An old story told to a Devon artist by his grandfather has been published as a book.
When British artist Robert Mountjoy was small and misbehaved with friends his grandfather would tell him the story of the Farmer and the Parrot.
“From then on if he saw me on the street with ‘the gang’ or coming in late from playing he would raise his finger and repeat, ‘Bad company…,’” recalls Robert, a member of the South West Academy.
His grandfather was born in 1896 and learnt the story at Sunday School sometime in the 1900s. Robert has re-written it for his grandchildren and made some changes to bring it up to date. He has also painstakingly illustrated it and published it under the title of Bad Company – The Parrot Said available from Fast Print Publishing for £4.99.
“Attempts to trace the origins of the story have so far failed but I have discovered references to it in Northern Europe where ‘shooting the parrot’ is a metaphor for acts of recklessness, usually when the consequences are opposite to the intentions,” he concludes.
