CHAPTER IV.

The phœnix—Various ancient and mediæval writers thereon—The

Bird of Paradise—The Museum of Tradescant—The roc—The

barnacle goose—The eagle—Its power of gazing upon the sun—Its

keenness of vision—The pelican—The swan and its death song—A

favourite idea with the poets—Hostility between the swan and

the eagle—The ostrich—Its digestive powers—How its eggs are

hatched—The cock—Antipathy between lion and cock—Cock-broth

and cock-ale for invalids—Incorporation in man of various

valued animal characteristics—The stone alectorius—Animals

haled before the judges for offences against man—The deadly

cockatrice—Cock-crow—The “Armonye of Byrdes”—The raven—How

it became black—The raven-stone—The owl—The swallow—Sight

to the blind—Oil of swallows as a remedy—The robin and

the wren—Their pious care of the dead—The nightingale—The

doctrine of signatures—Thorn-pierced breast—Philomela—The

cuckoo—His voice-restorer—The peacock—Its pride and its

shame—The kingfisher—As a weathercock—Sir Thomas Browne

thereon—Halcyone—Halcyon days—The filial stork—The cautious

cranes.

Though a belief in the phœnix has long since died away it was for a

thousand years or more as much an article of credence as a swan or an

eagle. As far as we are aware, the first reference to it is found in the

pages of Herodotus, and the story, as he tells it in the seventy-third

chapter of the second book of his history, was the basis upon which for

centuries a vast superstructure of fabledom was reared.

Even Tacitus, one of the most cautious and reliable of authors, seems to

have felt no difficulty in believing in the existence of the phœnix.

Erroneous as his account is, we feel at once on reading it that we have

the opinions of one honestly seeking the truth, a very different sort of

man to such a credulous old fellow, for example, as Maundevile. Tacitus

writes that “in the course of the year[70] the miraculous bird known to

the world by the name of the phœnix, after disappearing for a series

of ages, revisited Egypt. A phenomenon so very extraordinary could not

fail to produce abundance of speculation. The facts, about which there

seems to be a concurrence of opinions, with other circumstances in

their nature doubtful, yet worthy of notice, will not be unwelcome to

the reader. That the phœnix is sacred to the Sun, and differs from the

rest of the feathered species in the form of its head and the tincture

of its plumage, are points settled by the naturalist. Of its longevity

the accounts are various. The common persuasion is that it lives five

hundred years, though by some writers the date is extended to fourteen

hundred and sixty-one. It is the custom of the phœnix when its course of

years is finished, and the approach of death is felt, to build a nest in

its native clime, Arabia, and there deposit the principles of life, from

which a new progeny arises. The first care of the young bird, as soon as

fledged and able to trust to its wings, is to perform the obsequies of

its father. But this duty is not undertaken rashly. He collects a great

quantity of myrrh, and to try his strength, makes frequent excursions

with a load on his back. When he has made his experiment through a

great tract of air, and gains sufficient confidence in his own vigour,

he takes up the body of his father and flies with it to the Altar of the

Sun, where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance. Such is

the account of this wonderful bird. It has, no doubt, a mixture of fable;

but that the phœnix from time to time appears in Egypt seems to be a fact

satisfactorily ascertained.”

Pliny feels no difficulty in describing the phœnix, declaring that it is

about the size of an eagle, the neck being of a golden sheen, the body

purple, and the tail of an azure blue, though he admits feeling a doubt

as to whether it can be true that only one is in existence at one time.

According to Maundevile, “he hathe a Crest of Fedres upon his Hed more

gret than the Poocok hathe, and his Nekke is yalowe aftre colour of an

Orielle, that is a Ston well schynynge, and his Bek is coloured Blew, and

his Wenges ben of purpre colour, and the Taylle is yelow and red. And he

is a fulle fair Brid to loken upon, for he schynethe full nobely.” One

wonders at first how this old writer is able to give such very precise

details, but as he tells us that “this Bryd men sene often tyme fleen in

the Countrees,” he would have no difficulty in getting a full description

of it from some of these countrymen to whom it was a familiar sight.

Maundevile does not fail in his book of “Voiage and Travaile” to recite

the whole wonderful story. He tells us that “in Egypt is the Cytee

of Elyople,[71] that is to seyne, the Cytee of the Sonne. In that

Cytee there is a Temple made round, after the schappe of the Temple of

Jerusalem. The Prestes of that Temple have alle here Wrytynges, under

the Date of the Foul that is clept Fenix, and there is non but one in

alle the Worlde. And he comethe to brenne him selfe upon the Awtre of

the Temple at the end of five hundred Yeer: for so longe he lyvethe. And

at the five hundred Yeres ende the Prestes arrayen here Awtere honestly

and putten there upon Spices and Vif Sulphur and other thinges that wolm

brenne lightly. And then the Bryd Fenix comethe and brenneth him self to

Ashes. And the first Day aftre Men fynden in the Ashes a Worm; and the

seconde Day next aftre Men finden a Brid quyk and perfyt; and the thridde

Day next aftre he fleethe his wey. And so there is no more Briddes of

that Kynde in alle the World but it alone.”

