Seeing a peacock
Up close, a peacock lives up to an old Bohemian saying: an angel's plumage, a thief's step and the devil's voice. Which of the three you notice depends on whether you are visiting or living next door.
What it may mean
An old Bohemian saying gave the peacock an angel's plumage, a thief's step and the devil's voice, and anyone who has lived near one will recognize all three. Visitors to a park see the train fanned out in green and bronze and reach for their phones. Neighbors of the free-roaming flocks in parts of California and Florida know the other side: wailing calls through the breeding season, sometimes at night, and birds strolling over roofs and car hoods. Hindus counted it fortunate to own one; a sleepless neighbor may not. Same animal, two verdicts, depending on whether you meet it for ten minutes or share a street with it for years. People get judged that way too. Guests meet the plumage, while housemates and coworkers hear the voice at seven in the morning.
Depending on how you saw it
Hearing a peacock scream
The call can be heard streets away and can sound like a person shouting. Thomas Lupton's book of notable things, printed in London in 1660 and cited by Brand, held that the peacock's harsh cry foretells rain, and the more often it cries, the more rain. What sound near your home tells you about the weather before any app does?
A peacock pecking at a car
In neighborhoods with free-roaming peafowl, males sometimes go after their own image in a glossy car door or a window, as if another male had moved in. Owners find scratches and feathers by the wheel. Which fight have you picked lately with something that turned out to be your own reflection?
A peacock on an old estate lawn
Peafowl were long kept on grand estates as living ornaments, and many feral flocks descend from those birds. In Rome's catacombs, early Christians painted the peacock as an emblem of resurrection. What ordinary sight near you turns out to carry the longest story?
Why it happens in nature
The peacocks seen in parks and suburbs are nearly all Indian peafowl, native to South Asia. Only males grow the long train, which they raise and shiver to court females in spring, and both sexes call loudly, most of all in the breeding season. Free-roaming flocks descended from ornamental birds now live in some neighborhoods, including parts of Southern California and Florida.
What folk beliefs say
Bohemia
In Bohemia, peacocks were said to have an angel's plumage, a thief's step and the devil's voice.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 675. View the page
India (Hindu)
The Hindus, a 1903 collection says, considered it good fortune to own a peacock.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 676. View the page
Early Christian Rome
Early Christians used the peacock with its train displayed as an emblem of the resurrection of the body, and it appears often in the catacombs of Rome.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 678. View the page
England
Thomas Lupton's Notable Things, printed in London in 1660 and quoted by Brand, says that the peacock by his harsh and loud clamor foretells rain, and the oftener it cries, the more rain is signified.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 218. View the page
To reflect on
Which side of you do visitors meet, and which side do your housemates get?