Of a painted cock

Geert painted the cock in one night with costly gold paint from Groningen city. In the morning it crowed. The Sappemeer folk came to look, laugh, photograph (camera obscura). Geert received compliments. On the third day the cock pecked Geert in the palm to blood and fled to the wood.

The cock, still yellow, stood in the wood. He happened to fit a legend: a «gold cock» was, by a 17th-c. Hoogezand prophecy, the announcement of a good harvest. Four neighbouring villages saw him, shared the prophecy. The summer was good. Geert got no credit for the harvest — he had painted, hence on purpose — but credit for the cock, who did not come back. Geert painted nothing more. The Hoogezand saying: «A painted cock always crows for someone else.»