This belief in the phœnix is found not only through heathen and mediæval

literature, but in the Rabbinical writings, and those of the early

Fathers of the Christian Church. By these latter it was accepted as a

symbol of the resurrection of the dead, and it may not unfrequently be

found figured in the mosaics that adorn the basilicas of the primitive

Church. The Rabbins tell us that all the birds, save the phœnix, shared

in the sin of Eve, and eat of the forbidden fruit; hence the phœnix, as a

reward, obtained this modified form of immutability. Philippe de Thaun,

in his “Bestiary,” writes of the mystic bird: “Know this is its lot; it

comes to death of its own will, and from death it comes to life: hear

what it signifies. Phœnix signifies Jesus, Son of Mary, that he had power

to die of his own will, and from death came to life. Phœnix signifies

that to save his people he chose to suffer upon the cross.” “God knew

men’s unbelief,” writes St. Cyril, “and therefore provided this bird as

evidence of the Resurrection.” St. Ambrose says, too, that “the bird of

Arabia teaches us, by its example, to believe in the Resurrection.” Other

passages of like tenour could be quoted from Tertullian and others of

the writers of the early Christian Church, and all alike show the most

unquestionable belief in the existence of the bird.[72]

It was suggested by Cuvier that at remote intervals a golden pheasant

from China might have strayed as far west as Arabia or Egypt, and given

rise to the legend; but gorgeous as the bird is, and fully capable of

making a considerable sensation on its appearance in a land where it was

previously unknown, one feels that such an appearance goes but a very

little way indeed towards clearing up the mass of myth that still remains

to be some way accounted for.

Browne, in his excellent dissection of the vulgar errors of his day,

approaches the Phœnix story tenderly, but feels bound to declare against

it, though he rather takes refuge in the Scottish verdict of “not proven”

than slaughters it in cold blood. “That there is but one Phœnix in the

world,” saith he, “which after many hundred yeares burneth itself, and

from the ashes thereof ariseth up another, is a conceit not new or

altogether popular, but of great Antiquity: not only delivered by humane

Authors, but frequently expressed by holy Writers; by Cyril, Epiphanius,

and others. All which, notwithstanding, we cannot presume the existence

of this Animall, nor dare we affirm there is any Phœnix in Nature. For,

first, there wants herein the definite test of things uncertain—that is,

the sense of man. For though many writers have much enlarged hereon,

there is not any ocular describer, or such as presumeth to confirm it

upon aspection. Primitive Authors, from whom the stream of relations

is derivative, deliver themselves dubiously, and either by a doubtful

parenthesis, or a timorous conclusion, overthrow the whole relation.

As for its unity or conceit that there should be but one in Nature, it

seemeth not only repugnant unto Philosophy, but also Holy Scripture,

which plainly affirmes there went of every sort two at least into the

Ark of Noah. Every fowle after his kinde, every bird of every sort, they

went into the Ark, two and two of all flesh wherein there is the breath

of life. It infringeth the Benediction of God concerning multiplication.

God blessed them, saying Be fruitfull and multiply and let fowls multiply

in the earth, which terms are not applicable unto the Phœnix, whereof

there is but one in the world, and no more now living than at the first

benediction. As for longevity that it liveth a thousand years or more,

besides that from imperfect observations and rarity of appearance no

confirmation can be made, there may probably be a mistake in the compute.

For the tradition being very ancient the conceit might have its originall

in times of shorter compute. For if we suppose our present calculation,

the Phœnix now in nature will be the sixt from the Creation, and but in

the middle of its years, and, if the Rabbine’s prophecy succeed, it shall

conclude its daies not in its own, but in the last and generall flames.”

Some medical enthusiasts held that a bird of such singular and noble

properties must be of sovereign virtue for the ills of mankind, and

did not hesitate to assign its several healing properties. On these

mistaken individuals Browne descends heavily. “Surely,” quoth he, “they

were not wel-wishers unto Physick or remedies easily acquired, who

derived Medicines from the Phœnix, as some have done. It is a folly to

finde out remedies that are not recoverable under a thousand years, or

propose the prolonging of life by that which the twentieth generation

may never behold. More veniable is a dependence upon the Philosopher’s

stone, potable gold, or any of those Arcanas whereby Paracelsus, that

died himself at fourty seven, gloried that he could make men immortall,

which, although exceedingly difficult, yet they are not impossible:

nor doe they (rightly understood) impose any violence on Nature. And,

therefore, if strictly taken for the Phœnix, very strange is that which

is delivered by Plutarch, that the brain thereof is a pleasant morsel,

but that it causeth the headach.” The amount of headache caused by too

free an indulgence in Phœnix must have been infinitesimal.

