Portuguese Rooster
My newest piece, which was finished earlier this week, portrays a rooster perched atop a hill. The rooster itself is not an original design, but came from a picture I took in Provincetown, Massachusetts a few summers ago. A large contingent of Portuguese sailors and their families settled in Provincetown in the early nineteenth century, and their cultural influence is still apparent in the village today. One such symbol of this heritage is a rooster painted on the pavement at the end of the public pier (as pictured below). According to legend, the rooster became a symbol of good fortune when a poor man was saved from death for a crime he didn't commit. Because my feeble memory of the story would not do it justice, I did a quick online search and found the following at Nancy's Portugal Site http://home.online.no/~nancys/portugal/country/rooster.html : The Rooster from Barcelos The Rooster from Barcelos has become a national symbol. It symbolises "The
