Chapter IV (2)

Cock-crowing in mediæval days received mystical importance from a belief that it was in the dawn of the morning that our Saviour was born; it was regarded, too, as a warning voice telling of the coming of the day of Judgment,[89] and from its association with St. Peter’s grievous denial of his Master a warning against self-sufficiency and base cowardice. It was thought that during the hours of darkness evil spirits and the souls of the departed were abroad and that these fled at daybreak: hence Shakespeare makes the ghost of Hamlet’s father vanish at this season—“It faded on the crowing of the cock.” To the belief that on Christmas Eve the night was entirely free from any such spiritual manifestation he refers in the beautiful lines:—

“Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike.
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious in the time.”

In the quaint and delightful “Armonye of Byrdes” with its mingled Latin and English:—

“The Cock dyd say:
I use alway
To crow both first and last.
Lyke a Postle I am,
For I preache to man
And tell him the nyght is past.[90]

“I bring new tydyngis
That the king of kynges
In tactu profundit chorus:
Then sang he, mellodious,
Te Gloriosus,
Apostolorum chorus.”

This poem, of which only one ancient copy is in existence, has been reproduced by the Percy Society. The author is unknown, but is conjectured to be John Skelton. No date appears on it, but the name of the printer, John Wyght, shows that it must have been published somewhere about the year 1550. The poem begins:—

“Whan Dame Flora
In die Aurora
Had covered the meadow with flowers,
And all the fylde
Was over dystylde
With lusty Aprell showers,
For my desporte
Me to comforte
Whan the day began to spring
Foorth I went
With a good intent
To hear the byrdes syng.”

The poem then goes on to tell us of the birds all “praisyng Our Lorde without discord, with goodly armony,” the popyngay, the mavys, partryge, pecocke, thrusshe, nyghtyngale, larke, egle, dove, phenix, wren, the tyrtle trew, the hawke, the pellycane, the swalowe, all singing in quaint blending of Latin and English the praise of God.

The raven, “the hoarse night-raven, trompe of doleful drere,”[91] has been at almost all periods regarded with superstitious awe. Shakespeare, for instance, writes of the raven “that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan,”[92] and again, in Othello, we find the illustrative passage—

“It comes o’er my memory
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.”

Marlowe, in like spirit, in his “Rich Jew of Malta,” dwells on the sad presaging raven

“That tolls
The sick man’s passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings.”

The whole field of literature teems with references of the same ominous character. It will suffice to add but one more illustration, where Gay, in “The Dirge,” notices the evil presage in the lines—

“The boding raven on her cottage sat,
And with hoarse croakings warned us of our fate.”

The raven is sometimes called the devil’s bird. It is believed that it was originally white, but that it was changed to black for its disobedience. What this disobedience was appears to be a very moot point. The old Greeks believed that Apollo once sent it to a fountain to fetch water, and the bird on arrival found a fig-tree with very nearly ripe fruit, and determined to wait until they were quite so. As this was a matter of some few days, it became necessary to invent some plausible explanation of the delay, so he took a water-snake out of the fountain and brought it in the pitcher to the god, and explained that this creature had drunk the reservoir dry. Apollo, declining to accept this explanation, turned the disobedient raven black, condemned it to be always plagued with thirst, and changed its once melodious voice into the monstrous croak[93] that it has ever since been uttering as token of its punishment. Mediæval writers do not accept this story at all, but declare that the real reason that the raven exchanged its snow-white plumage for the sable garb was the consequence of its disobedience when, instead of returning to the ark to Noah, it stayed to feed on the bodies of the drowned.[94] It will be seen that in each case disobedience was the offence, and appetite the occasion thereof.

It is rather startling after this to read in the quaint pages of Legh that “the Rauen delighteth so much in her owne bewty that when her birds are hatched she will giue them no meate vntill she see whether they will bee of her owne colour or no.” Guillim, another writer, like Legh, on matters heraldic, entirely supports this statement, declaring that “it hath bene an ancient received opinion, and the same also grounded vpon the warrant of the Holy Scriptures that such is the property of the Raven, that from the time his young ones are hatched or disclosed, untill he seeth what colour they will be of, he never careth of them nor ministereth any food unto them, therefore it is thought that they are in the meane space nourished with the heavenly dew. And so muche also doth the kingly prophet, David, affirme, ‘which giveth fodder unto the catell and feedeth the young Ravens that call upon him.’ The Raven is of colour blacke, and when he perceiveth his young ones to be pennefeathered and black like himself, then doth he labour by all means to foster and cherish them from thence forward.”

