Chapter 9

"After him owles and night ravens flew, The hateful messengers of heavy things, Of death and dolor telling sad tidings."

And once more the following passage from Drayton's "Barons' Wars" (bk. v. stanza 42) illustrates the same idea:

"The ominous raven often he doth hear, Whose croaking him of following horror tells."

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 3), the "night-raven" is mentioned. Benedick observes to himself: "I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it." This inauspicious bird, according to Steevens, is the owl; but this conjecture is evidently wrong, "being at variance with sundry passages in our early writers, who make a distinction between it and the night-raven."[314]

[314] Dyce's "Glossary," 1876, p. 288.

Thus Johnson, in his "Seven Champions of Christendom" (part i.), speaks of "the dismal cry of night-ravens, ... and the fearefull sound of schriek owles." Cotgrave regarded the "night-crow" and the "night-raven" as synonymous; and Mr. Yarrell considered them only different names for the night-heron.[315] In "3 Henry VI." (v. 6) King Henry says:

"The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."

[315] See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," pp. 101, 102; Yarrell's "History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 581.

Goldsmith, in his "Animated Nature," calls the bittern the night-raven, and says: "I remember, in the place where I was a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the whole village; they consider it as the presage of some sad event, and generally found or made one to succeed it. If any person in the neighborhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; but if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave completion to the prophecy."

According to an old belief the raven deserts its own young, to which Shakespeare alludes in "Titus Andronicus" (ii. 3):

"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests."

"It was supposed that when the raven," says Mr. Harting,[316] "saw its young ones newly hatched and covered with down, it conceived such an aversion that it forsook them, and did not return to the nest until a darker plumage had shown itself." To this belief the commentators consider the Psalmist refers, when he says, "He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry" (Psalm cxlvii. 9). We are told, too, in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat" (xxxviii. 41). Shakespeare, in "As You Like It" (ii. 3), probably had the words of the Psalmist in his mind:

"He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow."

[316] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 107.

The raven has from earliest times been symbolical of blackness, both in connection with color and character. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2), Juliet exclaims:

"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven!"[317]

[317] Cf. "Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 2; "Twelfth Night," v. 1.

Once more, ravens' feathers were formerly used by witches, from an old superstition that the wings of this bird carried with them contagion wherever they went. Hence, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says:

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both!"

_Robin Redbreast._ According to a pretty notion,[318] this little bird is said to cover with leaves any dead body it may chance to find unburied; a belief which probably, in a great measure, originated in the well-known ballad of the "Children in the Wood," although it seems to have been known previously. Thus Singer quotes as follows from "Cornucopia, or Divers Secrets," etc. (by Thomas Johnson, 1596): "The robin redbreast, if he finds a man or woman dead, will cover all his face with moss; and some think that if the body should remain unburied that he would cover the whole body also." In Dekker's "Villaines Discovered by Lanthorn and Candlelight" (1616), quoted by Douce, it is said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are robin redbreasts that bring strawes in their bills to cover a dead man in extremitie." Shakespeare, in a beautiful passage in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2), thus touchingly alludes to it, making Arviragus, when addressing the supposed dead body of Imogen, say:

"With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would, With charitable bill,--O bill, sore-shaming Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie Without a monument!--bring thee all this; Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none To winter-ground thy corse"--

the "ruddock"[319] being one of the old names for the redbreast, which is nowadays found in some localities. John Webster, also, refers to the same idea in "The White Devil" (1857, ed. Dyce, p. 45):

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men."

[318] "English Folk-Lore," pp. 62-64; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 191; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 424; Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 380.

[319] Cf. Spenser's "Epithalamium," v. 8:

"The thrush replies, the mavis descant plays, The ouzell shrills, the ruddock warbles soft."

Drayton, too, in "The Owl," has the following lines:

"Cov'ring with moss the dead's unclosed eye, The little redbreast teaching charitie."

_Rook._ As an ominous bird this is mentioned in "Macbeth" (iii. 4). Formerly the nobles of England prided themselves in having a rookery[320] in the neighborhood of their castles, because rooks were regarded as "fowls of good omen." On this account no one was permitted to kill them, under severe penalties. When rooks desert a rookery[321] it is said to foretell the downfall of the family on whose property it is. A Northumbrian saying informs us that the rooks left the rookery of Chipchase before the family of Reed left that place. There is also a notion that when rooks haunt a town or village "mortality is supposed to await its inhabitants, and if they feed in the street it shows that a storm is at hand."[322]

[320] _Standard_, January 26, 1877.

[321] "English Folk-Lore," p. 76.

[322] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, p. 122.

The expression "bully-rook," in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 3), in Shakespeare's time, says Mr. Harting,[323] had the same meaning as "jolly dog" nowadays; but subsequently it became a term of reproach, meaning a cheating sharper. It has been suggested that the term derives its origin from the _rook_ in the game of chess; but Douce[324] considers it very improbable that this noble game, "never the amusement of gamblers, should have been ransacked on this occasion."

