William Cobbett and the Red Herring
Once upon a time there was a boy named William Cobbett. He lived with his parents and his three brothers. Some days he would visit his grandmother, in her cottage with two windows. By one window there was a damson tree, and by the other a hazelnut tree. He would visit her and she would give him milk and bread for breakfast, apple pudding for dinner, and for his supper he would have bread and cheese.
He loved sitting in the garden watching the animals, and birds and insects.
One day the hunt harriers came riding by. They were chasing a hare.
Now William was only eight years old, but as he watched the dogs surround the hare, he suddenly wondered what it would be like to be that hare.
“I bet it’s very scared, and wants to be at home. That’s not fair!”
William jumped up, and without thinking, he ran towards the hounds, shouting and waving his hands.
“Leave him alone, don’t touch him, you bullies!”
Then hounds were so surprised, that they stopped barking, and looked at William. He dashed into the middle of them, and picked up the hare. He could feel the hare’s heart beating very fast, and he held him very tight. His own heart was beating very fast too, and he wasn’t sure what to do next.
The master of the hunt came up, and saw what William had done.
“How dare you!” said the master of the hounds. He raised his whip in the air, and brought it down on William, just cutting his face. William cried out and held on tight to the hare. The master of the hounds then called the hunt and the hounds away. William stood there with blood coming from his forehead. Then very carefully William released the hare, which run away back to its home.
Now William wondered what to do. He didn’t think that it was right that the huntsman should strike him just because he tried to save the hare. He thought that the man was a bully, and somehow he didn’t feel that was right. How could he try and get his own back some how? He was only a small boy- how could he stand up to the bullies?
He thought and thought. Then he had a bright idea. He would use a red herring to put the hunt off the track of the hares. Now a red herring is a fish that has been smoked, and is very, very smelly. He waited until his grandmother had some red herring, then he sneaked some out of kitchen. It was so smelly that William had to hold his nose until he could put it in a hiding place.
So- on the next day of the hunt, William waited. He knew where the hunt started, and he knew where the hares were likely to go. When he heard the cry of the hounds, he started off, trailing his red herring across the filed, at right angles to where the hare would go. Up, up a steep hill- so steep that the horses would have to slow down. Then he dragged it over to the roughest part of the common, twirling it around so that the dogs would go in circles. Finally, he dragged it to the edge of a swamp, and he tossed it in.
He quickly washed his hands in the swamp water to get the smell off himself, and then he stood behind a tree. And waited.
It wasn’t long before the hunt and the dogs came. William could hardly stop himself laughing watching the hunt go round and round, and then some of them ended up in the swamp. The hunt master even fell off his horse into the mud!
William learned an important lesson that day. He learned that any kind of bullying must be challenged, and more importantly- that you can use your cunning and not your fists to overcome it.
And he used those two lessons for the rest of his life – and was famous in England, France and the USA for the way he always spoke out and acted against bullying, corruption and unfairness. And most of all- he is the reason why people talk about a red herring- as being something that misleads people – just as William did!