Plutarch, in his biography of Caius Marius, describes the Kymri fought by Marius, years before Caesar’s campaigns, as wearing helmets surmounted by animal effigies of various kinds, and many tall feathers. Diodorus says the Gauls had red hair, and made it redder by dyeing it with lime. This fierce and flowing red headdress must have appeared much like a cock’s comb, to which the vainglorious strutting of the barbarians added a most realistic touch in the eyes of the disciplined legionaries. Later, the Roman authorities in Gaul minted a coin or coins bearing a curious representation of a Gaulish helmet bearing a cock on its crest, illustrations of which are printed by G. R. Rothery in his _A B C of Heraldry_. Rothery also states that the bird appears on Gallo-Roman sculptures. Another writer asserts that Julius Caesar records that those Gauls that he encountered fought under a cock-standard, which he regarded as associated with a religious cult, but I have been unable to verify this interesting reference. Caesar does mention in his _Commentaries_ that the Gauls were fierce fighters, and that one of their methods in personal combat was skilful kicking, like a game-cock’s use of its spurs—a trick still employed by French rowdies, and known as _la savate_. In the Romance speech of the south of France chanticleer is still _gall_.
The question arises here in the mind of the naturalist: If the aboriginal Gauls really bore a “cock” on their banners and wore its feathers in their helmets (as the Alpine regiments in Italy now wear chanticleer’s tail-plumes), what bird was it? They did not then possess the Oriental domestic fowls to which the name properly belongs, and had nothing among their wild birds resembling it except grouse. One of these wild grouse is the great black capercaille, a bold, handsome bird of the mountain forests, noted for its habit in spring of mounting a prominent tree and issuing a loud challenge to all rivals; and one of its gaudy feathers is still the favorite ornament for his hat of the Tyrolean mountaineer. By the way, the _cockade_, that figured so extensively as a badge in the period of the French Revolution was so called because of its resemblance to a cock’s comb.