screaming of the lapwing." Hence the fact of this bird being regarded as unlucky in Scotland. 1 Spenser's "Thracian king lamenting sore" is, of course, a reference to Tereus, who, in some Englished versions of the myth, was turned into a lapwing and not into a hoopoe. The same confusion of these two birds occurs in the Bible, where for "hoopoe" should be read "lapwing." The shy plover (Mackay: Water-Tarantella); Screaming lapwings hail'd the op'ning day (Bloomfield: Walter and Jane); The dreary plover plains (Grahame: British Georgics-May); The plover's shrilly strain (Scott: Lady of the Lake). (1) From the shore The plovers scatter o'er the heath, And sing their wild notes to the listening waste. -Thomson: Spring. (2) Deep-toned plovers grey, Wild-whistling o'er the hill.-Burns: Brigs of Ayr. (5) (6) With nimble wing she sporteth. -A. Ramsay: Lauder Haughs and Yarrow. The sundew's crimson blush, Whose velvet leaf, with radiant beauty dressed, -Crabbe: The Borough. The Thracian king, lamenting sore, Turned to a lapwing, doeth them upbrayde, And fluttering round about them, still does sore. --Spenser: Faerie Queene. "English Folk Lore," by T. F. Thiselton Dyer. (7) (8) The lapwing cowering to preserve her nest. Like a lapwing fly Far from the nest, and so himself belie (9) The lapwing faces that still cry, (10) (11) (12) (13) "Here 'tis !" when that they vow is nothing nigh. -Marlowe: Hero and Leander. Like lapwing flying still the other way. -Quarles: Hist. of Samson. The plover safe her airy scream She, if or dog Or man intrude upon her bleak domain, Skims, clamouring loud, close at their feet, with wing And here the lonely lapwing hops along, He bends his steps, no more she round him flies ; -Leyden: Scenes of Infancy. Like me, the plover fondly tries To lure the sportsman from her nest, Too plainly shows her tortured breast. Oh, let him, conscious of her care, Pity her pains and learn to spare.-Shenstone: Odes. (14) Around the head Of wandering swain the white-winged plover wheels In long excursion skims the level lawn, To tempt him from her nest.-Thomson: Spring. (15) Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear. (18) (19) She never will forget, never forget, Thy dismal soughing wing and doleful cry. But though the pitying sun withdraws his light, Ill-omened bird! oft in the times When monarchs owned no sceptre but the sword, Thou, hovering o'er the panting fugitive Through dreary moss and moor, hast screaming led The keen pursuer's eye; oft hast thou hung Like a death-flag above the assembled throng Whose lips hymned praise.- Grahame: Birds of Scotland. (1) PTARMIGAN.. The snowy ptarmigan.-Scott: Marmion. QUAIL. (1) Whilst all I eat goes down with lookes to fight, They lay at flux and had sore throats. -Davenant: To Doctor Cadman. (2) The corn-land loving quayle, the loveliest of our bits. -Drayton: Polyolbion. (3) Thus jealous quails or village cocks inspect (4) Each other's necks, with stiffen'd plumes erect; Smit with the wordless eloquence, they show The vivid passion of the threat'ning foe.-Origin of Song. So have I seen The spaniel-hunted quail with lowly wing Shear the smooth air; and so, too, have I heard (5) A cloud of quails in rising tumult soar.-A. Wilson: Foresters. (6) Tardy quail (Hurdis: The Village Curate); Quail clam'ring for his running mate (Thomson: Summer). RAVEN. Associated, with exemplary punctuality, with the owl is the raven. 1 1 "That owls and ravens are ominous appearers and pre-signifying unlucky events, as Christians yet conceit, was also an augurial conception. Because many ravens were seen when Alexander entered Babylon, they were thought to preominate his death; and because an owl appeared before the battle, it presaged the ruin of Crassus. Which, though decrepit "A cursed bird too crafty to be shot, That always cometh with his soot-black coat To make hearts dreary-for he is a blot Upon the book of life." It is true that the one is a day bird and the other nocturnal, but this does not prevent them being, in poetry, comrades and confederates. "Each bird of evil omen woke; The raven gave his fatal croak, And shrieked the night-crow from the oak; The screech-owl from the thicket broke And fluttered down the dell." "The owl and the raven are mute for dread, "Here no night ravens look more black than pitch, "Let wolves be gone, be ravens put to flight, "Nor where the boding raven chaunts, Nor hear the owl's unhallowed haunts." I confess I do not find it in me to sympathise with the poets' abhorrence of the raven, the Methusaleh of the birds. superstitions, and such as had their nativity in times beyond all history, are fresh in the observation of many heads, and by the credulous and feminine party still in some majesty among us. And therefore the emblem of superstition was well set out by Ripa in the picture of an owl, a hare, and an old woman. And it no way confirmeth the augurial consideration, that an owl is a forbidden food in the law of Moses; or that Jerusalem was threatened by the raven and the owl, in that expression of Isaiah xxxiv., that it should be a court for owls, that the cormorant and the bittern should possess it; and the owl and the raven dwell in it;' for thereby was only implied their ensuing desolation, as is expounded in words succeeding: 'He shall draw upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.'"-Sir Thos. Browne. |