“Whaup, Whimbrel, an’ Plover,
Whan these whustle the worst o’t ’s over.”
By this time the neatherd by Loch Ken and the shepherd among the wilds
of Kirkcudbright, like their kin from the Sussex downs, to the last
_sliabh_ or _maol_ in Sutherland, may repeat the rhyme with safety.
‘The worst o’t ’s over.’ For to-day the curlews cry above the moors,
the whimbrel’s warning note echoes down the long sands o’ Solway, and
everywhere, from the salt bent by the coasts to the loneliest inlands,
the lapwing wails. The Tribe of the Plover is in the land once more,
and so Spring is with us. Not, perhaps, the Spring of the poets, who
look (as Ailil in the old Celtic tale) under boughs of white blossom
to where the sunlight moves like a fawn of gold in a windless land,
where the songs of birds turn to flowers, and where flowers change in
the twilights of dawn into singing birds. Not thus does Spring come
to us in the north. The black-headed gull screaming on the east wind,
restless before his long flight to the wilderness and the grassy homes
of the mating season: the hoodie-crow, weary of the south, heard on
grey mornings when sleet whips the uplands: the troubled fieldfares,
eager for lands oversea: the curlews crying along the Anglian fens and
lamenting over Solway Moss: the mallard calling to his mate in the
chill waters: the shadow of harrier and peregrine from Surrey upland
to the long braes of Lammermuir--these, rather, are the signals of our
bleak northern Spring. What though the song-thrush and the skylark
have long sung, though the wheatear and chiff-chaff have been late in
coming, though the first swallows have not had the word passed on by
the woodpecker, and somewhere in the glens of Greece and Sicily the
cuckoo lingers? How often the first have called _Spring_ to us, and,
while we have listened, the wind has passed from the south to the north
and the rains have become sleet or snow: how often the missel-thrush
has rung-in the tides of blossom, and the woods have but grown darker
with gloom of the east while the first yellow clans along the hedgerows
have been swept by hail. How often, again, the wind of the west has
been fragrant with cowslip and ox-eye, with daffodil and wallflower,
with the pungent growing-odours of barberry and butcher’s-broom and the
unloosening larch, when, indeed, the sallow-blooms have put on their
gold, and the green woodpecker is calling his love-notes in the copses,
and yet the delaying swallow has not been seen north of the Loire or
where the Loiny winds between Moret and the woods of Fontainebleau?
How often the wild-rose has moved in first-flame along the skirts of
hornbeam-hedge or beech-thicket, or the honeysuckle begun to unwind her
pale horns of ivory and moongold, and yet across the furthest elm-tops
to the south the magic summons of the cuckoo has been still unheard in
the windless amber dawn, or when, as in the poet’s tale, the myriad
little hands of Twilight pull the shadows out of the leaves and weave
the evening dark. But when the cry of the plover is abroad we know that
our less ideal yet hardly less lovely and welcome Spring is come at
last: that Winter is old and broken and shuffling north, clinging to
the bleak uplands and windygates: and this, even though Summer tarries
still among the fields of France.
Because of their association with solitary and waste places it is not
strange that these harbingers of Swallow-time should everywhere have
an evil repute. Even amid the unimaginative Sussex or Wilts peasants,
the cry of the curlew, the wail of the lapwing, forebode sorrow, cover
a vague menace: heard, at least, at dusk or at night, or in the grey
gloaming at the edge of day.
The Cornish or Devon moorlander has many wild tales of the whimbrel,
whose swift-repeated whistle hurtling suddenly in lonely places has
given rise to innumerable legends of the Seven Whistlers, the Demon
Huntsmen, the Hunted Souls. In Iona and along the Earraid of Mull,
where the whimbrel or ‘little curlew’ is rarely heard till May, though
it is generally called _Guilbinnach_, a diminutive of the Gaelic
name of the curlew, _Guilbin_ (pronounced sometimes _Kooley-pin_ or
_guley-pin_ and sometimes _gwilley-pin_), a compound word signifying
wailing music, I have heard it called _Guilbhròn_ (Kwillyvrone), Wail
of Sorrow, and again ‘_Keenyvàs_’ or Death-Cry, and once, either in
a tale or poem, by the singular name _Guilchaismeachd_, the Wail of
Warning. Any lowland cottar, from west of Lammermuir to east of
Ballantrae, will ’ken a wheen strange tales o’ the whaup,’ as the
curlew is commonly called north of the Tweed and south of the Highland
Line: and in some parts it is not only the children who shudder at its
cry in lonely places at dusk, fearing ‘the bogle wi’ the lang neb’ like
a pair of tongs, emissary of the Evil One, who gave this bird his long
curved beak so that in the dark he might, like tongs lifting a stray
coal or a nightjar snatching a wandering moth, carry off wrongdoers,
unrepentant sinners, truants, and all naughty children generally. As
for the lapwing, though more familiar than the curlew, and for many of
us associated only with pastures and pleasant wilds, in the countries
of the Gael dark things are whispered of the _Adharcan-luachrach_, or
Little Horn of the Rushes ... thus poetically called from the pretty
