Henny Penny
An acorn, a hen who did not look up, and five birds on the road to tell the king
Page 1
One fine morning in the autumn, in a farmyard in England, Henny-Penny was out under the big oak tree at the corner of the rickyard, scratching about in the leaves for corn as she did every morning of her life. It was a beautiful day. The barn doors were open and the sun was on the straw and there was not one single thing wrong anywhere in that farmyard, which is worth saying plainly, because of what is about to happen.
Page 2
And then an acorn fell off the oak tree and hit her on the head. It was a perfectly ordinary acorn and it did her no harm whatsoever, and if she had looked up she would have seen the branch it came off and the two hundred more hanging on it. She did not look up. Henny-Penny sat down hard in the leaves with her eyes shut, and when she had got over it she came to the only conclusion that presented itself to her: the sky was falling. A piece of it had just hit her on the head. And somebody, she said out loud to the empty rickyard, had better go and tell the king.
Page 3
So off she went down the lane at a great rate, and the first person she met was Cocky-Locky, standing on the gate post with the whole morning in front of him. He asked her where she was going. She said she was going to tell the king that the sky was falling. He asked her how she knew. And she said — and this is the line that the whole of England has been repeating for two hundred years — that she had seen it with her own eyes, and heard it with her own ears, and that a piece of it had fallen on her head. Cocky-Locky looked at her for a moment. Then he got down off the gate post and said that he would come too.
Page 4
They went on together, and the next person they met was Ducky-Daddles, coming up out of the pond with duckweed on her head. She asked where they were going; they said they were going to tell the king that the sky was falling; and she asked how they knew — and Henny-Penny said it all again, exactly as before, the eyes and the ears and the piece on the head, and Cocky-Locky stood beside her and said nothing at all. Ducky-Daddles, who had never in her life disagreed with anybody about anything, said that in that case she would come too. And the three of them went on up the lane together.
Page 5
On the green they met Goosey-Poosey, who hissed at all three of them before she had even heard what they wanted, because that was simply how she greeted people. And when she found out where they were going she wanted to know how they knew — and Henny-Penny said it all again, and by now she had got so good at saying it that it came out sounding like something read off a notice. Goosey-Poosey said that she had always thought something of the sort was likely. And she fell in behind, and the four of them went on across the green and out of the village and up the long hill road, by which time several people had come to their doors to watch them go past.
Page 6
At the top of the hill they came through a gap into a stubble field where Turkey-Lurkey was gleaning among the stooks, and the whole thing happened for the fourth time: where are you going, to tell the king the sky is falling, how do you know, eyes and ears and a piece on my head. Turkey-Lurkey took it extremely seriously. He said that he had felt for some days that the weather had a strange look about it. And so there were five of them: Henny-Penny, Cocky-Locky, Ducky-Daddles, Goosey-Poosey and Turkey-Lurkey, all going to tell the king, and not one of them had the first idea where the king lived.
Page 7
And then, exactly as they came out of the stubble onto the track at the edge of the wood, who should step out of the bracken but Foxy-Woxy. He was extremely polite. He asked them all where they were going; and they told him; and he did not ask how they knew, which should have been the first thing anybody noticed about him. Instead he said what nobody else all day had said: that he knew the way to the king. He said it was a short cut, through the wood, and that he would take them himself, since they would never find it on their own. And all five of them were so pleased to meet somebody who finally knew where they were going that they followed him off the track and in among the trees.
Page 8
The short cut went down into a hollow where the trees were thick and the light went green, and at the bottom of it, in a sandy bank, there was a hole — a proper fox's earth, with a worn mouth and a smell of fox coming out of it that you could have leaned on. Foxy-Woxy stood politely aside and said that this was the way, and that it came out just by the king's own back door, and would they go in. Ducky-Daddles went in because somebody suggested it. Goosey-Poosey went in because she was not going to be left outside. Turkey-Lurkey went in sideways, with difficulty. Henny-Penny went in because she was the one with the message. And Cocky-Locky stopped at the entrance, and looked at the worn earth at the mouth of that hole, and looked at the feathers caught round it, and did not go in at all.
Page 9
Cocky-Locky did the only thing a cockerel can do when he has worked something out and has about two seconds in which to say so. He threw his head back and crowed — one enormous, splitting, farmyard-at-dawn crow, right down that hole — and in the dark inside, four birds who had been shuffling politely along a tunnel stopped dead, and understood, all at the same moment, exactly where they were. What happened next took about four seconds and involved a great deal of shouting. Five birds came out of that fox's earth in one piece like a cork out of a bottle: Henny-Penny first, then Turkey-Lurkey sideways, then Goosey-Poosey over the top of him, then Ducky-Daddles, with Cocky-Locky going backwards in front of them crowing the whole time — and they went up out of that hollow and through the wood and over the stile and across the stubble without once touching the ground, as far as anybody could tell.
Page 10
They did not stop until they were back in the farmyard, all five of them, and then they stood about under the big oak for some time getting their breath and not saying very much. After a while Cocky-Locky reached down and picked up an acorn out of the leaves and set it on the ground in front of Henny-Penny, and the two of them looked at it, and then they both looked up — at the branch, and the two hundred more acorns hanging on it, and the enormous blue sky behind the whole lot, exactly where it had been all morning and where it still is. Nobody said anything about it. Ducky-Daddles went back to the pond and Goosey-Poosey went back to the green and Turkey-Lurkey went back to his stubble field, and Henny-Penny went on scratching under that oak tree for the rest of her life and never once went to tell the king anything about anything ever again. And so the king was never told that the sky was falling — which was just as well, because it was not.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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