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,
Forms a gay pillow for the plover's breast.

-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.
-Hood: Plea of the Fairies.

Like a lapwing fly

Far from the nest, and so himself belie
To others.-Johnson: Elegy.

(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
Circling repeats, then to a distance flies,
And querulous still returns importunate,
Yet still escapes, unworthy of our aim.
Amid the marsh's rushy skirts her nest
Is slightly strewn ; four eggs of olive hue
Spotted with black she broods upon.

She, if or dog

Or man intrude upon her bleak domain,

Skims, clamouring loud, close at their feet, with wing
Stooping, as if impeded by a wound.

And here the lonely lapwing hops along,
That piercing shrieks her still-repeated song,
Flaps her blue wing, displays her painted crest,
And, cow'ring, lures the peasant from her nest.
But if where all her dappled treasure lies

He bends his steps, no more she round him flies
Forlorn, despairing of a mother's skill,
Silent and sad, she seeks the distant hill.

;

-Leyden: Scenes of Infancy.

Like me, the plover fondly tries

To lure the sportsman from her nest,
And fluttering on with anxious cries,

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
Her sounding flight, and then directly on

In long excursion skims the level lawn,

To tempt him from her nest.-Thomson: Spring.

(15)

Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear.
-Burns: Afton Water.

(18)

(19)

She never will forget, never forget,

Thy dismal soughing wing and doleful cry.
-Grahame: Birds of Scotland.

But though the pitying sun withdraws his light,
The lapwing's clamorous hoop attends their flight,
Pursues their steps where'er the wanderers go,
Till the shrill scream betrays them to the foe.
Poor bird where'er the roaming swain intrudes
On thy bleak heaths and desert solitudes,
He curses still thy scream, thy clamorous tongue,
And crushes with his foot thy moulting young.
-Leyden: Scenes of Infancy.

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,
More forc'd than quailes t' each full-crammed Israelite,
Whose angry swallowing denotes

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
That she can sweetly clamour, though compell'd
To tread the lowly vale.—Hurdis: Village Curate.

(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,
And the time is meet to wake the dead.

"Here no night ravens look more black than pitch,
Nor elfish ghosts, nor ghastly owl do flee.

"Let wolves be gone, be ravens put to flight,
With hooting owls and bats that hate the light.

"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.