Hidden Connections - A Cock and Bull Story

My coming soon novel, ‘The Twelfth Cross,’ is set mainly in the year 1290 and involves a journey to the 12 locations from London to Lincoln that would later host the Eleanor Crosses. When the action is at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, the antagonist Derian Scand protests that another character's version of events is ‘a cock and bull story.’ My mother-in-law proofread the manuscript, and she baulked at ‘cock and bull story,’ wondering if it was in use in 1290. So I looked it up in my trusty Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

Definition: a highly coloured or unbelievable story.

Possible origin: at Stony Stratford, Bucks, the London coach used to change horses at the Bull Inn and the Birmingham coach at the Cock. The exchange of jests and stories between the waiting passengers of both coaches gave rise to the phrase ‘a cock and bull story.’ I couldn’t believe it! The cock and bull accusation in my novel is made in Stony Stratford where the phrase may have originated. Am I telling you a cock and bull story? No, it was pure serendipity.

Now I had a conundrum: in the dialogue of the medieval parts of the novel, I tried to use only words that existed at the time. If this Stony Stratford story were true, the phrase probably originated a couple of centuries later. However, the dictionary gave an alternative; the phrase possibly derived from old fables in which cocks, bulls and other animals could talk.  

What was I to do? At first, I altered the phrase to ‘a tall story,’ but, at the 11th hour before the book went to press, I decided to be guided by the serendipity and changed it back.

 Serendipity is one of my favourite words - but that's another story.