With Derbs and Brookhisers colliding it’s clearly too dangerous to enter the great poetry debate, though I don’t much like Eliot. Of far greater literary importance, however, is the mystery of Chicken Licken. My reference to this timid (and, apparently, delicious) fowl in a recent piece produced a number of comments that Licken was really called Little. Says who? Face it: ‘Chicken Little’ is an imposter or, at best a henny-come-lately. Here’s the proof from 1909 and again in 1919. No mention of Little who was, clearly, a sunsequent invention by someone opposed to rhyme.