THE CROWS AND THEIR RELATIONS.
To a superficial observer of nature, there may appear to be a much
greater resemblance between the Raven, the Crow, the Rook, and the
Jackdaw, than we find to be actually the case. At the same time, so
different to them in outward appearance are the Jay and Magpie, that it
may appear extraordinary to class them all together. Nevertheless, while
each, of course, has its distinguishing characters, all are included in
the first section of the family of crows.
[Sidenote: THE RAVEN,]
The Raven (_Corvus corax_), from his size and character, naturally takes
the lead. Go where we will over the face of the wide world, the
well-known hoarse croak of the raven is still to be heard. He was seen
perched on the bare rocks, looking over the dreary snows of the highest
points visited in the Arctic Expeditions. Under the burning sun of the
equator he enjoys his feast of carrion. He was discovered in the islands
of the Pacific Ocean by Captain Cook; and in the lowest Southern or
Antarctic regions, other travellers have found him pursuing his cautious
predatory life, just as in England.[61]
From the earliest times the raven, with his deep and solemn voice, has
always commanded attention, and superstitious people have become
impressed with the idea that there is something unearthly in his nature
and ominous in his voice.[62] By the Romans this bird was consecrated to
Apollo, and regarded as a foreteller of good or evil. Through a long
course of centuries this character has clung to him; and even to this
day, there are many who believe that the raven’s croak predicts a death.
[Sidenote: A BIRD OF ILL OMEN.]
No wonder, then, that Shakespeare has taken advantage of this
wide-spread belief, and has introduced the raven into many of the solemn
passages of his Plays, to carry conviction to the minds of the people,
and render his images the more impressive. He frequently alludes to “the
ill-boding raven:”
“It comes o’er my memory,
As doth the raven o’er the infectious house,
Boding to all.”
_Othello_, Act iv. Sc. 1.
Thersites, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (Act v. Sc. 2), says,--
“Would I could meet that rogue Diomed; I would croak like a raven; I
would bode, I would bode.”
In the play of _Henry VI_, Suffolk vainly endeavours to cheer up the
King, who has swooned on hearing of Gloster’s death, saying:--
“Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort!”
But the King, likening his message to the ill-boding note of a raven,
replies:--
“What, doth my lord of Suffolk comfort me?
Came he right now to sing a raven’s note,
Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;
And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,
By crying comfort from a hollow breast,
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?”
_Henry VI._ Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.
After Balthazar has sung his well-known song, “Sigh no more, ladies,”
(_Much Ado_, Act ii. Sc. 3,) Benedick observes to himself, “An he had
been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and
I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the
night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.”
[Sidenote: THE NIGHT-CROW:]
Willughby thought that the so-called “night-raven” was the bittern.
Speaking of the curious noise produced by the latter bird, he
says:--“This, I suppose, is the bird which the vulgar call the
night-raven, and have a great dread of.”[63]
The bittern was one of the very few birds which Goldsmith, in his
“Animated Nature,” described from personal observation, and he, too,
calls it the “night-raven.” Its hollow boom, he says, caused it to be
held in detestation by the vulgar. “I remember, in the place where I was
a boy, with what terror the bird’s note affected the whole village; they
considered it as the presage of some sad event, and generally found, or
made one to succeed it. If any person in the neighbourhood died, they
supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it;
but if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave
completion to the prophecy.”
Sometimes it was called the _night-crow_--
“The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time.”
_Henry VI._ Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.
[Sidenote: ITS SUPPOSED PROPHETIC POWER.]
Shakespeare has introduced an allusion to the raven with much effect, in
the fifth scene of the first act in _Macbeth_, where an attendant enters
the chamber of Lady Macbeth to announce--
“The king comes here to-night.
_Lady M._ Thou ’rt mad to say it!--
Is not thy master with him? who, were’t so,
Would have informed for preparation.
_Attend._ So please you, it is true:--our thane is coming:
One of my fellows had the speed of him;
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more
Than would make up his message.
_Lady M._ Give him tending;
He brings great news. [_Exit Attendant._
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.”
On this passage Johnson remarks: “The messenger, says the servant, had
hardly breath to make up his message; to which the lady answers
mentally, that he may well want breath; such a message would add
hoarseness to the raven. That even the bird whose harsh voice is
accustomed to predict calamities, could not croak the entrance of Duncan
but in a note of unwonted harshness.”
The preference which the raven evinces for “sickly prey,” or carrion, is
not unnoticed by the poet:--
“Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,
As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.”
_King John_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
And again--
“Ravens
Fly o’er our heads, and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey.”