Surprising as it is to find that the sable plumage that we regard as the mark of disgrace is to the bird himself or herself (for Legh refers to the maternal pride and Guillim to the paternal) a beauty that no bastard brood can attain to, it is still more surprising to find that this “devil’s bird” and messenger of woe is really not by any means so black as he is painted, and is, indeed, possessed of deep religious feeling. Maundevile in his pilgrimage to Mount Sinai saw and heard of many wonderful things, and certainly what he heard in that sacred spot of the ravens must have greatly astonished him. He tells us that at the shrine of St. Catherine he found many lamps burning, and the monks rejoicing in an abundance of “Oyle of Olyves both for to brenne in here Lampes and to ete also, and that plentee have thei of the Myracle of God, for the Ravennes and the Crowes and the Choughes and other Fowles of the Countree assemble hem there ones every yeer, and fleen thider as in pilgrymage, and everyche of hem bringethe a Braunche of the Olyve in here Bekes in stade of offryng and leven hem there: of the whyche the monkes maken gret plentee of Oyle, and this is a gret marvaylle.” The monkish moral to the story is obvious—that if “Foules that han no kyndely wytt ne Resoun” thus willingly offer to the maintenance of the church how much more should the sons of men give of their substance to so excellent a cause. One can indeed only feel that it is more probable that the story was made to fit the moral than the moral to fit the story.

Like most other things in mediæval days the raven found a place in the pharmacopœia, for it would appear that there was scarely anything better “for ye Gowte” than raven-broth, but to make it effectually one or two points that appear in themselves of little importance had to be scrupulously observed. For those who care to make trial of it we append the recipe: “Take Rauynys bryddys all quyke owte of here neste and loke yat yei towche not the erth nor yat yei comy in non hows, and brene hem in a new potte all to powdir and gif it ye seke man to drynkeyn.”

The talisman known as the raven-stone was held to confer on its holder invisibility, and we may remark in passing on the curious attraction that in the Middle Ages this gift of invisibility possessed, whether used as a means of shielding one’s self from dangers, as a means of inflicting without detection injuries on others, or the dishonourable desire of secretly spying upon their proceedings. It appears to point to a somewhat unwholesome state of things, too suggestive of cowardice and treachery to be at all an object to be sought after. There were many such kinds of talisman, all doubtless of equal efficacy, and all of them, naturally, presenting considerable difficulties in acquisition. The raven-stone was no exception. It was necessary first to discover a nest, then to climb the tree and to take from the brood one of the nestlings and kill it. The victim must be a male bird and not more than six weeks old. So far, with reasonable powers of observation, a fair amount of agility, and sufficient sense to visit the nest at a time when one might reasonably expect to find young birds therein, there would appear to be no great difficulty; but unless the parent birds were at least a hundred years old, all this preliminary trouble was of no avail. Having descended the tree in safety, the slaughtered nestling had to be placed at its foot, and watch kept for the return of the parent raven. On its return it will be observed to place a stone in the throat of its offspring, whereupon nothing remains but to secure the treasure and proceed to exercise its mystic power. How many persons actually put the matter to the test it is of course impossible to say, but full belief in its efficacy was for generations an article of faith to thousands.

The owl, like the raven, was regarded by our forefathers with great awe as an omen of misfortune and death; thus in Shakespeare we find several allusions to this superstitious belief—

“Out on ye owls! nothing but songs of death,”

and the “boding scritch owl,” as he is called in Henry VI., reappears in Macbeth in the passage:—

“It was the owl that shriek’d; that fatal bellman
Which giv’st the stern’st good night.”

The idea dates from time immemorial. Pliny says, in the tenth book of his “Natural History,” that “the scritch-owle betokeneth alwaies some heavie newes, and is most execrable and accursed. He keepeth ever in the deserts, and loveth not only such unpeopled places, but also those that are horrible hard of accesse. In summer, he is the verie monster of the night, neither crying, nor singing out cleare, but uttering a certaine heavie grone of dolefull moning. And, therefore, if he be seene within citties or otherwise abroad in any place it is not for good, but prognosticateth some fearfull misfortune.”

