What is a Spring Chicken anyway? | Spring Chicken
You are never too old to become younger. – Mae West
We know why we are here – to share ideas, wisdom and stories to make life easier and brighter. And we know what our story is. But what is the meaning behind our name? What is a Spring Chicken anyway?
Mục Lục
A Spring Chicken, officially
The official dictionary definition of a spring chicken is,
1. a young chicken for eating – hence restaurants sometimes advertise that their chickens are spring chickens: they have been harvested at the perfect time and are suitably tender.
2. a young person. Yes. That’s us. 😉
But even in the dictionary, the second definition immediately goes on to say, “usually used in negative contexts to say someone is no longer young: and uses the classic example, ‘You’re no spring chicken yourself any more’.” Which we’re not so keen on and are tempted to react like Neil from The Young Ones: ‘Lose the negativity, man.’
BBC Good Food Recipe Spring Chicken in a pot (Click for full recipe)
What’s the story behind the name?
So, what is a specifically spring chicken anyway? Back in the 1700s, there were no incubators and few warm hen houses. That meant chickens often couldn’t be reared during winter, and instead were bred in the spring. Chicken farmers then found that those born in the spring – and brought to market for eating three months later – brought premium prices in the market because they were just that much more tender. When traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest and say that the bird was “no spring chicken”.
Q: Did you hear about the chicken who could only lay eggs in the winter? A: She was no spring chicken.
Luckily we don’t hold with negative contexts, nor are we selling poultry. Instead, we embrace the springiness of the spring chicken that lies within us all. We may not be precisely young, but nor are we old because we still have the energy of a young spring chicken anyway.
There are now also more older people on earth than at any other point in history – so a healthy few of us have to stay cheerful about that…
Spring Chickens in Science
There are honourable – and eccentric – spring chickens who have come before us, determined, as we are, not to let old age dictate these chapters of our lives.
Like Edouard Brown-Sequard, a truly heroic scientist, who in 1889 performed an experiment on himself to reverse the symptoms of ageing that he had observed: a growing muscular weakness, inability to sleep well, degrading memory and an unpleasant tendency towards constipation. Edouard had observed that something in younger animals – their genitals, he reckoned – seemed to give them their youthful vigour. So he injected himself with a liquid made from the mashed-up testicles of young dogs and guinea pigs, washed down with testicular blood and semen. After a three-week cycle of injections, he reported a dramatic turnaround: he could hoist weights, work for hours without sitting down, slept soundly all night. Almost overnight, trumped-up, mail order sales of fake ‘Sequard’s Elixir of Life’ were going through the roof, jumping on the bandwagon of what he called his ‘orchitic liquid’ – but Sequard himself profited not at all and was laughed at by his colleagues, but he planted the seed that rejuvenation was – might be – commercially possible.
The search for eternal youth is as old as this rock fragment. Copyright: Osama SM Amin FRCP(Glasg) from Wikimedia Commons
The search for anti-ageing solutions is an ancient one, chronicled in the four-thousand-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh (above) as a quest by a man for the elixir of eternal life. An Egyptian papyrus, from about 2500 BC, turned out to be a medical text containing a ‘Recipe for Transforming an Old Man into a Youth’. The fact that it was just a mud and almond nut face-mask known as Nefertiti’s Secret is a sign of how metrosexual Egyptian noblemen were about skincare, but it also illustrates that we Spring Chickens have always been credulous: Ancient Egypt’s mud pack is today’s Creme de la Mer that sells for around £2,000 per kilo – even though a British chemist estimated that the cost of the ingredients was around the £100 mark.
Why did the spring chicken go to the gym – To work on his pecks
Spring Chickens in Culture
In 1720, Jonathan Swift – more famous now for his Gulliver’s Travels but renowned at the time for his clever wordplay – uses the phrase – and acknowledges, even back then, the casual misogyny of it being used more often about women than about men – in his collection of letters and witticisms, A Journal to Stella:
Even in 1720, Swift knew sexism when he saw it.
