Good evening,
To write/send a letter (to someone)
Any sensible person knows that a chicken can be drawn[1] and possibly sent, but certainly not written.
And yet, the expression does indeed exist!
Indeed, since the mid-16th century, a chicken (or ‘poullaict’ at the time) first took on the figurative meaning of ‘missive’ or ‘letter’ before specializing in ‘love note’ or ‘flirtatious note’.
There are at least two explanations for this odd name.
According to some, those tasked with delivering the love letter to the recipient carried chickens under the pretext of selling them, but hid the famous note under the wing of one of them.
By metonymy, the ticket would have become the chicken itself.
But according to Furetière, these bills were so named because, when folded, they formed two points that represented the wings of a chicken.
This explanation also seems to be Molière's, since in *The School for Husbands* (Act II, Scene III), Isabelle says to Sganarelle:
I saw a young man appear in this detour
Who first, from that impertinent fellow,
Came to give me a surprising hello
And in my room, a thrown box
Who contains a sealed letter in a chicken.
If Furetière’s explanation were confirmed, the “chicken letter” would therefore imply “letter (folded) into a chicken.”
For one thing, in his draft of The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry had his hero ask the aviator, “Please draw me a hen”; but when you are “on the sand a thousand miles from any inhabited land,” hens don’t run across the dunes. Besides, the aviator being more accustomed to fancy hens than to those in a coop, his first drawing probably wouldn’t have been very accurate. So, as a result, Saint-Ex replaced the hen with a sheep, forgetting, however, that while it is easy to find goats in the desert, it is far rarer to come across sheep there.
In the movie "Hot Shots! Part Deux," the hero shoots arrows made of chickens. Why chickens? Undoubtedly because it's easier than with sheep. Besides, a chicken has a pointed beak that sticks into the target much better than a sheep's snout. Yes it does!
One might occasionally send a chicken to knock on a neighbor’s door when the latter is partying too hard at 3 a.m., but in that case, assuming the chicken is willing to go out with all sirens wailing, it is the neighbor, not the bird, who risks getting feathers ruffled.
A gentleman [in London] asks a woman (...) who happens to be his neighbor for the playbill without any trouble: a good way for a bold Frenchman to slip a love letter along with the playbill.
Henri Beyle, known as Stendhal – Journal
Marylena