_Julius Cæsar_, Act v. Sc. 3.
[Sidenote: ITS PRESENCE ON BATTLE-FIELDS.]
In _Henry V._ (Act iv. Sc. 2) we have a graphic picture of a distressed
army followed by ravens on the look-out for corpses:--
“Yond island _carrions_, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour’dly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
And their executors, the knavish crows,
Fly o’er them all, impatient for their hour.”
It is most probable that the supposed prophetic power of the raven,
respecting battles and bloodshed, originated in its frequent presence on
these occasions, drawn to the field of slaughter by an attractive
banquet of unburied bodies of the slain. Hence poets have described this
bird as possessing a mysterious knowledge of these things. The
Icelanders, notwithstanding their endeavours to destroy as many as they
can, yet give them credit for the gift of prophecy, and have a high
opinion of them as soothsayers. And the priests of the North American
Indians wear, as a distinguishing mark of their sacred profession, two
or three raven skins, fixed to the girdle behind their back, in such a
manner that the tails stick out horizontally from the body. They have
also a split raven skin on the head, so fastened as to let the beak
project from the forehead.[64]
[Sidenote: ITS FOOD.]
The solitary habits of this bird during the nesting season are thus
alluded to:--
“A barren detested vale, you see, it is;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful misseltoe:
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven.”
_Titus Andronicus_, Act ii. Sc. 3.
And a curious belief is mentioned with regard to the rearing of its
young:--
“Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests.”
_Titus Andronicus_, Act ii. Sc. 3.
[Sidenote: ALLEGED DESERTION OF YOUNG.]
It would appear, from some passages in the sacred Scriptures, that the
desertion of their young had not escaped the observation of the inspired
writers. It was certainly a current belief in olden times, that when the
raven saw its young ones newly hatched, and covered with down, it
conceived such an aversion that it forsook them, and did not return to
the nest until a darker plumage had shown itself. And to this belief
commentators suppose the Psalmist alludes when he says:--“_He giveth to
the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry_.” (Psalm cxlvii.
9.) And again, in Job, “_Who provideth for the raven his food? When his
young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat._” (Job xxxviii.
41.)
In Batman “upon Bartholome his book, ‘De proprietatibus Rerum,’ folio,
1582,” we find the following passage bearing upon the question:--“The
raven is called _Corvus_ of Corax. It is said that ravens birdes
(_i.e._, young ravens) be fed with deaw of heaven all the time that they
have no black feathers by benefite of age.” (Lib. xii. c. 10.)
Izaak Walton, in his “Compleat Angler,” speaking of fish without mouths,
which “are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills,
man knows not how,” observes that “this may be believed if we consider
that when the raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care,
but leaves her young ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said
in the Psalms (Psal. cxlvii. 9) ‘to feed the young ravens that call upon
him.’ And they be kept alive, and fed by a dew or worms that breed in
their nests; or some other ways that we mortals know not.”
Shakespeare, no doubt, had the words of the Psalmist in his mind when he
wrote--
“And He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age!”
_As You Like It_, Act ii. Sc. 3.
[Sidenote: RAVENS’ FEATHERS.]
We read in the First Book of Kings, xvii. 4, that when the prophet
Elijah fled from the tyranny of King Ahab, and concealed himself by the
brook Cherith, God commanded the ravens to feed him there. The
remembrance of this passage may have been in our poet’s mind when he
penned the following lines in the _Winter’s Tale_. Antigonus, ordered by
Leontes to expose the infant Perdita to death, says, with a touch of
pity:--
“Come on, poor babe:
Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens
To be thy nurses!”
_Winter’s Tale_, Act ii. Sc. 3.
As in the case of the owl, it appears that ravens’ feathers were
employed by the witches of old in their incantations; for it was
believed that the wings of this bird carried contagion with them
wherever they appeared. Marlowe, in his _Jew of Malta_, speaks of--
... “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.”
Hence the curse which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Caliban:--
“As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both!”
_Tempest_, Act i. Sc. 2.
Here “wicked” may be taken to mean pernicious or destructive--the
antonym being “virtuous,” as in the expression “the virtuous properties
of plants.” A bad sore is described, in an old tract on hawking (Harl.
MS. 2,340), as “a wykked felone.”
[Sidenote: A BLACK CHARACTER.]
As the type of blackness, both as regards colour and character, we find
the raven frequently contrasted with the white dove, the emblem of all
that is pure and gentle.
“Who will not change a raven for a dove?”
_Midsummer Nights Dream_, Act ii. Sc. 2.