It wasn’t long before the comic potential of the human Spring Chicken was translated into onstage entertainment. In 1905, an Edwardian musical comedy opened, aptly enough, at the Gaiety Theatre – adapted from an earlier French piece of fluff called the Coquin de Printemps. Starring Gertie Millar and a few male sidekicks, including Edmund Payne, it ran for a very successful 401 performances, transferred to Broadway in New York and toured both Britain and America. One of its hits was a song called Not So Very Old, which starts as we mean to go on!
An excerpt from song Not So Very Old from The Spring Chicken, 1905
Gertie Millar & Edmund Payne advertising The Spring Chicken in 1905
The Spring Chicken in Popular Culture
How do spring chickens dance? Chick-to-chick.
Yes, it’s partly just an excuse to run a clip of the genius that is (and ever shall be, amen) The Muppet Show, but we think the Swedish Chef has the right bouncy, bouncy attitude about him in this perfect Spring Chicken sketch…
What is a Spring Chicken doing in the Swedish Chef’s Kitchen?
While, for anyone who has taken a small child to a music class, the following may sound familiar… I’m a Spring Chicken and I’m Having A Ball, which bears more than a tiny resemblance to There Were Five in the Bed And The Little One Said…..
I’m a Spring Chicken and I’m Having a Ball
The Spring Chicken in Poetry
Finally, there are many and numerous communities of poets across the globe and across the internet. Many of them, it turns out, have been inspired by the spring chicken ethos, to write a poem about it. But first we start with an Anonymous offering:
Your hair may be thinning
Your waist wants to thicken
But deep down inside
You’re still a Spring Chicken
- Anon
I’m as young as I feel
I’m not getting old, I’m as young as can be.
There’s nothing at all the matter with me.
My hair is not grey, there’s a silvery shine;
My back is not bent, I’ve a fancy-shaped spine.
I’m not getting slower, I just take my time;
The cold doesn’t get me, I always feel fine.
These are not wrinkles, just mature skin;
I am very well proud of the shape I am in.
I’m as fit as a fiddle, a spring chicken still.
I am nowhere near, or over, the hill.
The Golden Age is a long way away;
Until I am ready, that’s where it can stay.
Copyright © Shirley Moody | 2011
Spring Chicken
“You’re not a spring chicken,”
My husband blurts out.
The truth in that statement’s
Beyond any doubt.
My running around’s
Surely taken its toll,
As Nature reminds me
I’m not in control.
For age has its limits
And mine’s reached a peak.
What I do in a day
Should spread over a week.
I try for it all
But my body’s refused.
As I conk on the couch,
There’s my husband – amused!
Copyright © Ilene Bauer | 2015
Senior Moments
In our lives, there comes a time
When we find that we’re past our prime
Even though we’re no spring chicken
We’re glad to be alive and kickin’
Maybe our hair is thin and gray
But it doesn’t have to stay that way
There’s L’Oreal and Miss Clairol
And Grecian Formula, and that’s not all
We can get a toupee or maybe a wig
And look spiffy enough to dance a jig
We could all dress up in our finest clothes
And strike a dashing handsome pose
We can sit and dream of days gone by
Recalling when we were young and spry.
We say with a nod, a wink, and a grin,
The power of thought will make us that way again.
Copyright © Curtis Moorman | 2005
Avian in Nature
I once went out on a blind date
But that’ll never happen again
A not so pleasant experience
When I was set up by a friend
He said, “She has but one problem,”
“I noticed as she crossed the street,”
“It’s avian in nature, because”
“She has what you’d call crow’s feet!”
I said, “Well I’m no spring chicken,”
“And I’m a little weathered myself”
So I grabbed hold of that comment
And put it on my “So what” shelf!
I admit that I was nervous
Knocking on the door of her place
But was most, pleasantly surprised
When I saw her angelic face!
She was gorgeous from head to knee
But how was I supposed to know
Below that, I was shocked to see,
She did have the feet of a crow!
Copyright © Pat Adams | 2021
I may no longer be a spring chicken but I’m a seasoned hen