The Phœnix may still be considered to have a literary existence, and

remains part of the stock-in-trade of the orator and poet as an emblem of

something especially choice and rare. Fletcher writes of

“That lone bird in fruitful Arabie,

When now her strength and waning life decays,

Upon some airy rock or mountain high,

In spicy bed (fir’d by near Phœbus’ rays)

Herself and all her crooked age consumes:

Straight from her ashes, and those rich perfumes,

A newborn Phœnix flies, and widow’d place resumes.”

Ariosto, in his “Orlando Furioso,” refers to the bird in the Voyage of

Astolfo in the following lines:—

“Arabia, nam’d the happy, now he gains,

Incense and myrrh perfume her grateful plains:

The Virgin Phœnix there in search of rest

Selects from all the world her balmy nest.”

In the two foregoing extracts the Phœnix has been represented as maiden

and as widow, and in the first line of Ariosto the pronoun is masculine,

and in the fourth line feminine. Ovid, and many other writers, in

describing him, her, or it, select the masculine as the most appropriate.

Thus Ovid, in the translation of Dryden, sings:—

“All these receive their birth from other things,

But from himself the Phœnix only springs:

Self-born, begotten by the parent flame

In which he burn’d, another and the same.”

It is needless to give the rest of the reference, as the ancient poet

naturally follows in the lines of the recognized tradition: the funeral

pyre, the infant Phœnix rising from the ashes, the dutiful removal of the

paternal remains to Heliopolis, all taking their proper and accustomed

place in the narrative.

Shakespeare frequently refers to the mythical bird in his writings, and

seems to have thoroughly mastered all that could be said on the subject.

Some half-dozen passages naturally rise to one’s mind as illustrations of

this: thus Rosalind says in As You Like It:—

“She calls me proud; and that she could not love me,

Were man as rare as Phœnix.”

And the idea of its unique character is again brought out in Cymbeline,

in the passage “If she be furnished with a mind so rare, she is alone the

Arabian bird.” The destruction of the bird on its own funeral pyre, and

the resurrection of its successor therefrom, are several times referred

to. Thus in 1 Henry VI. we read: “But from their ashes shall be reared

a Phœnix that shall make all France afeared,” and in 3 Henry VI.: “My

ashes, as the Phœnix, may bring forth a bird that will revenge upon you

all.” Some little doubt of its existence at all is suggested by the

words of Sebastian in the Tempest. Now I will believe

“That there are unicorns: that in Arabia

There is one tree, the Phœnix throne; one Phœnix

At this time reigning there.”

Notwithstanding the doubts as to the reality of this creature that were

freely expressed in the seventeenth century, two feathers that were

said to be from the tail of a Phœnix were amongst the treasures of

Tradescant’s Museum.[73]

It was held a firm article of belief during the Middle Ages that the Bird

of Paradise fed upon nothing more gross than the dew of Heaven and the

odours of flowers, and that it had no feet, nor ever rested on earth at

all.

“Thou art still that Bird of Paradise

Which hath no feet, and ever nobly flies.”

It is a sadly prosaic explanation of this to recall that its footless

condition simply arose from the fact that the natives of Molucca in

sending the skins to Europe removed the legs and feet as needless

additions, seeing that the beauty of the plumage was the reason for their

export.

Tavernier relates that “the Birds of Paradise come in flocks during the

nutmeg season to the South of India. The strength of the nutmeg odour

intoxicates them, and while they lie in this state on the earth, the

ants eat off their legs.” Saving the last terrible detail and shocking

instance of what may befall those who stray from the paths of temperance,

Moore evidently adopts this account in Lalla Rookh in the lines:—

“Those golden birds that in the spicetime drop

About the gardens, drunk with that sweet fruit

Whose scent hath lured them o’er the summer flood.”

Literary allusions to the Bird of Paradise are not unfrequent, and

testify to the general acceptance of the myth that has grown up around

the prosaic facts of the case. Francis Thynne, in his “Emblemes and

Epigrames,” A.D. 1600, takes the somewhat exceptional view that the bird

is to be pitied:—

“There is a birde which takes the name of Paradise the fair,

Which allwaies lives beatinge the winde and flienge in the Ayre,

For envious Nature him denies the helpe of resting feete

Wherby hee forced is in th’ayre incessantlie to fleete.”