“I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.”
_Twelfth Night_, Act v. Sc. 1.
“Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven!
* * * * *
Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii. Sc. 2.
The quarto (1599) and folio here read, “ravenous, dove-feather’d raven,”
&c.
As colour is intensified by contrast, so we read--
“Whiter than snow upon a raven’s back.”
So the undated quarto. Other editions have the emendation--
“Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii. Sc. 2.
[Sidenote: VARIATION IN COLOUR.]
We have seen a variety of the jackdaw of a dirty yellowish-white colour;
it could scarcely be called “amber-colour’d.” No doubt other members of
the genus _Corvus_ have occasionally been observed to vary quite as much
in their plumage. Shakespeare says,--
“An amber-colour’d raven was well noted.”
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
No doubt it was; quite as much as a white blackbird. This apparent
contradiction of terms is in reality no myth. We have seen three or four
albino varieties of the blackbird, and could give a tolerably long list
of dark-plumaged birds of which pure white, or almost pure white,
varieties have been found. This may be the result of disease, or of old
age, drying up the animal secretions, and causing the absence of colour
which we call white. According to ancient authors, ravens were formerly
white, but were changed to black for babbling. The great age to which
the raven sometimes attains has been alluded to in the first chapter,
where some reference is made to “ancient” eagles, and tame ravens have
been known to outlive several masters who owned them successively. But
birds, like all things else, succumb to time. Shakespeare tells us,--
“Time’s glory is to calm contending Kings, ...
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, ...
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings.”
_Lucrece._
[Sidenote: THE CARRION CROW:]
Next to the raven, the Carrion-Crow (_Corvus corone_) claims our
attention, from his close relationship to his larger congener. So
closely, indeed, does he resemble the raven upon a slightly modified
scale, that we might also fancy him--
“A crow of the same nest.”
_All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
Like him, he leads a predatory life, carrying off young game-birds,
chickens, and eggs; and where he cannot obtain a fresh meal, he has no
objection to carrion and offal of all kinds. Should a sheep die in the
field, the crows of the neighbourhood are sure to be attracted to it.
“The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.”
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act ii. Sc. 1.
Gamekeepers, knowing this propensity, and having an eye to the better
preservation of pheasants’ eggs for the future, avail themselves of the
opportunity, when a sheep dies, to place a little strychnine in the
mouth and eyes, and on a second visit they are seldom disappointed in
finding two or three dead crows.
[Sidenote: ITS PREDATORY HABITS.]
Throughout the Plays we meet with frequent allusions to the crow, and
its partiality for carrion. In the fifth act of _Cymbeline_ a scene is
laid in a field between the British and Roman camps, where the following
dialogue takes place:--
“_British Captain._ Stand! who’s there?
_Posthumus._ A Roman,
Who had not now been drooping here, if seconds
Had answer’d him.
_British Captain._ Lay hands on him; a dog!
A leg of Rome shall not return to tell
What crows have peck’d them here.”
_Cymbeline_, Act v. Sc. 3.
Again--
“_Boy._ Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master,--and you,
hostess;--he is very sick, and would to bed....
_Host._ By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these
days.”
_Henry V._ Act ii. Sc. 1.
The Duke of York, on the field of St. Albans, boasting of his victory
over Lord Clifford, says, in reply to the Earl of Warwick:--
“The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed,
But match to match I have encounter’d him,
And made a prey for carrion kites and crows
Even of the bonny beast he lov’d so well.”
_Henry VI._ Part II. Act v. Sc. 2.
[Sidenote: FOOD FOR CROWS.]
Cassius, on the eve of battle, augured a defeat because, as he said,--
“Crows
Fly o’er our heads, and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey; their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.”
_Julius Cæsar_, Act v. Sc. 1.
In the third act of _Cymbeline_ (Sc. 1), when Caius Lucius, the Roman
Ambassador, comes to demand tribute from the British King, he is met
with a flat refusal, and Cloten, one of the lords in waiting, deriding
his threat of war, says:--
“His Majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or two, or
longer: if you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us
in our salt-water girdle: if you beat us out of it, it is yours; if
you fall in the adventure, _our crows shall fare the better for
you_; and there’s an end.”
Alexander Iden, addressing the lifeless body of Jack Cade, whom he had
just slain, exclaims:--
“Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels
Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave,
And there cut off thy most ungracious head;
Which I will bear in triumph to the king,
Leaving thy trunk _for crows to feed upon_.”
_Henry VI._ Part II. Act iv. Sc. 10.
[Sidenote: BLACK AS A CROW.]
