'The Pebble Is a Perfect Creature'

My nephew has introduced me to the practice of “pebbling,” not to be confused with “stoning.” Sorry to say the psychologists and sociologists got their hands on it first, but there’s nothing new about so simple a human gesture. The word is adopted from the courtship rituals of two species of penguins. The male gives the female he is attracted to a small stone. If interested, she responds by giving him one of her own, and so on. Soon, they have a nest. 

Among humans, pebbling has come to mean giving a friend or family member small gifts unrelated to a birthday or other holiday. My nephew used the example of sending a video to someone we think might enjoy it. It doesn’t necessarily represent a prelude to romance. I don’t even think of such things as gifts. Despite evidence to the contrary, we are social animals and some of us enjoy pleasing others.

 

To pebble as a transitive verb has been around since Shakespeare’s time: “to pelt with or as with pebbles,” according to the OED. The first citation is from George Chapman’s 1605 play Eastward Hoe or Eastward Ho!: “Wee’d so peble ’hem with snowe bals as they come from Church.” That, by the way, is Keats’ Chapman. The second definition, dating from the nineteenth century, is “to pave or cover with pebbles or pebble-like objects.” The final one is “to treat (leather, vinyl, etc.) with a patterned roller to produce a rough or indented surface, such as might be produced by the pressure of pebbles.”

 

Inevitably, I’m reminded of Zbigniew Herbert’s “Pebble” (trans. Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz):

 

“The pebble

Is a perfect creature

 

“equal to itself

mindful of its limits

 

“filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

 

“with a scent that does not remind one of anything

 does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

 

“its ardour and coldness

 are just and full of dignity

 

 “I feel a heavy remorse

  when I hold it in my hand

  and its noble body

  is permeated by false warmth

 

  “--Pebbles cannot be tamed

  to the end they will look at us

  with a calm and very clear eye”

 

Herbert suggests we probably ought to be envying pebbles. As Whitman says about animals, “They do not sweat and whine about their condition.”