[323] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 121.

[324] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 36; the term "bully-rook" occurs several times in Shadwell's "Sullen Lovers;" see Dyce's "Glossary," p. 58.

_Snipe._ This bird was in Shakespeare's time proverbial for a foolish man.[325] In "Othello" (i. 3), Iago, speaking of Roderigo, says:

"For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane, If I would time expend with such a snipe, But for my sport and profit."

[325] In Northamptonshire the word denotes an icicle, from its resemblance to the long bill of the bird so-called.--Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. ii. p. 260.

_Sparrow._ A popular name for the common sparrow was, and still is, Philip, perhaps from its note, "Phip, phip." Hence the allusion to a person named Philip, in "King John" (i. 1):

_Gurney._ Good leave, good Philip.

_Bastard._ Philip?--sparrow!

Staunton says perhaps Catullus alludes to this expression in the following lines:

"Sed circumsiliens, modo huc, modo illuc, Ad solam dominam usque pipilabat."

Skelton, in an elegy upon a sparrow, calls it "Phyllyp Sparowe;" and Gascoigne also writes "The praise of Philip Sparrow."

In "Measure for Measure" (iii. 2), Lucio, speaking of Angelo, the deputy-duke of Vienna, says: "Sparrows must not build in his house-eaves, because they are lecherous."[326]

[326] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 653; Dyce's "Glossary," p. 320.

_Sparrow-hawk._ A name formerly given to a young sparrow-hawk was eyas-musket,[327] a term we find in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 3): "How now, my eyas-musket! what news with you?" It was thus metaphorically used as a jocular phrase for a small child. As the invention, too, of fire-arms took place[328] at a time when hawking was in high fashion, some of the new weapons were named after those birds, probably from the idea of their fetching their prey from on high. _Musket_ has thus become the established name for one sort of gun. Some, however, assert that the musket was invented in the fifteenth century, and owes its name to its inventors.

[327] Derived from the French _mouschet_, of the same meaning.

[328] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 593: Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 46. Turbervile tells us "the first name and terme that they bestowe on a falcon is an eyesse, and this name doth laste as long as she is an eyrie and for that she is taken from the eyrie."

_Starling._ This was one of the birds that was in days gone by trained to speak. In "1 Henry IV." (i. 3), Hotspur says:

"I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him, To keep his anger still in motion."

Pliny tells us how starlings were taught to utter both Latin and Greek words for the amusement of the young Cæsars; and there are numerous instances on record of the clever sentences uttered by this amusing bird.

_Swallow._ This bird has generally been honored as the harbinger of spring, and Athenæus relates that the Rhodians had a solemn song to welcome it. Anacreon has a well-known ode. Shakespeare, in the "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), alludes to the time of the swallow's appearance in the following passage:

"daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty."

And its departure is mentioned in "Timon of Athens" (iii. 6): "The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship."

We may compare Tennyson's notice of the bird's approach and migration in "The May Queen:"

"And the swallow 'll come back again with summer o'er the wave."

It has been long considered lucky for the swallow to build its nest on the roof of a house, but just as unlucky for it to forsake a place which it has once tenanted. Shakespeare probably had this superstition in his mind when he represents Scarus as saying, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 12):

"Swallows have built In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers Say, they know not,--they cannot tell;--look grimly, And dare not speak their knowledge."

_Swan._ According to a romantic notion, dating from antiquity, the swan is said to sing sweetly just before its death, many pretty allusions to which we find scattered here and there throughout Shakespeare's plays. In "Merchant of Venice" (iii. 2), Portia says:

"he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music."

Emilia, too, in "Othello" (v. 2), just before she dies, exclaims:

"I will play the swan, And die in music."

In "King John" (v. 7), Prince Henry, at his father's death-bed, thus pathetically speaks:

"'Tis strange that death should sing. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings His soul and body to their lasting rest."

Again, in "Lucrece" (1611), we have these touching lines:

"And now this pale swan in her watery nest, Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending."

And once more, in "The Phoenix and Turtle:"

"Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right."

This superstition, says Douce,[329] "was credited by Plato, Chrysippus, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial. Pliny, Ælian, and Athenæus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More, among the moderns, treat this opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it." This notion probably originated in the swan being identified with Orpheus. Sir Thomas Browne[330] says, we read that, "after his death, Orpheus, the musician, became a swan. Thus was it the bird of Apollo, the bird of music by the Greeks." Alluding to this piece of folk-lore, Carl Engel[331] remarks: "Although our common swan does not produce sounds which might account for this tradition, it is a well-known fact that the wild swan (_Cygnus ferus_), also called the 'whistling swan,' when on the wing emits a shrill tone, which, however harsh it may sound if heard near, produces a pleasant effect when, emanating from a large flock high in the air, it is heard in a variety of pitches of sound, increasing or diminishing in loudness according to the movement of the birds and to the current of the air." Colonel Hawker[332] says, "The only note which I ever heard the wild swan make, in winter, is his well-known 'whoop.'"[333]

[329] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 161.

