Dear readers,
I am on a train and have received an email from a follower of the blog who asks “can you help me find a passage in which Paddy describes a global choir of roosters crowing as the sun rises around the globe?”
My first thoughts are to Roumeli, but then perhaps Mani.
Can anyone help us both?
Patrick Leigh Fermor 
Thank you everyone.
“Yes, perhaps, to the whole of this rhetorical questionnaire; and again, perhaps, no. How enjoyable, how very enjoyable and luxurious it is, suddenly to emerge from the stern labyrinth of fact onto these dawn-lit uplands of surmise! Movement is free and the air is supernaturally bracing. Bright with unclassified flora, the dewy turf underfoot has a special spring. Choirs of birds break into song, groves beckon umbrageously in all directions and it is hard to discern what catches the charmed eye in the half dim, half brilliant haze at the end of the offered vistas: a sundial or a fountain, a delegation of Chinamen, a sedan-chair or a mammoth grazing…. Alien and unseen hands under the armpits lift us in easy parabolas to strange and sparkling destinations…”
Excerpt From
Mani pg 204
Patrick Leigh Fermor
This material may be protected by copyright.
Mani pg 204 “Yes, perhaps, to the whole of this rhetorical questionnaire; and again, perhaps, no. How enjoyable, how very enjoyable and luxurious it is, suddenly to emerge from the stern labyrinth of fact onto these dawn-lit uplands of surmise! Movement is free and the air is supernaturally bracing. Bright with unclassified flora, the dewy turf underfoot has a special spring. Choirs of birds break into song, groves beckon umbrageously in all directions and it is hard to discern what catches the charmed eye in the half dim, half brilliant haze at the end of the offered vistas: a sundial or a fountain, a delegation of Chinamen, a sedan-chair or a mammoth grazing…. Alien and unseen hands under the armpits lift us in easy parabolas to strange and sparkling destinations…”
Excerpt From
Mani
Patrick Leigh Fermor
This material may be protected by copyright.
Henry Miller at the end of his book The Colossus of Marousi adds a letter from Lawrence Durrell describing the incident. Late at night, very drunk. Durrell, Miller and George Katsimbalis (The Colossus of Marousi) climbed up the Acropolis. Katsimbalis yelled out “Do you want to hear the cocks of Attica?”, stood on the edge of the precipice and sent out a blood-curdling cry “Cock a Doodle Do”. It echoed all over the city. He continued screaming until the whole night was alive with cockcrows. Durrell refers to it as “the frantic psaltery of the Attic cocks”. Paddy refers to it in Mani” as noted by others above.
Hello Tom, It’s in Mani. I posted a reply in your blog. P.123 in the first edition.
Nigel
Hello Tom,
You are right. The roosters echoing around the world are in Mani. Page 123 of the first edition towards the end of chapter 9.
I’ve always liked that crazy idea of his. Very typical.
All the best,
Nigel
This reminds me of a passage in Henry Miller’s Colossus of Maroussi. It takes place on the Acropolis when an eccentric pet manages to make all roosters in Athens sound in choir…Does this help?