therefore, and notably in natural history, the jay is as conspicuous in character and habits as it is in appearance. It has not, however, taken the fancy of the poets, who misrepresent it as an upstart and a forward one.

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

I met a parrot and a jay who mocked me.-Prior: Turtle.

The painted jay.—Gay: Shepherd's Week.

The various herald-jay.-Lovelace: Falcon.

One of Juno's birds, the painted jay.—Marlowe : Ilero.

As any jay she light was and jolif.-Chaucer: Reve's Tale.

Thou janglest as a jay (Chaucer: Lawyer's Tale); No longer scolds the saucy jay (Hurdis: Village Curate); The jay, a very termagant (Hurdis: Village Curate); The prating jay (Quarles: History of Samson).

(9)

Two sharpe-winged sheares,

Decked with diverse plums, like painted jays,
Were fixed at his backe to cut his ayery wayes.

(10)

(11)

-Spenser: Faerie Queen.

Tu-whoo, Tu-whoo, near, nearer, now

The sound of song, the rushing throng!

Are the screech, the lapwing and the jay,

All awake as if 'twere day.-Shelley: Scenes from Faust.

"Thou hast a crested poll and 'scutcheoned wing
Fit for a herald of the eagle king,

But such a voice, I would that thou couldst sing."

(12)

(13)

"My bill has rougher work—to scream with fright,
And then, when screaming will not do, to fight."

Once the jays sent a message

-Montgomery: Birds.

Unto the eagle's nest :-
"Now yield thee up thine eyrie

Unto the carrion kite,

Or come forth valiantly and face
The jays in deadly fight."
Forth looked the eagle in his wrath,

And carrion kite and jay,

Soon as they saw his beak and claw,

Fled screaming far away.—Macaulay: L. Regillus.

Kiss me, sweet; the wary lover

Can your favours keep, and cover,

When the common courting jay

All your bounties will betray.-Johnson.

KINGFISHER.

Poetry is conspicuously indebted to heraldry in the matter of "the halcyon." A remote past has bequeathed

the

"Bird of calm that sits brooding on the charmed wave,"

and which dead,

"Shows the change of winds with his prophetic bill;"

and in the days of emblazoned shields and tournament devices, "the halcyon" was one of the most popular of crests. From the heralds the poets received it, and as they received it, transferred the sea-calming, wind-foretelling bird to their verse. Of the real bird, the kingfisher, they seem to have known nothing-except that (sometimes 1) it was

1 "The scarlet plume of the halcyon.”—M. Howitt.

"blue," "very blue," "sapphire," and that it fished.

Now

and then they ventured to "localise" the bird, as in Darwin's

"From osier bowers the brooding halcyons peep,"

and Cunningham's

"On the isles, with osiers drest,

Many a fair plumed halcyon breeds."

But this does not occur more than five or six times in the whole range of the poets, and even then occasionally with disastrous effect. For instance, when Cowper says, "Lovely halcyons dive into the main;" or when Shelley writes,

"Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,

I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward,
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms, imaged, as in a sky."

What he did see it is of course now impossible to inquire, but it is quite certain that he never saw kingfishers clinging to a spray and eating the berries on it. Or when Savage thus recklessly makes the halcyon an aquatic nightingale

"When winter halcyons, flickering on the wave,
Tune their complaints, yon sea forgets to rave;

Loud winds turn zephyrs to enlarge their notes,
And each safe nest on a calm surface floats."

The preference, however, is always given to the heraldic fowl "that broods round foamless isles," whose natural solicitude even the pitiless sea respects, and whose "floating raft" is rude Boreas's special care.

1

"And wars have that respect for his 1 repose

As winds for halcyons when they breed at sea."

This tradition of the kingfisher charming the seas to tranquillity and ensuing it, naturally suggests "the halcyon to the poets as a simile for sleep

"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird!

That broodest over the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hush'd and smooth;"

"Halcyon sleep will never build his nest

In any stormy breast;"

for franquillity itself

"O still tranquillity, so hushed thy breast,
As if some halcyon were its guest,

And there had built her nest ;'

for peace of mind—

"Far, far away, O ye,

Halcyons of memory,

Seek some far calmer rest;"

for quiet times-"halcyon days" and "halcyon hours;" or for both together

"Hail! welcome tide of life, when no tumultuous billows roll,

How wondrous to myself appears this halcyon calm of soul !"

That it should be also an emblem of youth is not perhaps so plainly "aperte." "Oh! halcyon youth," says Mrs. Hemans; but it may be that the idea of " playful," so often applied to it by Shenstone, influenced the poet of the Better Land. Yet old age would seem to be more of "a halcyon" than Youth, which, in other poets, is so fitly set forth as an eaglet in the male, a dove in the female sex.

Its Plumage-Haunts-Seclusion-Birds of Calm-Epithets

(1)

(2)

Metaphors.

The little halcyon's azure plume

Was never half so blue.-Shenstone: Song.

The kingfisher saw his plumage bright

Vying with fish of brilliant dye below.-Keats: Imitation.

(3)

There came,

Swift as a meteor's shining flame,

(4)

(5)

A kingfisher from out the brake,

And almost seemed to leave a wake

Of brilliant hues behind.-Faber: The Cherwell.

Ocean from his lap let fly

His loveliest halcyon through the sky.-Montgomery: Cloud.

Birds of brighter plume

With busy pinion skim the glittering wave,
And tempt the sun, ambitious to display

Their several merits.-Shenstone: Ruined Abbey.

(5) But see! the golden fisher from the bridge
Shoots on his glancing wings; shall nature still
Preach on? Lo! then, ye children of the world,
That bird is crowned a king, and ever makes
The streams the limits of his realm, the rills

His pathway o'er the world, and for food

The venturous creature preys upon the fish.-Faber: Hermitage.

(7) Thou hast a fair dominion here, Sir King!

(8)

(9)

And yon tall stone beneath the alder stone
Seems a meet throne for a gay crowned thing
That wears so well its tawny diadem.

Thou hast a fair dominion-pools and bays,

With heath and copse, and nooks of plumy fern;
And tributes of sweet sound the river pays,

Changing to blithe and sad at every turn.-Faber: Kingfisher.

66

Why dost thou hide thy beauty from the sun?”
"The eye of man, but not of heaven, I shun:
Beneath the mossy bank, with alders crowned,
I build and brood where running waters sound;
There, there the halcyon peace may still be found."
-Montgomery: Birds.

From osier bowers the brooding halcyons peep.

(10) On the isles, with osiers drest,

-Darwin: Loves of the Plants.

Many a fair plum'd halcyon breeds.—Cunningham: Laniscape.