This tie by Liberty shows peacock feathers. When I was a boy we lived in a house in Cambridge that my father leased from Downing College. Our garden backed onto the college grounds where, in my early years, the fellows kept peafowl. Their cries, harsh and mournful like the cries of the souls of the damned, were far more annoying than any vuvuzela.
There is a superstitious belief that one should not bring a peacock feather into the house, or a death will occur. I do not think this applies to textile representations of the feathers. And while I am on the subject of vulgar errors, see Sir Thomas Browne on peacocks:
'That there is a special propriety in the flesh of Peacocks, roast or boiled, to preserve a long time incorrupted, hath been the assertion of many; stands yet confirmed by Austin, De Civitate Dei; by Gygas Sempronius in Aldrovandus; and the same experiment we can confirm our selves, in the brawn or fleshly parts of Peacocks so hanged up with thred, that they touch no place whereby to contract a moisture; and hereof we have made trial both in summer and winter. The reason, some, I perceive, attempt to make out from the siccity and driness of its flesh, and some are content to rest in a secret propriety thereof. As for the siccity of the flesh, it is more remarkable in other animals, as Eagles, Hawks, and birds of prey; That it is a propriety or agreeable unto none other, we cannot, with reason admit; for the same preservation, or rather incorruption we have observed in the flesh of Turkeys, Capons, Hares, Partridge, Venison, suspended freely in the air, and after a year and a half, dogs have not refused to eat them.'
'As for the other conceit, that a Peacock is ashamed when he looks on his legs, as is commonly held, and also delivered by Cardan; beside what hath been said against it by Scaliger; let them believe that hold specificial deformities; or that any part can seem unhandsome to their eyes, which hath appeared good and beautiful unto their makers. The occasion of this conceit, might first arise from a common observation, that when they are in their pride, that is, advance their train, if they decline their neck to the ground, they presently demit, and let fall the same: which indeed they cannot otherwise do; for contracting their body, and being forced to draw in their foreparts to establish the hinder in the elevation of the train; if the foreparts depart and incline to the ground, the hinder grow too weak, and suffer the train to fall. And the same in some degree is also observable in the Turkeys.'
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