[330] Works, 1852, vol. i. p. 357.

[331] "Musical Myths and Facts," 1876, vol. i. p. 89.

[332] "Instructions to Young Sportsmen," 11th ed., p. 269.

[333] See Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, p. 561; Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. pp. 302-328.

_Tassel-Gentle._[334] The male of the goshawk was so called on account of its tractable disposition, and the facility with which it was tamed. The word occurs in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 2):

"O, for a falconer's voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again!"

[334] Properly "tiercel gentle," French, _tiercelet_; cf. "Troilus and Cressida," iii. 2, "the falcon as the tercel."

Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (bk. iii. c. iv. l. 49), says:

"Having far off espied a tassel-gent Which after her his nimble wings doth straine."

This species of hawk was also commonly called a "falcon-gentle," on account of "her familiar, courteous disposition."[335]

[335] "Gentleman's Recreation," p. 19, quoted in Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 867.

_Turkey._ This bird, so popular with us at Christmas-tide, is mentioned in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 1), where the First Carrier says: "God's body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved." This, however, is an anachronism on the part of Shakespeare, as the turkey was unknown in this country until the reign of Henry VIII. According to a rhyme written in 1525, commemorating the introduction of this bird, we are told how:

"Turkies, carps, hoppes, piccarell, and beere, Came into England all in one yeare."

The turkey is again mentioned by Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 5), where Fabian says of Malvolio: "Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him: how he jets under his advanced plumes!"

_Vulture._ In several passages Shakespeare has most forcibly introduced this bird to deepen the beauty of some of his exquisite passages. Thus, in "King Lear" (ii. 4), when he is complaining of the unkindness of a daughter, he bitterly exclaims:

"O Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here."

What, too, can be more graphic than the expression of Tamora in "Titus Andronicus" (v. 2):

"I am Revenge, sent from the infernal kingdom, To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind."

Equally forcible, too, are Pistol's words in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 3): "Let vultures gripe thy guts."

Johnson considers that "the vulture of sedition" in "2 Henry VI." (iv. 3) is in allusion to the tale of Prometheus, but of this there is a decided uncertainty.

_Wagtail._ In "King Lear" (ii. 2), Kent says, "Spare my grey beard, you wagtail?" the word being used in an opprobrious sense, to signify an officious person.

_Woodcock._ In several passages this bird is used to denote a fool or silly person; as in "Taming of the Shrew" (i. 2): "O this woodcock! what an ass it is!" And again, in "Much Ado About Nothing" (v. 1), where Claudio, alluding to the plot against Benedick, says: "Shall I not find a woodcock too?" In "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 3) Biron says:

"O heavens, I have my wish! Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish."

The woodcock has generally been proverbial as a foolish bird--perhaps because it is easily caught in springes or nets.[336] Thus the popular phrase "Springes to catch woodcocks" meant arts to entrap simplicity,[337] as in "Hamlet" (i. 3):

"Aye, springes to catch woodcocks."

[336] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 508.

[337] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 971.

A similar expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Loyal Subject" (iv. 4):

"Go like a woodcock, And thrust your neck i' th' noose."

"It seems," says Nares, "that woodcocks are now grown wiser by time, for we do not now hear of their being so easily caught. If they were sometimes said to be without brains, it was only founded on their character, certainly not on any examination of the fact."[338] Formerly, one of the terms for twilight[339] was "cock-shut time," because the net in which cocks, _i. e._, woodcocks, were shut in during the twilight, was called a "cock-shut." It appears that a large net was stretched across a glade, and so suspended upon poles as to be easily drawn together. Thus, in "Richard III." (v. 3), Ratcliff says:

"Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself, Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop, Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers."

[338] See Willughby's "Ornithology," iii. section 1.

[339] Minsheu's "Guide into Tongues," ed. 1617.

In Ben Jonson's "Masque of Gypsies" we read:

"Mistress, this is only spite; For you would not yesternight Kiss him in the cock-shut light."

Sometimes it was erroneously written "cock-shoot." "Come, come away then, a fine cock-shoot evening." In the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (iv. 1) we find the term "cock-light."

_Wren._ The diminutive character of this bird is noticed in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 1, song):

"The wren with little quill."

In "Macbeth" (iv. 2), Lady Macbeth says:

"the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl."

Considering, too, that as many as sixteen young ones have been found in this little bird's nest, we can say with Grahame, in his poem on the birds of Scotland:

"But now behold the greatest of this train Of miracles, stupendously minute; The numerous progeny, claimant for food Supplied by two small bills, and feeble wings Of narrow range, supplied--ay, duly fed-- Fed in the dark, and yet not one forgot."

The epithet "poor," applied to the wren by Lady Macbeth, was certainly appropriate in days gone by, when we recollect how it was cruelly hunted in Ireland on St. Stephen's day--a practice which prevailed also in the Isle of Man.[340]

[340] See Yarrell's "History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 178.