Many similar instances might be brought forward. As in the case of the
raven, we find the crow, as the emblem of blackness, contrasted with the
white dove:--
“With the dove of Paphos might the crow
Vie feathers white.”
_Pericles_, Act iv. Introd.
Again--
“Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cyprus black as e’er was crow.”
_Winter’s Tale_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
Here we have not only the crow contrasted with snow, but also cyprus, a
thin transparent black stuff, somewhat like crape, placed in
contradistinction with lawn, which is a white material, like muslin.[65]
“So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act i. Sc. 5.
“Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act i. Sc. 2.
Beatrice says (_Much Ado about Nothing_, Act i. Sc. 1),--“I had rather
hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me;” but then this
was meant to be personal, for Benedick, whom she addressed, was not a
favoured suitor. She might have added, with Dromio, in the _Comedy of
Errors_, Act iii. Sc. 1:--
“We’ll pluck a crow together.”
This saying appears to be of some antiquity, but the origin of it is not
very clear.
[Sidenote: CROW-KEEPER AND SCARE-CROW.]
The custom of protecting newly sown wheat from the birds by keeping a
lad to shout, or putting up a “scare-crow,” is no doubt an old one.
Shakespeare makes allusion to both methods:--
“That fellow handles his bow like _a crow-keeper_.”
_King Lear_, Act iv. Sc. 6.
That is like a boy employed to keep the crows from the corn. So again--
“Scaring the ladies like a _crow-keeper_.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act i. Sc. 4.
The rustic, although entrusted with a bow and arrows, was not expected
to have much skill in archery, and Roger Ascham, in his “Toxophilus,”
when speaking of a clumsy archer, has a similar comparison to that in
the passage just quoted:--“Another coureth downe and layeth out his
buttockes, as though hee should shoote at crowes.”
“We must not make a _scare-crow_ of the law,
Setting it up to fear[66] the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.”
_Measure for Measure_, Act ii. Sc. 1.
Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was exhibited
publicly in the market-place:--
“Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The _scare-crow_ that affrights our children so.”
_Henry VI._ Part I. Act i. Sc. 4.
And Falstaff, alluding to his recruits on the march to Shrewsbury, says
of them:--
“No eye hath seen such _scare-crows_.”
_Henry IV._ Part I. Act iv. Sc. 2.
[Sidenote: THE CHOUGH.]
Associated with the crow by many of the poets is the Red-legged Crow, or
Chough--the Cornish Chough, as it is sometimes called, from its being
considered a bird peculiar to the south-west coast of England. Since
this last name was applied to it, the study of ornithology has become
so universally courted, that it can scarcely be necessary to show that
the geographical distribution of the species is much wider than was
formerly supposed.
[Sidenote: THE CHOUGH AND CROW.]
The old song of “The Chough and Crow” will probably be remembered as
long as the English language lasts.
Shakespeare has introduced both these birds in a fine description of
Dover Cliff. It is not improbable that the chough, which affects
precipices and sea-cliffs, may once have frequented the cliffs at Dover;
but whatever may have been the case formerly, this haunt, if it ever was
one, has long since been deserted. Shakespeare, at all events, has
placed this bird in a situation most natural to it:--
“Come on, sir; here’s the place:--stand still.--How fearful
And dizzy ’t is, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The _crows_ and _choughs_, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire,--dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.--I’ll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.”
_King Lear_, Act iv. Sc. 6.
The chough is easily tamed, and a prettier sight than three or four of
these birds, with their bright red legs and bills, strutting about on a
well-mown lawn, can scarcely be conceived.
It is to be regretted that the species is not more plentiful and more
generally domesticated.
[Sidenote: CHOUGH’S LANGUAGE.]
Instances, we believe, are on record of choughs being taught to speak,
but Shakespeare appears to have entertained no great opinion of their
talking powers. He speaks of
“Chough’s language, gabble enough, and good enough.”
_All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act iv. Sc. 1.
And probably there was a good deal more chattering than talking, as we
understand the term.
“There be ...
... lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo; I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat.”
_Tempest_, Act ii. Sc. 1.
In _Henry IV._, in the scene where Falstaff, with the Prince and Poins,
meet to rob the travellers at Gadshill, Falstaff calls the victims “fat
chuffs,” probably from their strutting about with much noise.
[Sidenote: VARIOUS CHOUGHS.]
In the _Winter’s Tale_, the rogue Autolycus appears as a pedlar, and
while drawing the attention of those around him to his wares, he takes
the opportunity to pick their pockets. His power of persuasion was so
great that, as he himself said,--
“They throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been
hallowed, and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which means I
saw whose purse was best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use
I remembered.”