Raven-like again, the owl is a specific for the gout, all that is necessary being to “take an owl, pull off her feathers, salt her well for a weak, then put her into a pot and stop it close, and put her into an oven, that so she may be brought into a mummy.” This has then to be beaten into a powder and mixed with boar’s grease, and “the grieved place” well anointed with this preparation. Owl-broth has in many rural districts of England been regarded as invaluable in whooping cough.

The notion of stones of mystic virtue being found in divers animals is a very common one in ancient and mediæval lore. We have already referred to the raven-stone, and many others were sought after. The interior of a fowl was said to yield a precious stone called alectorius; the chelidonius came from a swallow, geranites from a crane, and draconites from a dragon; while corvia was the name of the stone obtained from the crow. Anyone who cares to penetrate farther into this mass of rubbish will find plenty of it in the “Mirror of Stones” of Camillus. A stone from the hoopoe, when laid upon the breast of a sleeping man, forced him to reveal any rogueries he might have committed. The swallow was believed by some people to have two of these precious stones stowed away somewhere in its interior; one of these was a red one, and cured insanity; while the other, a black one, brought good fortune. Others said that the swallow found by some inspiration a particular kind of stone on the seashore, and that this stone restored sight to the blind. It will be remembered that Longfellow, in his “Evangeline,” refers to this fancy in the lines:—

“Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea, to restore the sight of her
fledglings.”[95]

Hence people assumed, not unreasonably, that what the bird found of such value to its young ones could scarcely fail to be of equal value for suffering humanity. Sometimes the association of the swallow with blindness is much more recondite. Thus Marcellus, writing in the year of our era, 480 A.D., advises one who fears that he is going blind to “look out for the first swallow, then run silently to the nearest spring, wash your eyes, and pray God that you may be free from it that year;” and then, with the callousness that is so characteristic of so many of these folk-lore remedies, very needlessly adds, “and that all the pain may pass into the swallow.”

On referring to our copy of Winstanley’s “Book of Knowledge,” edition of 1685, to find out how far he confirms these wondrous cures of insanity, impecuniosity, and ophthalmia, we find that he does not even recognize their existence, but supplies in their place other facts equally striking. “Take a Swallow on the Wednesday,” he writes, “and bind him with a silken thread by the foot, then cut him in the midst, and thou shalt find three stones, a white, a red, and a green; take the white and put it into thy mouth, and it shall make thee fair; put into thy mouth the red, and thou shalt have favour from her thou lovest; put the green into thy mouth, and thou shalt never be in peril.” If none of these inducements prevail or appeal to the reader, the author can supply another recipe of equal value. “Take a swallow in the moneth of August, look in her breast, and you shall find there a stone of the bignesse of a pease: take it and put it under your tongue, and you shall have such eloquence that no man shall have power to deny thy request.” Such a gift would often be invaluable, and it seems distinctly unfortunate for the legal profession that it can only be utilised during the Long Vacation, unless, indeed, this wondrous stone can be in some way preserved without losing its efficacy; but of this the recipe gives no hint. In an old receipt book before us oil of swallows is pronounced “exceeding soveraign” for broken bones, or “any grief in the sinews.” It is procured by pounding the swallows in a mortar, and adding thereto divers herbs.

For one that is, or will be, drunken, it is well to have at hand some preparation that may be deterrent, and here is the very thing! “Take swallowes and burne them, and make a powder of them; and give the dronken man thereof to drinke, and he shall never be dronken hereafter.” There is a certain sense of incompleteness here, as one does not quite realize how this powder becomes drinkable.

The ill-luck that attended those who hurt the robin or the wren was an article of faith with our forefathers, and probably still remains so in rural districts. In the “Six Pastorals,” written in the year 1770, we find the belief very clearly expressed in the lines:—

“I found a robin’s nest within our shed,
And in the barn a wren has young ones bred:
I never take away their nest, nor try
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.
Dick took a wren’s nest from the cottage side,
And ere a twelvemonth pass’d his mother dy’d.”

The belief that they, “with leaves and flowers, do cover the friendless bodies of unburied men” has no doubt had much to do with the kindly feeling extended to them. As Drayton hath it:—

“Covering with moss the dead’s unclosed eye
The little red-breast teacheth charity.”

Its fearless confidence, too, in visiting the habitations of men has begotten a kindly feeling for it, while one ancient legend tells us that when our Saviour hung forsaken on the cross the robin strove to draw out the cruel nails, and thus imbrued its breast in the Sacred Blood, an act of piety of which from thenceforth it bore the token in its ruddy feathers.

