The children's story Chicken Licken talks about a chicken who thinks the sky is falling down after being hit on the head by an acorn. Based on a European folklore tale, it dates back around 2,500 years.

Known as a "cumulative tale", this is a genre in which the dialogue is sparse and repetitive, building up to a climax as the story progresses. It can require a skilled narrator to achieve the correct rhythm to create the desired effect, especially when many of the lyrics can be something of a tongue-twister.

 

Plot

The simple tale of Chicken Licken relates to the title character going out for a walk in the woods one day. On the way, he's hit on the head as an acorn falls out of a tree. The hapless fowl mistakenly believes the sky is about to fall, so sets off to warn the king.

En route, he picks up various other birds and warns them of the imminent demise of the earth due to an impending natural disaster, so they all blithely follow him, believing his tale. However, on the way, they meet their arch-enemy, Foxy Loxy, who tricks them into thinking he'll show them the way to the palace.

Unfortunately, their trust is misplaced, as he takes them back to his lair - with the help of his family, he devours them all instead. The unhappy ending seems to be aimed at giving children nightmares, instead of sweet dreams!

The phrase, "The sky is falling!" features many times in the tale of Chicken Licken. It has become part of the English language as an idiom describing a mistaken and hysterical belief that disaster is imminent.

 

Origins

Chicken Licken is a fable passed down in European culture for generations. A fable is a short story which conveys a moral - typically with anthropomorphised animals, plants or inanimate objects as characters.

Described as one of the best international examples of a folk tale that makes light of paranoia and mass hysteria, it depicts how easy it is for paranoia to spread due to misinformation, as one chicken's misconception of a simple situation leads to a mob marching to tell the king that the end of the world is nigh.

In an ironic twist, their own ill-founded fears inadvertently lead to their deaths when they are eaten by foxes, whom they would never have met, had they not panicked unnecessarily and rushed off mob-handed.

The first published version of the story was The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little in 1840, when the initial event was a leaf off a rose-bush falling on Chicken Little's tail, leading to the oft-repeated fear that "the sky is falling".

 

Different versions

There have been numerous slightly different versions of the tale over the years, such as The Hen and Her Fellow Travellers in 1842 and The Little Chicken Kluk and His Companions in 1853. The motivation in every story is the same: to tell the king that the sky is falling down.

Chicken Licken is also known as Chicken Little or Henny Penny, while the other birds he picks up on the way include Cocky Locky, Drakey Lakey, Ducky Lucky, Gander Lander, Turkey Lurkey and Goosey Loosey. Their demise comes in the jaws of the rather too cute-sounding Foxy Loxy.

In the style of the fable, the story is very repetitive, with a basic plot that involves Chicken Licken meeting a variety of other birds, one by one, as he rushes on his way. He tells them individually not to go to the wood, explaining, "As I was going, the sky fell on to my head and I am going to tell the king."

To everyone he bumps into, he conveys this information. The panic heightens with his friend, Henny Lenny, who meets Cocky Locky and tells him not to go to the woods because the sky has fallen on Chicken Licken.

The terrifying news is passed on without question and no-one takes a step back to think about the likelihood of this being true! It ends on the sombre note of all the birds' deaths after they trusted Foxy Loxy to help them.

The term "Chicken Little Syndrome" was first used in the 1950s to describe how fear mongering can provoke a response from society which draws "catastrophic conclusions" - often for no reason whatsoever.

 

Is Chicken Licken still popular?

Walt Disney has made two versions of Chicken Licken, the first being an animated short film in 1943, called Chicken Little. It was a World War II propaganda film, produced at the request of the US government, to discredit Nazism.

As a variation of the fable, Foxy Loxy takes the advice of a psychology book and strikes the least intelligent members of society first. So, he tells dim-witted Chicken Little that the sky is falling down. The whole farmyard is whipped into mass hysteria, which Foxy Loxy manipulates for his own ends. It was a dark comedy used to spread the message that fear-mongering would weaken the war effort and cost lives.

Disney made a second film in 2005, the loosely-adapted animated feature, Chicken Little. It updated the fable into a science fiction adventure, in which the chicken was at least partially justified in his fears that the end was coming.

Foxy Loxy became female, rather than male, and was the local bully. The plot had Chicken hit over the head by an unidentified object and voicing his fears that the sky was falling. However, everyone presumed it was an acorn and he became a laughing stock.

Sometime later, when the same thing happened again, the object turned out to be part of a UFO that had fallen off a hidden spaceship in the sky. Mass panic then ensues, but it turns out the "hostile" aliens are only searching for their lost child. Chicken Little becomes a hero by finding and returning the child and the aliens depart peacefully.

The original unknown author of Chicken Licken would probably be shocked to find out that the simple chicken, who was scared of an acorn, had become the hero of an American town, that successfully staved off the threat of an alien invasion.

Established in 1970, Grigg’s Country Store provides outdoor clothing, footwear and leisurewear for adults and children, from top brands including Barbour and Hunter.

Please contact us for further information.