Each rapid movement gives a different dye;
Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling show,
Now suit to shade, now like a furnace glow.

-A. Wilson: Humming-Bird.

If all the crow family were black, and if blackbirds were any other colour than they are, I should be inclined to suspect that poets have an aversion to nigritude

66

'For black, you know, is the devil's colour."

But when I find that the crows' cousins,-"the painted jay" and piebald magpie,—are unpopular with the bards, and yet that the blackbird, the most negrofied of fowls, is very popular with them, I confess myself in doubt as to the true causes of this poetic odium.

It is not easy, for instance, to understand why the poets should be so unkind to the jackdaw. For, out of the poets, it is a popular bird. Its name, perhaps, is against it-for "jackdaw" is not a name that prompts to gravity of treatment, or even to much respect; while "daw" is, if anything, rather worse-but, except for this accident of baptism, the bird has nothing in its disfavour. Some people, I know, have a vague notion that jackdaws are little crows, and some day will be full-sized ones, and later on still, perhaps, grow up to be ravens; and there is so much traditional

disrepute attaching to these larger birds of ominous antecedents, that the unfortunate "daw," having the same shade of feather, has to accept the same shade of character, Moreover, it happens by chance that there is a fable in existence about a certain peacock's feather; and such is the human tendency to cherish and repeat ill-natured things, that this deplorable incident of individual vanity has been remembered against the whole species, and is being constantly thrown in their faces whenever they venture to appear in respectable society. Whether it is right or not to treat a poor bird thus, simply because it had a coxcomb amongst its ancestors, it is for moralists to decide, and meanwhile it only concerns me to note how curiously unfavourable literary opinion, when expressed in verse, has always been. Cowper dedicates an ode to—

"The bird who, by his coat,

And by the hoarseness of his note
Might be supposed a crow ;"

but he is not generous to it, and in his translation of Virgil speaks of a cave where—

"Birds obscene,

Of ominous note, resorted, choughs and daws." 1

Shakespeare calls it stupid; Thomson speaks of it as a bird of "discordant pipe;" Savage says it is "dissonant ; Shelley mocks at it; and many others pelt it with such epithets as "wrangling," "keckling," "clattering," "saucy," and "prating."

Yet numbers of prose writers speak in special admiration of this bird, and more particularly of its note. I myself know no voice in Nature more suggestive of long-undisturbed repose, more significant of the statelier forms of peace, or more in harmony with old baronial possessions, than the

1 Dryden construes the same passage "owls and ravens."

pleasant clamour of jackdaws up among the chimneys and turrets. Not only (to my mind) do they enhance the tranquillity of the ancient castle, but they add a solemnity to the minster. The poets are quite wrong when they say "the steeple-loving" jackdaw's note is dismal; and they go still further wrong when they draw from their first error the inference that, being dismal, it is also "ominous." As a matter of fact, folk-lore has very little indeed about the jackdaw, and what there is, is to its credit. It is a staunch friend of the farmer, and a popular favourite. But the poets take offence, I suppose, at its name, and cannot shake off that undue "ravishment with antiquity"-which is so conspicuous in their treatment of other birds-sufficiently to forget its having once tried to look smart in a peacock's tail-feather.

(1)

Canst thou remember that unlucky day
When all thy peacock's plumes were pluck away?
-Montgomery: Birds.

Idle as the chattering of a daw (Cowper: Anti-Thelyphthora); Dissonant daw (Savage: The Wanderer); The busy daw (Addison); Its harsh pipe (Thomson); Kekling kaes (Leyden); Clatterin daws (Ramsay: Eagle and Robin); The steeple-loving daw (Hurdis: Favourite Village).

(2)

(3)

(4)

From the hollows of the tower on high

The grey-cap'd daws in saucy legion fly.-Bloomfield: Autumn.

The daws throng on the steeple perch,

Ambitious of its loftiest vane.-Hurdis: Favourite Village.

Stationed high, a towering height,

On the sun-gilt weathercock,

Now the jackdaw takes his flight,

Frighted by the striking clock.-Clare: Summer Eve.

While the daw-people numerous,

with plumes

Rapid and audible, the valley skim,

Startling by fits the meditating ear

With mingled outcry of ten thousand throats.

Lo! to the steeple, with alternate wing,
Bears expeditious his long twig the daw,
Nor seldom struggles with his awkward freight,

And drops it, startled by the hooting boy

That shouts beneath.-Hurdis: Favourite Village.

The clamorous daws, that all the day

Above tree-tops and towers play,

Pair by pair had gone to rest,

Each in its ancient belfry-nest,

Where asleep they fall betimes

To music and the drowsy chimes.-Keats: Eve of St. Mark.

There is a bird, who by his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow.

A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch
And dormitory too.

Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,

And thence securely sees

The bustle and the raree-show

That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men,

And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,

And such a head between 'em.

-Cowper: Jackdaw.

JAY.

The Jay is another bird that the poets do not like. They refer with significant frequency to its "scream" and "screech;" Macaulay selects it (in deference to a tradition) as the confederate of the "carrion kite" in insulting the eagle. Hurdis delights in repeating his idea that it was a scold-"the jay, a very termagant," and "scolds the saucy jay." Wordsworth, Thomson, Prior, seem to know no more of it than its name. Chaucer calls it "light,"-" as any jay she light was and jolif" and "jangling," while the restexcept Spenser and Gay, who appear to grudge its being "painted," and Pope, who thinks it a "merry songster -do not seem to know even that. Yet "the various herald-jay" is emphatically a notable bird. It is one of the very few birds of beautiful plumage that is native to England, and yet it is also one of the most retiring. Its love-notes are curiously subdued and soft, as if it did not wish to be overheard, while nearly all other birds are absurdly demonstrative in courtship. They are singularly intelligent, even amongst such an intelligent family of birds, and teach themselves to imitate woodland sounds. Montague says that, during the nesting season, the male bird apparently amuses its mate by introducing into "its tender wooing the bleating of lambs, the mewing of cats, the cries of hawks, the hooting of owls, and even the neighing of horses; while Yarrell heard one giving a poultry-yard entertainment, "imitating the calling of the fowls to feed, and all the noises of the fowls themselves to perfection; while the barking and growling of the house-dog were imitated in a style that could not be distinguished from the original." Moreover, they are the brigands and tyrants of the coppice; for not only do they plunder nests, but they sometimes murder and eat the parents. In prose,