tuft of the male _weep_ or _peaseweep_, curving like a horn over the
delicately poised head, and from the bird’s fondness for nesting in
rushy places or among tangled grasses. Is he not said to be one of
the bitter clan who mocked on the day of the Crucifixion, and so
was made homeless for ever, with a cry that should be for ever like
the cry of wandering sorrow? It is of little avail to say that love
among the rushes is as sweet as elsewhere, that the wilderness can
be home, and that the wailing of repentant souls may be no more than
angry vituperations against the hoodie-crow or laughing-gull or other
marauders after lapwing-eggs. Is the _weep_ not a spirit of the waste
that was once human, but lost his soul, and so can never reach heaven
nor yet dwell on earth, but must night and day be restless as the sea,
and wail the long hours away from grey dawn to moonrise, from darkness
to the paling of the stars? So they say, they who know: and who know
with the unshakable surety of the unlettered peasant? In the Gaelic
imagination the lapwing is something stranger and wilder still: a bird
of the ancient world, of the dispossessed gods, nameless in truth
because in truth a god nameless and homeless. The Gaelic poet hears
in its lament the lamentation of what is gone never to come again, of
what long since went away upon the wind, of what is going away on the
wind: and he has called the _weep_ the Birds of the Sorrowful Past. Is
not the lapwing the bird of Dalua, that unknown mysterious god, that
terrible Shadow who is the invisible, inaudible, secret, and dread
divinity of weariness, separation, gloom, sadness, decay, desolation,
madness, despair?
It is not only in our own land that the lapwing and all the tribe of
the plover bear so evil a repute. Not always thus, however: for in some
parts of Germany this plover, I do not know why, is called the Virgin
Mary’s Dove, and is greeted with welcome. Even in Argyll there is a
lost or confused kindly legend, for sometimes when children run along
the moorland mocking the Pibhinn (_pee-veen_ ... the Gaelic equivalent
of the lowland _peaseweep_ and the southern pee-_weet_) they cry
“_Welcome back, welcome back, Pēe-veen, Pee-vēen!
But keep the wind and the rain behind your tail,
Or you’ll never see the fields of heaven again!_...”
or words to that effect. In the East the Mohammedan women have a
beautiful name for this bird ... the Sister of the Brother: and, says
the authority whence in some forgotten reading I took this note, ‘when
these women hear the cry in the evening, they run from their houses
and throw water in the air, that the bird may use it to assuage the
pain of the burn on the top of the head, still marked by some black
feathers.’ This is in allusion to an oriental legend that the lapwing
was once a princess. This princess had a passionate love for a brother
who had long been absent, and when one day she heard that he was on his
return and close at hand and weary, she snatched a bowl of hot milk
from the fire and hastened to meet him. But an evil-wisher, knowing her
great love and how she would not rest till she found her brother, had
misinformed her, and for all the pain on her head caused by the heated
bowl, she ran now this way and now that, continually crying _Brother!
O Brother!_ Hours passed, and then days, and week after week and month
after month the girl vainly sought her loved one. At last, feeling her
strength ebbing, she cried aloud to Allah. Allah, moved by compassion,
gave her wings and changed her into a lapwing or black-plover, the
better to accomplish her purpose. Hence, when the little brown children
on the desert or on the sun-scorched ways of the East look up and see
the lapwings wheeling overhead in long circling flights and sudden
dashes, they hear, in the wailing voices, either the long yearning
or the sudden eager hope in the cry which to their ears sounds as
_Brother! O Brother!_
Perhaps the German name of the Virgin Mary’s Dove is merely a variant
of the Swedish folk-legend concerning the lapwing. The tale goes that
this bird was once one of Mary’s handmaidens, but lost place and
honour because of her theft of a pair of scissors. The punishment
was transformation into a bird with a forked scissor-tail, and to
go out across the fjords and above all the meadows and pastures and
keep crying incessantly _Tyvit-Tyvit-Tyvit_ (_i.e._, I stole them! I
stole them!). I think, however, I have heard or read the same story in
connection with the wagtail. In his interesting book on the _Manners
and Customs of the Russian People_, Mr. Ralston has the following
Slavonic plover-legend. When God had created the earth, and wished
to supply it with seas and lakes and rivers, He ordered the birds to
convey the waters to their appointed places. All obeyed except the
lapwing, whose reason for this indolence and impiety was that it had no
need of seas, lakes, or rivers, to slake its thirst. At that the Lord
waxed wroth, and forbade it and its posterity ever to approach a sea
or stream, and that it might quench its thirst only with that water
which remains in hollows and among stones after rain. So from that time
this sorrowful plover has never ceased its wailing cry of _Peet-peet!_
(_i.e._, Drink! Drink!). In another northern book (Thiel’s _Danish
Traditions_, vol. ii.) there are two lapwing-legends not less homely
than the Russian and the Swedish.
