[1] The poem of _Aymeri de Narbonne_ contains the account of the
young Aymeri's brilliant capture of Narbonne, which he then receives
as a fief from Charlemagne, of his marriage with Ermenjart, sister of
Boniface, king of the Lombards, and of their children. The fifth
daughter, Blanchefleur, is represented as the wife of Louis the
Pious. The opening of this poem furnished, though indirectly, the
matter of the _Aymerillot_ of Victor Hugo's _Legende des siecles_.
GUILLEMOT (Fr. _guillemot_[1]), the name accepted by nearly all modern
authors for a sea-bird, the _Colymbus troile_ of Linnaeus and the _Uria
troile_ of Latham, which nowadays it seems seldom if ever to bear among
those who, from their vocation, are most conversant with it, though,
according to Willughby and Ray his translator, it was in their time so
called "by those of Northumberland and Durham." Around the coasts of
Britain it is variously known as the frowl, kiddaw or skiddaw, langy
(cf. Ice. _Langvia_), lavy, marrock, murre, scout (cf. COOT), scuttock,
strany, tinker or tinkershire and willock. In former days the guillemot
yearly frequented the cliffs on many parts of the British coasts in
countless multitudes, and this is still the case in the northern parts
of the United Kingdom; but more to the southward nearly all its smaller
settlements have been rendered utterly desolate by the wanton and cruel
destruction of their tenants during the breeding season, and even the
inhabitants of those which were more crowded had become so thinned that,
but for the intervention of the Sea Birds Preservation Act (32 & 33
Vict. cap. 17), which provided under penalty for the safety of this and
certain other species at the time of year when they were most exposed to
danger, they would unquestionably by this time have been exterminated so
far as England is concerned.
Part of the guillemot's history is still little understood. We know that
it arrives at its wonted breeding stations on its accustomed day in
spring, that it remains there till, towards the end of the summer, its
young are hatched and able, as they soon are, to encounter the perils of
a seafaring life, when away go all, parents and progeny. After that time
it commonly happens that a few examples are occasionally met with in
bays and shallow waters. Tempestuous weather will drive ashore a large
number in a state of utter destitution--many of them indeed are not
unfrequently washed up dead--but what becomes of the bulk of the birds,
not merely the comparatively few thousands that are natives of Britain,
but the tens and hundreds of thousands, not to say millions, that are in
summer denizens of more northern latitudes, no one can say. This mystery
is not peculiar to the guillemot, but is shared by all the _Alcidae_
that inhabit the Atlantic Ocean. Examples stray every season across the
Bay of Biscay, are found off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, enter
the Mediterranean and reach Italian waters, or, keeping farther south,
may even touch the Madeiras, Canaries or Azores; but these bear no
proportion whatever to the mighty hosts of whom they are literally the
"scouts," and whose position and movements they no more reveal than do
the vedettes of a well-appointed army. The common guillemot of both
sides of the Atlantic is replaced farther northward by a species with a
stouter bill, the _U. arra_ or _U. bruennichi_ of ornithologists, and on
the west coast of North America by the _U. californica_. The habits of
all these are essentially the same, and the structural resemblance
between all of them and the Auks is so great that several systematists
have relegated them to the genus _Alca_, confining the genus _Uria_ to
the guillemots of another group, of which the type is the _U. grylla_,
the black guillemot of British authors, the dovekey or Greenland dove of
sailors, the tysty of Shetlanders. This bird assumes in summer an
entirely black plumage with the exception of a white patch on each wing,
while in winter it is beautifully marbled with white and black. Allied
to it as species or geographical races are the _U. mandti_, _U. columba_
and _U. carbo_. All these differ from the larger guillemots by laying
two or three eggs, which are generally placed in some secure niche,
while the members of the other group lay but a single egg, which is
invariably exposed on a bare ledge. (A. N.)