The Dancing Turkey

The Dancing Turkey by Alice Morse Earle

"The Dancing Turkey" by Alice Morse Earle is a charming short story set in nineteenth-century Narragansett, Rhode Island, that blends local color, American folklore about wild turkeys, and a tale of boyhood attachment, theft, and recovery. The story opens with historical context, citing a seventeenth-century ballad from the State Papers office in London that describes American wild turkeys weighing as much as sixty pounds. Earle uses this to establish the legendary size and quality of American turkeys, noting regional preferences for turkey stuffings across different states, and mentioning that the President of the United States traditionally dines on a Narragansett turkey fattened on local grasshoppers each Thanksgiving. Against this backdrop, Earle introduces Launcelot Gobbo, an enormous turkey hatched on a Narragansett farm and raised by two brothers, Bill and Ralph Prime, aged fourteen and fifteen. The boys receive the turkey as part of a family tradition in which children are given a portion of the farm's animals to raise as their own. The turkey is named by a young college student who courts their sister Mary, and the name is drawn from Shakespeare. Gobbo is extraordinary from the start, a massive chick reared on curdled milk, Rhode Island corn, and grasshoppers dried and preserved by the inventive Bill after reading missionary accounts of how locusts were prepared as food in the East. The turkey thrives on this diet, growing to a size that rivals the legendary colonial birds, and his weight is estimated by the boys at somewhere between thirty and thirty-five pounds. Beyond his size, Gobbo is a performer. Bill has trained him to dance on command. When Bill strikes the ground with a stick and whistles, Gobbo spreads his great tail, bows, nods, and hops in comical, rhythmic circles. Farmers and fishermen come from miles around to watch him perform, and even on Sundays the boys sneak neighbors behind the barn to see the show, despite the disapproval of the local deacon. The story takes a turn when a traveling antique dealer arrives in town in a painted wagon, charming the Prime household, buying pewter and old household items from the mother, and laughing uproariously at Gobbo's dancing before departing cheerfully at dusk. The next morning, Gobbo is gone without a trace. The boys suspect local chicken thieves, search the woods and fields, and grieve intensely, but find nothing. To ease their distress, their mother sends them to Boston to spend Thanksgiving week with their married sister. In Boston, the brothers wander the docks and busy streets, and on the day before Thanksgiving they stop in front of a dime museum whose show window displays an enormous turkey in a wire coop. The turkey looks familiar. When they enter and Bill calls out Gobbo's name and gives the dance command, the turkey immediately spreads his tail and performs, confirming his identity beyond all doubt to the watching crowd outside. Cautious and shrewd despite their youth, the boys befriend a local policeman rather than act impulsively. That evening, Gobbo is to be raffled at the museum. A policeman accompanies the boys to the event. When the showman begins his introduction, Bill whistles the dance command, and Gobbo flies from the platform directly to him. The policeman intervenes to prevent the showman from interfering, and Ralph explains the situation to the sympathetic crowd of sailors and dockworkers. The following morning at the police station, the boys testify and Gobbo dances for the assembled officers in what Earle describes as a lively session in otherwise dingy surroundings. The showman, recognizing he has no rightful claim, surrenders Gobbo with a forced show of good humor. The story closes on an ironic and gently melancholy note. Gobbo proves too large to keep in a city yard and too large to transport home by rail. His very greatness, like Cardinal Wolsey's, becomes his undoing. His fame as a dancing turkey makes a quiet country life impossible for him. He ends up in the window of a city poulterer and is raffled again on the eve of Thanksgiving, this time as a plucked and dressed carcass, his dancing days permanently concluded.

By Alice Morse Earle · First published 1884 · Genre: Humorous Fiction, Children's Literature, American Regional Fiction · 2,092 words

First lines

In the States Papers office in London is a "propper ballad" entitled a "Sommons to New England," which was written about 1680. It alluringly recites natural conditions in the colonies. One verse runs thus:

"There flights of foules doe cloud the light, / Of turkies three score pound in weight / As bigg as ostridges."

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The Dancing Turkey is listed on Textopian as a short story by Alice Morse Earle, dated 1884 CE.

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turkey · birds · dancing · animals · nature · wildlife · behavior · observational · descriptive · natural history · domestic animals · poultry

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