When Christ, says one, was a bairn, He took a walk one day and came to
an old crone who was busy baking. She said she would give Him a new
cake for His trouble, if He would go and split her a little wood for
the oven. Christ did as she wanted, and the old wife put aside a small
bit of dough for the promised cake. When the batch was drawn from the
oven, however, she saw to her surprise and chagrin that the wee bit
cake was equally large with the rest. So again she broke off a small
bit of dough; but again the same thing happened. Hereupon she broke
out with, ‘That’s a vast oure-muckle cake for the likes o’ you; thee’s
get thy cake anither time.’ At this injustice Christ was angered, so
He said to the old crone, ‘I split your wood as you asked me, and you
would not give me the little cake you promised. Now you in turn shall
go and cleave wood, and that, too, as long as the world shall last!’
And with that Our Lord turned her into a _vipa_ (a weep). ‘So the weep
fares betwixt heaven and earth as long as the world lasts; and fare
where she will she says no other words than _Klyf ved! Klyf ved!_’
(_i.e._, Cleave wood! Cleave wood!).
The other Danish plover-tale given by Thiel is one of the familiar
Crucifixion legends. While Christ still hung upon the Cross, three
birds came flying towards Calvary, the Styrkham (the Stork), the
Svalham (the Swallow), and the Pün-ham (Pee-weet). As they flew
overhead each cried a cry. The stork cried, _Styrk ham! Styrk ham!_
(_i.e._, Strengthen Him!), and so has this bird called ever since, and
been under God’s blessing and man’s care. The swallow cried, _Sval ham!
Sval ham!_ (_i.e._, Cool or refresh Him!), and so is evermore known
by that name, and likewise is loved by man and guided by God. But the
weep wheeled about the Cross, shrieking derisively, _Pün ham! Pün ham!_
(_i.e._, Pine Him, make Him suffer!), and so is not only accursed by
men from then till now, but is under God’s ban till the Last Day, after
which the lapwing’s wail will never be heard again.
Although _Guilbinn_, or Wailing Music, is, as I have said, the common
Gaelic name for the Curlew, as the Whaup in the lowlands, it is also
often called the _Crann-toch_, the long-beaked one, or Coulter-neb, as
they say in Dumfries and Galloway. Of the mythical origin of the name
Crann-toch (a very obvious designation, and needing no mythical legend
one would think) I remember hearing a year or so ago from a boatman of
Lismore a wild and romantic legend, but it is too long to quote now.
Few Gaelic tales, few poems, in which are not to be heard the voices of
the wind or the sea or the wailing curlew. We have perhaps no bird more
wild and solitary: a Highland saying places it with the herons and
wild-geese. ‘When a man has shot six herons, six wild-geese, and six
curlews, he may call himself a sportsman.’
When the Golden Plover, or Grey Plover as he is sometimes called,
wheels in Spring above the fallowlands of the North the ploughman
hears in his cry _Plough weel! Sow weel! Harrow weel!_ This beautiful
bird--of whom no poet has written a finer line than Burns in
“The deep-toned plover grey, wild whistling on the hill”--
is not exempt from the common tradition of uncanniness. He, too,
is classed with the dreaded ‘Seven Whistlers’: and from Cornwall
to Iceland he is often vituperated as one of these, or as of the
spectral pack called Gabriel’s Hounds, or as of Odin’s Phantom Chase.
I spoke of a name I had heard in Iona and Mull for the whimbrel, but
applicable also to any plover or curlew ... the _Guilchaismeachd_ or
Wail of Warning, the Alarm Bird so to say: and this repute is held by
the plover in many mining parts of England, where it is said that the
miners will not descend a pit if the ‘Whistlers’ be heard lamenting
overhead. To this day there are many regions not only in our own
country but abroad where the plovers are called the Wandering Jews,
from an old legend that the first of the clan were the transmuted souls
of those Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion. An old woman who gave
me some plovers’ eggs told me in all good faith that the _feadag_ (the
Gaelic name, equivalent to flute-note or mellow whistle) neither ate
nor drank but fed upon the wind ... a superstition said to have been
almost universal in the Middle Ages.
As for many of us, surely they are birds of our love. The cry of the
curlew on the hill, the wail of the lapwing in waste places, have not
these something of the same enthralling spell, the same entrancing
call--the summons to the wilderness, whether that be only to solitude,
or to wild loneliness, or to the lonelier solitudes, the dim limitless
wilderness of the imagination--that the wind has, at night, coming with
rain through woods, or that the sea has, heard in inland hollows, or
when athwart a long shore or among fallen rocks the tide rises on the
breast-swell of coming storm? They call us to the wild.