The Roc or Rukh, though associated nowadays in our minds with the

“Thousand and One Nights,” and regarded as simply an illustration of the

lengths that the Eastern love of the wonderful can be carried to, was

an article of faith with our ancestors. Marco Polo, in his wonderfully

interesting book on his travels in Eastern lands, refers to this

remarkable bird; but it will be noted that he merely gives the account

as hearsay, and protects himself more than once from any admission of

personal belief in the creature. He states respecting it as follows: “The

people of the island[74] report that at a certain season of the year an

extraordinary kind of bird, which they call a rukh, makes its appearance

from the southern region. In form it is said to resemble the eagle, but

it is incomparably greater in size; being so large and strong as to seize

an elephant with its talons, and to lift it into the air, from whence it

lets it fall to the ground, in order that when dead it may prey upon the

carcase. Persons who have seen this bird assert that when the wings are

spread they measure sixteen paces in extent from point to point, and that

the feathers are eight paces in length and thick in proportion. The Grand

Khan, having heard this extraordinary relation, sent messengers to the

island on the pretext of demanding the release of one of his servants who

had been detained there, but in reality to examine into the circumstances

of the country, and the truth of the wonderful things told of it. When

they returned to the presence of his Majesty they brought with them (as I

have heard) a feather of the Rukh, positively affirmed to have measured

ninety spans. This surprising exhibition afforded his Majesty extreme

pleasure, and upon those to whom it was presented he bestowed valuable

gifts.”

The existence of such a bird seems to have been universally credited

in the East. While the tale passes all belief as it stands, or rather

as it lies, it may possibly be that it is grossly exaggerated rather

than entirely fabulous, as it may have originated from the occasional

sight of some bird of vast, though not miraculous, dimensions, such as

the albatross, birds of fierce aspect, measuring many feet from tip to

tip of their wings, though with strength and power of grip considerably

short of transporting elephants from their umbrageous retreats to

mid-air. The sixteen paces that are given by the informants of Marco Polo

as the measurement of the wings would be about forty feet, while the

wing-measurement of the albatross would not exceed fifteen or sixteen

feet, thus leaving a handsome balance to be put to the credit of the love

of the marvellous.

Jordanus brought back from India the story of “certain birds which are

called Roc, that are so big that they easily carry an elephant into the

air.” He did not himself see one of these, the nearest he is able to

approach to this being, “I have seen a certain person who said that he

had seen one of these birds.” The Roc was said to lay an egg equal in

bulk to one hundred and forty-eight hen’s eggs. The precision of this

estimate should disarm criticism: one feels in face of it that to have

said one hundred and fifty would have been a fatal yielding to the charm

of round numbers and a palpable exaggeration.

Mr. Lane refers to an Arab, one Ibou el Wardee, for authority for the

statement that Rocs are found in an island in the Chinese Sea that have

each wing ten thousand fathoms long.[75] These birds find no difficulty

in carrying an eagle in their beak, plus two others in their talons.

Wardee also knew of a Roc’s egg, or said he did—which is, perhaps, not

quite the same thing—on one of these islands that looked like an enormous

white dome over a hundred cubits high and as firm as a mountain.

Many of the beliefs of our forefathers had a refreshing quaintness about

them, and one of the quaintest, perhaps, of these was the notion that a

particular kind of goose sprang from the barnacles that cluster in salt

water on submerged wood. Butler, in his “Hudibras,” tells of those

“Who from the most refined of saints

As naturally turn miscreants

As barnacles turn Soland geese

In the islands of the Orcades.”

[Illustration: FIG. 15.]

Gerarde, in 1597, in his “Historie of Plants,” of which there are many

editions—our own copy, we see, being dated 1633,—gives in all good faith

a description and an illustration of the barnacle-goose tree. The former

Gerarde shall give in his own words, the latter we have reproduced in

fig. 15 in facsimile from his book. We see in it the branch bearing

barnacles, and by its side a bird, which stands for the resulting goose.

This “wonder of England, for the which God’s name be ever honoured and

praised,” he thus discourses upon—“Hauing trauelled from the grasses

growing in the bottom of the fenny waters, the woods and mountaines, euen

unto Libanus it selfe, and also the sea and bowels of the same, wee are

arriued at the end of our Historie; thinking it not impertinent to the

conclusion of the same, to end with one of the maruells of this land,

we may say of the world. The historie wherof to set forth according to

the worthinesse and ranke therof would not only require a large and

peculiar volume, but also a deeper search into the bowels of Nature than

mine intended purpose will suffer me to wade into, my sufficience also

considered, leauing the historie therof rough hewn unto some excellent

men learned in the secrets of Nature, to be both fined and refined;

in the meantime, take it as it falleth out, the naked and bare truth,

though vnpolished. There are found in the North parts of Scotland and

the islands adiacent, called Orchades, certaine trees whereon do grow

certaine shells of a white colour tending to russett, wherein are

contained little liuing things, which shells in time of maturitie do

open, and out of them do grow those little liuing creatures, which

falling in the water do become fowles, which we call Barnakles, and in

Lancashire tree-geese, but the others that do fall upon the land perish

and come to nothing. Thus much by the writings of others, and also from

the mouths of people of those parts, which may very well accord with

truth.