He proceeds to compare them to choughs whom he had allured by his chaff,
and says:--
“In this time of lethargy, I picked and cut most of their festive
purses; and had not the old man come in with a whoobub against his
daughter and the king’s son, and scared my choughs from the chaff, I
had not left a purse alive in the whole army.”--_Winter’s Tale_,
Act iv. Sc. 3.
[Sidenote: THE JACKDAW.]
The word “chough,” it appears, was not always intended to refer to the
bird with red legs and bill, as we may infer from the following passage
in O’Flaherty’s “West or H’Iar Connaught, 1684,” p. 13:--“I omit other
ordinary fowl and birds, as bernacles, wild geese, swans,
cocks-of-the-wood, woodcocks, _choughs_, rooks, _Cornish choughs, with
red legs and bills_,” &c. Here the first-mentioned choughs were in all
probability jackdaws.
Shakespeare alludes to--
“Russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report.”
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act iii. Sc. 2.
Now the jackdaw, though having a grey head, would more appropriately
bear the designation of “russet-pated” than any of his congeners. We may
presume, therefore, that this is the species to which Shakespeare
intended to refer. The head of the chough, like the rest of its body, is
perfectly black.
The Jackdaw (_Corvus monedula_) has not been so frequently noticed by
Shakespeare as many other birds, and in the half-dozen instances in
which it is mentioned, we find it referred to as the “daw.” The word
occurs in _Coriolanus_, Act iv. Sc. 5; _Troilus and Cressida_, Act i.
Sc. 2; _Much Ado about Nothing_, Act ii. Sc. 3; _Twelfth Night_, Act
iii. Sc. 4; and in a song in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. Warwick, expressing
his ignorance of legal matters, says:--
“But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.”
_Henry VI._ Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.
And the crafty and dissembling Iago remarks that--
“When my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at.”
_Othello_, Act i. Sc. 1.
[Sidenote: THE MAGPIE.]
With the ancients, much superstition prevailed in regard to various
species of the crow family; and Shakespeare has specially mentioned
three of these as birds of omen:--
“Augurs that understood relations have,
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.”
_Macbeth_, Act iii. Sc. 4.
Even at the present day, there are many who profess to augur good or
evil from the flight of a magpie, or from the number of magpies seen
together at one time. An old rhyme on the subject runs thus:--
“One for sorrow, two for mirth;
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.”
The origin of the word magpie we have not heard explained, but it is
possible, from the manner in which the name is spelled above, that “mag”
may be an abbreviation of “maggot,” pointing to a certain propensity of
the bird, which, however, is not peculiar. Those who have spent much
time in the country, must have observed not only the magpie, but also
the jackdaw and starling, busily engaged in searching for insects on the
back of a sheep.
As in the case of the jackdaw, the magpie is sometimes called by the
latter half of his name:--
“And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.”
_Henry VI._ Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.
[Sidenote: THE ROOK.]
Before taking leave of the crow family, we have yet to notice another
bird mentioned by Shakespeare, which is nearly related to the crow. This
is the Rook (_Corvus frugilegus_). But, notwithstanding the usefulness
of the bird, the poet has not said much in its favour. It is noticed in
the song in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and is included amongst the birds of
omen in the quotation lately given from Macbeth.
In the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act i. Sc. 3, we find the expression
“bully-rook,” and it would seem that this epithet in Shakespeare’s time
bore much the same signification as “jolly-dog” does now-a-days. But it
came subsequently to have a more offensive meaning, and was applied to a
cheat and a sharper.
[Sidenote: THE JAY.]
We had well-nigh forgotten the Jay (_Corvus glandarius_),--_Winter’s
Tale_ (Act iv. Sc. 3),--and only allude to it now to show that
Shakespeare has not omitted it from his long list of birds. In
_Cymbeline_, the name is applied to a gaudily-dressed person:--
“Some jay of Italy hath betray’d him.”
_Cymbeline_, Act iii. Sc. 4.
No doubt on account of the bright plumage of this bird.
“What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?”
_Taming of the Shrew_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
Caliban, addressing Trinculo, in _The Tempest_ (Act ii. Sc. 2),
exclaims:--
“I pr’ythee let me bring thee where crabs grow,
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;
Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet; I’ll bring thee
To clust’ring filberds, and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young sea-mells from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?”
This tempting offer is irresistible, and Stephano interrupts him at once
by saying,--
“I pr’ythee now, lead the way, without any more
talking.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]