Though there are divers quaint beliefs associated with the wren which we need not here particularize, we may perhaps assume that the main reason for its association with the robin lies in the love of alliteration, for though the actual spelling of the words is against this theory, the sound to the ear favours it, and the two R’s of the Robin and the ’Ren are certainly not more far-fetched than the three R’s that were once held to cover the whole field of rustic scholarship, Reading, Riting and Rithmetic.

“The eyes and heart of a nightingale laid about men in bed,” according to the “Magick of Kirani,” serve to “keep them awake, and to make one die for sleep. If anyone dissolve them and give them secretly to anyone in drink, he will never sleep, but will so die, and it admits of no cure.” It was a belief in the Middle Ages, and termed the doctrine of signatures, that every plant bore stamped upon itself, though men’s eyes were in some cases too blind to detect it, an indication of its value to humanity, thus the spots in the inside of a foxglove flower were a sign that this plant was of value for ulcerated sore-throat; the buds of the forget-me-not bent round in a spiral somewhat suggestive possibly of the tail of a scorpion, gave the plant its mediæval name of scorpion-grass, and were held a clear indication that anyone stung by a scorpion would find in this herb his remedy. In a like spirit we see that the eyes and heart of the nightingale, a bird awake when most other creatures are sleeping, were held to be, on application, a cause of wakefulness to anyone coming within their subtle influence.

It was a very common and widespread belief that the nightingale when singing pierced its breast with a thorn, but whether this was to keep it awake, or to give its song the sad character that the poets will insist most wrongfully in attributing to it, seems an open question. Sir Philip Sidney in one of his sonnets appears to reflect the popular belief—

“The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth
Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of her clothing, springeth,
Sings out her woes, a thorn her song book making:
And mournfully bewailing
Her throat in times expresseth,
While grief her heart oppresseth.”

The author of the “Speculum Mundi” also refers to “the nightingale sitting all the night singing upon a bough, with the sharp end of a thorn against her breast,” assigning, as the reason, “to keep her waking.” The bird is a great favourite with the poets, but in most cases their invocations are somewhat misplaced: it is not the “sweet songstress” that so delights us, for though her notes are sweet, the real flood of melody wells from the heart of her lord. ’Tis he, to quote the words of Coleridge—

“That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With thick fast warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music.”

The error as to sex, and the error as to the pensive character of the song, have a common origin and date back from the ancient time when Ovid declared that Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens, mourning for her children, was turned into a nightingale: hence Virgil uses the word “Philomela” when speaking of the bird, and the mediæval and modern poets have continued the usage; and on this same account, the song of the nightingale has by poetic fiction been deemed pensive and melancholy. Thus Shelley refers to “the nightingale’s complaint,” and Drayton writes of “our mournful Philomela,” while Milton calls the bird “most musical, most melancholy.” Coleridge, Clare, and others refuse however to follow this precedent.

When the peasant of mediæval days heard the cuckoo for the first time in each year, he rolled himself vigorously on the grass, and thus secured himself for the rest of the year from pains in the back. Much of the virtue of this remedy, we should imagine, would depend upon how damp the grass might be. We could easily imagine a state of things when this rolling process would be provocative rather than preventative. It was generally believed that the cuckoo sucked the eggs of other birds.

“The cuckoo, he sings in the spring of the year,
And he sucks little birds’ eggs to make his voice clear.”

Hence so soon as the general nesting season is over, and this selfish ovisuction fails him, the cuckoo to a great extent loses his song.[96] It was a generally accepted belief, too, that the cuckoo repaid the care of his foster parents, when he had no further occasion for it, by swallowing them. This belief dates from very early times. Aristotle refers to it, for instance, while in later days it crops up in the various books on so-called Natural History. On turning again to Shakespeare, who rarely fails us when any quaint folk-lore has to be illustrated, we find an interesting reference to it in King Lear: “The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it had its head bit off by its young”—and again in the first part of King Henry IV., where Worcester, reminding the king of his broken word, says:—

“And being fed by us, you used us so,
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird,
Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest;
Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk,
That even our love durst not come near your sight
For fear of swallowing.”

Those, it was believed, who turned their money over in their pockets when they each year first heard the cuckoo, would have good fortune throughout the rest of the year, and keep their pockets well supplied until the recurring spring necessitated a re-turning of the contents.