“But what our eyes haue seene and hands haue touched, we shall declare.

There is a small island in Lancashire, called the pile of Foulders,

wherein we find the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some wherof

haue been cast thither by shipwracke, and also the trunks and bodies with

the branches of old and rotten trees cast up there likewise; whereon

is found a certaine spawne or froth that in time breedeth unto certain

shels, in shape like those of the muskle, but sharper-pointed, wherein is

contained a thing in forme like a lace of silke finely wouen together as

it were. One end thereof is fastened into a rude masse or lumpe, which

in time commeth to the shape and form of a Birde. When it is perfectly

formed the shel gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the

foresaid lace or string: next come the legs of the bird hanging out, and

as it groweth greater it openeth the shel by degrees til at length it is

all come forth and hangeth onely by the bill: in short space after it

commeth to ful maturitie, and falleth into the sea, when it gathereth

feathers and groweth to a Fowle bigger than a Mallard and lesser than

a Goose, hauing blacke legs and bill and beake, and feathers blacke and

white, spotted in such manner as is our magpie, which the people of

Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose: which place therof

and all those parts adioining doe so much abound therewith that one of

the best is bought for threepence. For the truth wherof, if any doubt,

may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the

testimony of good witnesses.”

On reading the foregoing one can only wonder what the old fellow really

did see on this wild sea shore amidst the wreckage: that he wrote in the

most perfect good faith, and in the strongest belief in this “Maruell,”

is perfectly evident. That he has no desire to practise on our credulity

is patent, but it is equally patent that his own credulity got the

better of his judgment. He goes on to tell us that on another occasion,

near Dover, he found on the sea shore an old tree-trunk covered with

“thousands of long crimson bladders, in shape like unto puddings newly

filled, and at the nether end therof did grow a shelfish fashioned

somewhat like a small muskle.” Many of these shells he brought back with

him to London, and on opening them he tells us that he found “liuing

things that were very naked, shaped like a bird: in others the birds

couered with a soft doune, the shel halfe open, and the bird ready to

fall out; which no doubt were the fowles called Barnakles.”

Soon after Gerarde’s death, Thomas Johnson, “Citizen and Apothecarie of

London,” brought out another edition of the “Historie of Plants,” in

which he adds the following note to Gerarde’s statement: “The Barnakles,

whose fabulous breed my Author here sets downe and diuers others have

also deliuered, were found by some Hollanders to haue another originall,

and that by egges, as other birds have: for they in their third voyage

to find out the North-East passage to China and Mollocos, found little

islands, in the one of which they found an abundance of these geese

sitting upon their egges, of which they got one goose and tooke away

sixty egges.” Here again one can only feel that the explanation needs

explaining, as it hardly seems necessary to sail for China to find the

home of the birds that were to be had retail in any quantity on the

Lancashire coast, for the by no means extravagant price of sixpence a

brace.

In a description of West Connaught by Roderic O’Flaherty, published

in the year 1684, the barnacle is thus mentioned: “There is the bird

engendered by the sea, out of timber long lying in the sea. Some

call these birds Clakes and Solan’d geese, and some puffins, others

barnacles.” And in the “Divine Weekes and Workes” of Du Bartas we find

another reference:—

“So Sly Bootes underneath him sees

In y’ cycles, those goslings hatcht of trees,

Whose fruitfull leaues falling into the water

Are turn’d, they say, to liuing fowles soon after.

So rotten sides of broken ships do change

To barnacles! O transformation strange!

’Twas first a greene tree, then a gallant hull,

Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull.”

[Illustration: FIG. 16.]

Another version of the barnacle-tree is given in fig. 16. We have

extracted it from Parkinson’s “Theater of Plants,” a book that achieved

considerable popularity and ran through several editions. Our own copy,

from which we have reproduced the illustration, is dated 1640. Parkinson,

we see, classes the barnacle-tree with “Marsh, Water, and Sea Plants,

with Mosses and Mushrooms.” It seems curious that he should have inserted

it at all, as his remarks thereupon are not at all those of a believer.

