WB Yeats and the lost art of hypnotising hens

I must confess I am new to the world of singing washing machines. Until recently, we had a very old and overworked machine. Eventually it took to shuffling around the utility room while emitting a very loud juddering noise. One fateful day it gave a boisterous bang and shuddered to a stop.

We toddled off to buy a new one and our first observation was that some of the machines were priced at a level that suggested they must also dry, and put away your clothes and make you a cup of tea, sprinkled with gold dust.

We found a reasonably priced one and soon after, it completed its first wash. It let me know this by triumphantly playing a few jaunty bars from Schubert’s Die Forelle. Inter Cert students from the 1980s will recognise it from the fourth movement of The Trout Quintet.

I don’t know who was more surprised – me or the dog – but he has been giving the machine a wide berth ever since it burst into song.

“The last of the great classical physicists” – Brian Maye on William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

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A city where peace comes dropping slow – Frank McNally on a visit to The Hague

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Clues of destiny – Alison Healy on the Crossword Panic of 1944

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Animal cracker – Frank McNally on “Humanity Dick” Martin and 200 years of the SPCA

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What a time to be alive! Our ancestors scrubbed clothes on a washboard, but we can buy sleek machines that play classical music involving fish, while simultaneously sending you an alert on your phone when the wash is done.

Singing household appliances appear to have originated in Korea and Japan and several household appliance manufacturers have replaced their machines’ pings, bleeps and buzzes with little musical interludes. Rice cookers are playing Für Elise. Dishwashers are playing marching tunes. Microwaves are even muscling in. If this continues, every home will have its own domestic symphony and Lyric FM will have no one left to entertain.

But some people are not happy with this delightful move towards musical machines.

When I did an online search for singing washing machines to see if this was a new phenomenon, I found endless complaints from people who hated the tunes with every fibre of their being.

I quickly learned that the whimsical ditty can be turned off if you are dead inside and don’t want to be surprised by joy. My triumphant washing machine reminds me of the way a hen sings after laying an egg.

Like the washing machine tune, the hen can go on a bit too, but she doesn’t have a mute button. If WB Yeats happened upon a singing hen, he might have tried to mute her with his party trick.

Dr John Cowell made an intriguing but fleeting reference to this in his book Dublin’s Famous People and Where They Lived, published in 1996. Writing about Katherine Tynan, the poet and author, he said a stream of callers would come to her family farm in Clondalkin on Sundays “with endless talk of poetry and Willie Yeats would hypnotise the hens.” And then he continued on, as though he had written nothing remarkable at all.

We all knew WB Yeats had a penchant for mystical matters but who would have guessed he was a hen hypnotist?

When the book came out, the reference to hen hypnosis was picked up in this newspaper by the In Time’s Eye column. Dr Cowell contacted the newspaper to point out that he had seen it done in Co Sligo so perhaps that was where the poet also picked it up.

In case any readers had a burning desire to immobilise the nearest hen, he helpfully explained the technique. “You gently fold a hen’s head beneath a wing, then hold the hen in both hands and rock it from side to side for a minute or two. Then just put it on the ground. It will remain in that position until you waken it”.

Wearing his doctor’s hat, he suggested it might have something to do with the inner workings of a hen’s ear. “At any rate, it doesn’t seem to do the hen the least harm,” he reassured readers.

One of those readers, Derek Forest, then chimed in with a letter to the editor, explaining that the practice of immobilising fowl and other small animals was a convenient way of bringing these animals to the market. He mentioned one method which involved holding the hen’s beak against a line drawn on the ground, which caused a type of catalepsy.

He also pointed to a devious trick by stoats – they fascinate rabbits into a state of immobility by performing a complicated dance before their bewildered eyes. If that isn’t enough information about hypnotising small animals, I have since learned of trout tickling, which involves putting a trout into a trance by rubbing its belly.

Hen hypnosis, stoat strutting and trout tickling. Suddenly my singing washing machine does not seem at all remarkable.