris, ProfessorofEnglish atNew MexicoJunior College in Hobbs, New Mexico, which appeared originally in the Publications ofthe Texas Folklore Society in 1987. Readersfomiliar with cockfighting in other countries will notice differences between the rules presented in this essay and the rules prevailing elsewhere. As all folkloristic phenomena are manifestedthrough multiple existence (existence in more than oneplace and time) and variation, it is to be expeaed that no two sets ofcockfighting rules will be absolutely identical. For afew representative samples ofdifferent rulesfor cockfights, see Edwin Oliver, "The Laws ofthe Cockpit, "The Cornhill Magazine, 56 (1924): 610-618 (for 18th-century England); Tito Saubidet, Vocabulario y Refranero Criollo (Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft, 1952), pp. 354-356 (for 19th-centuryArgentina); R. Van Eck, "Schetsen uit het Volksleven (I. Hanengevecht), "De Indische Gids 1 (1879): 102-118 (for 19th-century Bali); L. G. Marquez, Reglamento del Club Gallistico de Caracas (Caracas: Tip. Londres, 1954) (for20th-century Venezuela); Steven L. Del Sesto, "Roles, Rules, and Organization: A Descriptive Account of Cockfighting in RuralLouisiana, "Southern Folklore Quarterly 39 (1975): 1-14 (for 20th-century Louisiana). Reprinted from Hoein' the Short Rows. Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, no. 47, ed. Francis Edward Abernethy (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1987), pp. 101-111. 9 Jim Harris No one knows why or when man first put fowl into a pit and let the game male do as he had done in the wilds for thousands of years: fight brother against brother until one cock ruled. No one knows why or when man first intervened and institutionalized part ofthe natural process that enabled the fittest to survive : the killing ofall the competing roosters and the mating with all the hens. No one knows when game fowl were first taken from the jungles and bred in pens for their gameness. What we do know is that the fighting ofcocks was first the experience ofthe folk, that it became the passion ofprinces, generals, and kings, and that now it is again the pastime ofthe ordinary peoples ofthe earth. Historian Page Smith writes, "In much ofpresent-day India, cockfighting has passed from the sport ofprinces and rajahs to the ordinary people of the country, who engage in it avidly, following formulas for diet and training several thousand years old...."1 But throughout the sport's history, cockers have always been a curious cross sectionofpeoples. In his eighteenth-centurydiary, Englishman Samuel Pepys wrote, "To Shoe Lane to see a Cockfighting at a new pit there ... but Lord! to see the strange variety ofpeople, from Parliamentmen ... to the poorest 'prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, dairymen, and what not; and all these fellows one with another cursing and betting."2 Seventeen hundred years before Pepys wrote of attending a cockfight in London, the Romans came to the Britishislands, afterhavingspread cockfighting throughout northern Europe, and found the inhabitants raising chickens for amusement and sport. Cockfighting came to the southwestern United States from two directions. From the south, the Spanish and Mexicans brought a long tradition of "slasher," or knife fights, the blades tied to the cock's feet resembling a curved, single-edged razor blade. Today knife fighting is done by Latin Americans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and peoples in the southern Mediterranean countries , Asia, and the South Pacific. From the southeastern United States, cockers brought gafffighting to the Southwest, the blades resembling a rapier with a sharpened point and a round body. Biologists surmise that all domestic chickens come from the Red and Grey Jungle Fowl of India. The game chicken we know today is the chicken that most resembles in appearance and...