“To finish this treatise of sea-plants,” he writes, “let me bring this

admirable tale of untruth to your consideration, that whatever hath

formerly been related concerning the breeding of these Barnakles to be

from shels growing on trees is utterly erroneous, their breeding and

hatching being found out by the Dutch and others, in their navigations to

the Northward.” This second reference to the Dutch shows that the matter

had caused some little stir outside England, and we may perhaps not too

uncharitably assume that the foreigner did not feel altogether displeased

when so great a British wonder was reduced to a very commonplace and

everyday affair indeed.

The “Cosmography” of Munster supplies us with the graceful illustration

which we have reproduced in facsimile in fig. 17. It is a far more

charming representation than either of the others we have given. In the

drawing the whole process may be clearly traced, from the immature and

unopened fruit to that sufficiently ripe to give some indication of its

strange contents in the form of the protruding head of the coming bird,

and then on again to the geese actually fallen in the water, and more or

less freeing themselves from the encumbering husk, until finally we see

them in all respects fit and proper subjects for the ornithologist or

the salesman of Leadenhall Market. Munster states in his book that “in

Scotland we find trees, the fruit of which appears like a ball of leaves.

This fruit, falling at its proper time into the water below, becomes

animated, and turns to a bird which they call the tree-goose.”

[Illustration: FIG. 17.]

Æneas Sylvius, afterwards better known to the world as Pope Pius II.,

visited Scotland in the year 1468, and while there made diligent inquiry

concerning this wonderful tree, but found that no one could point it out

to him. As the general impression that one gathers on reading his account

of his travels is that he appeared in Scotland rather as a seeker after

knowledge than as the recipient of a wonderful story till then unknown to

him, we must conclude that the myth had spread considerably beyond the

land of its origin. In fact, as we often find even unto the present day,

in divers matters the intelligent stranger is often able to enlighten the

natives on matters in which we might reasonably have expected to find

them well informed. Who, for instance, would ever dream of asking the

nearest resident to a cathedral anything of its history, or seeking from

“the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain” any light on the mysterious origin of

Stonehenge?

William Turner, one of the earliest writers on ornithology, described the

barnacle-goose as being produced from “something like a fungus growing

from old wood lying in the sea,” and quotes Giraldus Cambrensis as his

authority. “Having uncomfortable misgivings I asked,” he writes, “a

certain clergyman named Octavianus, by birth an Irishman, whom I knew

to be worthy of credit, if he thought the account of Giraldus was to

be believed. He, swearing by the Gospel, declared that which Giraldus

had written about the bird was most true: that he had himself seen and

handled the young unformed birds, and that if I would remain in London

a month or two he would bring me some of the brood.” Whether Turner

was satisfied by the very unsatisfying proof of the production of some

dubious ducks in London, or by the solemn declaration and oaths taken on

the Gospels by his reverent informant, we have no means of knowing, but

as he inserts the wonder in his book, he was evidently relieved from his

previous doubt of the veracity of the story.

In a land even beyond far distant Cathay, according to Maundevile,

“growethe a maner of Fruyt as thoughe it weren gowrdes, and whan thei ben

rype men kutten hem a to and fynden with inne a lytylle Best in Flessche,

in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle Lamb with outen Wolle. And

Men eten bothe the Fruyt and the Best, and that is a gret Marveylle.

Of that Frut I have eten, alle thoughe it were wondirfulle, but that I

knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes. And nathles I tolde hem

that in oure Contree weren Trees that beren a Fruyt that becomen Briddes

fleeynge, and tho that fellen in the Water lyven, and thei that fellen on

the Erthe dyen anon, and thei ben righte gode to Mannes mete. And here of

had thei als gret marvaylle that sume of hem trowed it were an impossible

thing to be.” One would have thought that people who were quite familiar

with the sight of a lamb-tree would have found no great difficulty in

believing in a goose-tree. Anyone who can credit the one should feel no

hesitation in accepting the other.

Saxo Grammaticus, Lobel, Valcetro, and many other writers, refer to the

barnacle-tree, some with full belief in it, others more dubiously, but it

is, of course, needless to quote a multiplicity of authors. Should any

of our readers themselves feel any doubt in the matter, they may very

advantageously pay a visit to a good museum, where probably, even if they

fail to find a goose-tree, they may see much else that will be almost

equally a wonder and a delight to them.

The ancients thoroughly believed that the eagle proved her young by

forcing them to gaze upon the sun, discarding any that failed to face

the test, and the belief survived well into the Middle Ages. “Before that

her little ones bee feathered she will beat and strike them with her

wings, and thereby force them to looke full against the sunne beames. Now

if shee see any one of them to winke or their eies to water at the raies

of the sunne shee turnes it with the head foremost out of the nest as a

bastard and none of hers, but bringeth up and cherisheth that whose eie

will abide the light of the sunne as she looketh directly upon him.” It

will be remembered that Shakespeare, in King Henry VI., refers to this

old belief when the Duke of Gloucester addresses the young prince in the

words—

“Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird,

Show thy descent[76] by gazing ’gainst the sun.”