It was a curious fancy of many of the old writers on such matters, that the peacock, though arrayed in such splendour, was ashamed of his feet, the mortification at the latter being more than a set-off to his pride in his plumage. “The peacock,” says, for instance, one of these ancient authorities, “is a bird well-known and much admired for his daintie coloured feathers, which, when he spreads them against the sunne, have a curious lustre, and look like gemmes. Howbeit his black feet make him ashamed of his fair tail: and therefore when he seeth them, (as angrie with nature, or grieved for that deformitie) he hangeth down his starrie plumes, and walketh slowly in a discontented fit of solitary sadnesse, like one possest with dull melancholy.” The peacock was throughout the Middle Ages the symbol of pride, and doubtless those who started and those who accepted such a story as this saw in it a happy illustration of the haughty spirit that goeth before a fall, and very gladly added it to the great body of moral teaching that the works of creation were required to furnish.

A large mass of legend and folk-lore is associated with the halcyon or kingfisher. One curious old superstition is that if a dead kingfisher is suspended from the roof it will always turn its breast in the direction from which the wind blows.[97] On looking over any old works on natural history one is repeatedly struck by the way in which the writers all copy each other, and reproduce the most outrageous statements, without ever seeming to care to bring the matters they deal with to the easy test of actual proof. It is, therefore, the more refreshing to find the old writer, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the “Enquiry into Vulgar Errors,” very wisely declining to accept the statement without proof, but actually getting a kingfisher for himself, and seeing what would befall. His reflections and experience are so graphically and quaintly given in his book that we make no apology for transferring them to our own pages. He says “that a Kingfisher hanged by the bill, sheweth in what quarter the winde is by an occult and secret property, converting the breast to that point of the horizon from whence the winde doth blow, is a received opinion and very strange, introducing naturall Weathercocks, and extending magneticall positions as far as animall natures: a conceit supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason or experience. Unto reason it seemeth very repugnant that a carcasse or body disanimated should be so affected by every winde as to carry a conformable respect and constant habitude thereto. For although in sundry animals we deny not a kinde of naturall Meteorology or innate præsention bothe of winde and weather, yet that proceeding from sense receiving impressions from the first mutations of the air, they cannot in reason retain their apprehension after death: as being affections which depend upon life and depart upon disanimation. And therefore with more favourable reason may we draw the same effect or sympathie upon the Hedgehog, whose præsention of windes is so exact that it stoppeth the North or Southern hole of its nest, according to prenotion of these windes ensuing; which some men observing, have been able to make predictions whiche way the winde should turn, and been esteemed hereby wise men in point of weather. Now this proceeding from sense in the creature alive, it were not reasonable to hang up an Hedgehog dead and to expect a conformable motion unto its living conversion. Thus Glowe-wormes alive project a lustre in the dark, which fulgour notwithstanding ceaseth after death; and thus the Torpedo, which being alive stupifies at a distance, applied after death produceth no such result.”

“As for experiment we cannot make it out by any we have attempted, for if a single Kingfisher be hanged up with silk in an open room and where the aire is free, it observes not a constant respect unto the winde, but vainly converting doth seldome breast it right. If two be suspended in the same room they will not regularly conform their breasts, but oftimes respect the opposite points of heaven. And if we conceive that for exact exploration they should be suspended where the air is quiet and unmoved, that clear of impediment they may more freely convert upon this naturall verticity, we have also made this way of inquisition, suspending them in large and spacious glasses closely stopped; wherein, neverthelesse, we observed a casuall station, and that they rested irregularly upon conversion.”

It was formerly held that if the dead bodies of these birds were put away in chests they protected garments from the ravages of moths, and it was believed that the feathers of a dead kingfisher were renewed in all their splendour every year. It was an article of faith, too, that the plumage of the kingfisher was injurious to the eyes of those who gazed too long and too intently upon it, while the possession of even a feather was a protection against lightning.

According to the old Greek myth, Halcyone was the daughter of Æolus. Her husband, Ceyx, king of Trachyn, was drowned in the Ægean Sea, and the widowed Halcyone, wandering on the shore, saw afar the dead body of her husband. The gods, in pity, turned her into a bird, which with eager wings bore her spirit across the waste of waters, and that Ceyx might be able to return the love she lavished upon him, he, too, was permitted the same transformation.

It was an old belief that during the space of fourteen days, while the young kingfishers were being hatched, a great calm fell upon all things, and this period of quietness and security is referred to by many of our writers.[98] A very beautiful illustration may be found in Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity,” where he describes how:—

“Peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kiss’d,
Whispering new joys to the wild ocean,
Which now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.”