In Ariosto, again, we have the same reference, where he styles the eagle

“The bird

That dares with steadfast eyes Apollo’s light.”

And Dryden exclaims in his “Britannia Rediviva,”

“Truth, which is light itself, doth darkness shun,

And the true eaglet safely dares the sun.”

The keenness of vision of the eaglet[77] has been noted in all ages, and

its powers sometimes made even more astonishing than facts can justify.

It has been asserted that when the eagle has soared into the air to a

height that has rendered it perfectly invisible to human eye, it can

discern the motions of the smaller animals upon the earth, and swoop down

upon them from the sky, and Homer, in the “Iliad,” it will be recalled,

describes Menelaus as

“The field exploring, with an eye

Keen as the eagle’s, keenest eyed of all

That wing the air, whom, though he soar aloft,

The lev’ret ’scapes not hid in thickest shades.

But down he swoops, and at a stroke she dies.”

The eastern writers, ever given to hyperbole, have assigned to the eagle

powers of vision of a far more astonishing character than this. One of

them, Damir, quoted by Burckhardt, declares that the eagle can discern

its prey at a distance of four hundred parasangs—more than a thousand

miles—and poets of all periods have drawn striking images from the

wonderful power of vision of the king of birds. Mediæval naturalists have

asserted that this magnificent eyesight was strengthened even beyond its

natural powers by a diet on the eagle’s part of wild lettuce, in the same

way that the linnet cleared its sight by means of the eyebright, the

swallow through use of the celandine, and divers other birds through use

of some special herb that they had proved to be of value to them.

Our readers will doubtless remember the fine passage in the

“Areopagitica” of Milton: “Methinks I see in my mind a noble and

puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and

shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle renewing

her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday

beam.” It was one of the beliefs of our forefathers that the eagle had

this power of rejuvenescence. The description of the process has a

very prosaic sound about it, but the result is highly successful. When

the eagle “hathe darknesse and dimnesse in eien and hevinesse in wings

against this disadvantage she is taught by kinde to seeke a well of

springing water, and then she flyeth up into the aire as farre as she

may, till she bee full hot by heat of the aire and by travaile of flight,

and so then by heat the pores be opened, and the feathers chafed, and she

falleth sideinglye into the well, and there the feathers be chaunged and

the dimnesse of her eien is wiped away and purged, and she taketh againe

her might and strength.”[78]

It was a strange belief of the writers of antiquity on these natural

history topics that the feathers of the eagle, when placed amongst those

of other birds, in a short space of time entirely consumed them.

While the king of beasts has been credited with generosity and other

royal virtues, the eagle, king of birds, seems not to have developed,

either in nature or in fable, any such regal qualities. The most

favourable estimate we have encountered is that of the “Speculum Mundi,”

and even that leaves much to be desired. “The Eagle,” writes our

authority, “is commended for her faithfulnesse towards other birds in

some kinde, though sometimes she show herselfe cruell. They all stand in

awe of her; and when she hath gotten meat she useth to communicate it

unto such fowls as do accompany with her; onely this some affirme, that

when she hath no more to make distribution of, then she will attack some

of her guests, and for lack of food, dismember them.”

The eagle is often depicted as bearing the thunderbolts of Jove, from an

ancient belief that “of all flying fowles the ægle only is not smitten

nor killed with lightening.”

“Secure from thunder, and unharm’d by Jove.”[79]

A man clothed in the skins of seals, or crowned with bay-leaves, enjoyed

like immunity.

The pelican has been pressed into the service of religious symbolism,

from a belief that it nourished its young with its own blood, and hence

it was made the emblem of loving sacrifice.[80] “The pelicane, whose sons

are nursed with bloude, stabbeth deep her breast, self-murdresse through

fondnesse to hir broode,” and the Shakespearian student will recall the

lines in Hamlet:—

“To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,

And, like the kind, life-rendering pelican,

Refresh them with my blood.”

The whole myth is based upon a very slender basis indeed, as it is

conjectured that it arose from the habit of the bird pressing its breast

feathers with its bill, the bill itself having a crimson spot at its

extremity that suggested the idea of blood. When the bird is represented

in ecclesiastical work, or as a charge in heraldry, it is always shown

in this position, and is known technically as “a pelican in her piety.”