The word halcyon is Greek and signifies brooding on the sea, as it was formerly believed that the kingfisher laid its eggs in a floating nest upon the sea. Drayton writes, for example, of

“The halcyon, whom the sea obeys
When she her nest upon the water lays.”

While Dryden, to quote one more instance, says:

“Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be
As halcyon brooding on a winter’s sea.”

This exceptional favour fair Halcyone owes to her close relationship with Æolus, since with him rested the power to lash the waves to fury or to soothe them to rest. This beautiful Greek myth doubtless underlies the superstition as to the dead body of the kingfisher indicating the direction of the wind, though probably it never occurs to the rustic meteorologist as he watches his revolving kingfisher that any idea of the loving Halcyone turning to greet the coming Æolus enters into the philosophy of his test.

It was for centuries a belief that storks fed with filial care their aged parents. Thus Heywood, writing in the year 1635, asserts in “The Hierachie of the Blessed Angells” that

“The indulgent storke, who builds her nest on hye
(Observ’d for her alternat pietie),
Doth cherish her unfeather’d young and feed them,
And looks from them the like, when she should need them.
(That’s when she grows decrepit, old, and weake)
Nor doth her pious Issue cov’nant breeke:
For unto her, being hungry, food she brings,
And being weake, supports her on her wings.”

One meets with the same notion again in Beaumont, where he asserts that

“The stork’s an emblem of true piety:
Because, when age has seized and made his dam
Unfit for flight, the grateful young one takes
His mother on his back, provides her food,
Repaying thus her tender care for him,
Ere he was fit to fly.”

The extraordinary idea that storks were found only in countries having a republican form of government held its ground for a considerable time, though it would appear as though nothing could have been simpler than its prompt disproof.

Cranes, it was believed, bore stones with them when they were migrating, in order that they might not be swept out of their course by the wind. A somewhat parallel notion was that swallows in their annual migrations carried in their bills, when about to cross the sea, a piece of stick, to be laid upon the water from time to time as a convenient resting place. The idea of the cranes steadying themselves in flight by a ballasting of small rock was too quaintly happy a conception not to bear amplification, so we find that the bees, the never-failing emblems of industry and wisdom, were equally ready to avail themselves of the notion. “Bees that are emploied in carrying of honie chuse alwaies to have the wind with them if they can. If haply there do arise a tempest whiles they bee abroad they catch up some little stonie greet to ballaise and poise themselves against the wind. Some say that they take it and lay it upon their shoulders.” How the little stony grit maintains this latter position the old authors do not stop to explain. In the Georgics of Virgil we find a reference to this, which evidently even then was an old and unchallenged belief, in the lines:—

“And oft with pebbles, like a balanced boat,
Poised through the air on even pinions float”—

and the idea reappears from time to time as a fact in natural history. There is so much that is legitimately wonderful in bee-arrangements that it is scarcely strange that some of the details given by ancient and mediæval naturalists in praise of their sagacity, and other estimable qualities, should overreach the possibilities, and fail in the not unimportant element of truth.[99]

The sagacious cranes seem to have found several valuable uses for their pieces of rock. We are told that while the main body are resting at night, sentinels are posted to guard against surprise, so that the flock or covey, or whatever else may be the proper technical term to use, rest in full assurance of safety. To insure the necessary vigilance, these sentinels stand upon one foot, and hold in the other a large stone.[100] Should they inadvertently nod, the muscles relax and the stone drops, and by the slight noise it makes awakens them to a proper sense of their duty and their temporary lapse from it.

A third valuable use that the cranes seem to have found for stones was to put them in their mouths when migrating, so that thus gagged they might not make a noise, and by their cries bring the eagles and other birds of prey upon themselves.[101] In the “Euphues,” we find a passage that admirably illustrates the belief in these two latter uses of the stone, as the author would naturally not use similes that would be unfamiliar to his readers. “What I haue done,” he writes, “was onely to keep myselfe from sleepe, as the Crane doth the stone in hir foote; and I would also, with the same Crane, that I had been silent, holding a stone in my mouth.”

It will be sufficiently evident that the birds we have mentioned are but few in number. It would be extremely difficult to make our treatment exhaustive, extremely easy to make it exhausting; we would desire in pity to our readers to avoid either of these alternatives. We would therefore steer straight for the proverbial third course, and trust that it may be held that we have found a happy medium in resting satisfied with the comparatively few species of birds that are here brought under notice.