Many of the early writers accept the legend in the most perfect good

faith, and no more doubted that the young pelicans were reared on the

blood of the mother bird, than that hens would eat barley, or sparrows

come for bread-crumbs. Some ecclesiastical writers, whom we cannot quite

exonerate from acting on the principle that it is lawful to do ill if

good flows from it, added the detail that when the young of the pelican

were destroyed by serpents, the mother pelican shed her blood upon them,

and brought them to life again, and hence became a striking symbol of the

restoration to life of those dead in trespasses and sin by the vivifying

blood of the Redeemer of mankind.

It was for many centuries a belief that the swan, mute through life, sang

melodiously at its death.

“Sweet strains he chaunteth out with’s dying tongue,

And is the singer of his funerall song.”

“Wherein,” writes the author of the “Speculum Mundi,” “he is a perfect

embleme and pattern to us, that our death ought to be cheerfull, and life

not so deare unto us as it is.” Martial writes of the swan’s “joyful

death, and sweet expiring song,” and Virgil, Lucretius, Horace, Ovid,

and other ancient authors all refer to the belief. Cicero compared the

excellent discourse which Crassus made in the senate a few days before

his death to the melodious singing of a dying swan, while Socrates

declared that good men ought to imitate swans, who, perceiving by a

secret instinct what gain there was in death, die singing with joy.

Shakespeare refers frequently to the belief: thus in the Merchant of

Venice Portia says: “Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end, fading in

music.” After King John is poisoned his son, Prince Henry, is told that

in his dying frenzy he sang; whereupon the prince replies:—

“’Tis strange that death should sing,

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death;

And from the organ-pipes of frailty sings

His soul and body to their lasting rest.”

Many similar passages might be quoted from the poets; it will suffice to

give but one example:—

“Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,

Where nothing, save the waves and I,

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep.

There, swan-like, let me sing and die.”[81]

Though the ordinary swan of our English lakes and rivers would appear

to be without a grain of music in its composition, the black swan of

Australia,[82] now naturalized in our midst, has a really very musical

note, and one, too, which it very readily utters, not by any means

reserving it as a pæan of approaching dissolution.

It was a firm article of belief with the older writers, such as Pliny,

Aristotle, and Ælian, that the swan was especially exposed to attack

from the eagle, and that when thus assailed it fought with extreme

determination, and never failed to come off victor in the fray.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.]

To the ostrich was accredited the power of digesting iron. How such an

idea could have arisen, it is now impossible to explain. In allusion

to this myth the bird, when introduced in blazonry, as in fig. 18,

from a mediæval flagon, ordinarily has a horse-shoe in its mouth.[83]

The artist who thus represented the bird was evidently by no means

oblivious of the fact that the plumage of the ostrich was another very

characteristic feature. Shakespeare, in his Henry VI., makes Jack Cade

declare “I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword

like a great pin;” while Munster, in his “Cosmography,” gravely gives a

picture of an ostrich with an immense key in his mouth, and at his feet,

as second course, a horse-shoe. Cogan, the author of the very popular

“Haven of Health,” finds apt simile herein. “The fat of flesh,” he says,

“alone without leane is unwholesome and cloyeth the stomack and causeth

lothsomnes, yet have I knowne a country man that would feed onely of the

fat of Bacon or Pork, without leane, but that is not to bee marvelled at,

considering that many of them have stomackes like the bird that is called

an Ostridge, which can digest hard Iron.”

It was held that the ostrich never hatches her eggs by sitting upon

them, but by the rays of warmth and light from her eyes. Southey alludes,

it will be remembered, to this old fancy in the lines:—

“With such a look as fables say,

The mother ostrich fixes on her eggs,

Till that intense affection

Kindle its light of life.”[84]

A considerable body of folk-lore is associated with the cock. One strange

notion that crops up in the books of the mediæval writers is that the

lion has a strong antipathy to this bird, and that the crowing of

chanticleer will effectually put to the rout the king of beasts. One can

readily imagine that the lion, prowling in the darkness round some human

habitation, would naturally resent the shrill clarion of the cock, and

that this idea might, with the delight in mysticism and symbolism of the

Middle Ages, be readily transferred to the roaring lion, seeking whom he

may devour, thwarted by the vigilance of which the cock is the emblem.

Even so early, however, as the pre-Christian days of Pliny we find this

belief in the antagonism between the two creatures in full operation,

for this ancient author prescribes the broth from a stewed cock as an

excellent outward application for those in peril from wild beasts,

declaring confidently that whosoever shall bathe himself in this shall

fear no harm from lion or panther.

Gerard Legh, in his “Accedence of Armorie,” affirms that “the Cocke is

the royallest birde that is, and of himself a king, for Nature hath

crowned hime with a perpetuall Diademe, to him and to his posteritie for

ever. He is the valiantest in battle of all birdes, for he will rather

die than yeelde to his aduersarie.” And one old writer goes so far as

to declare that the lion, whom we have always been taught to regard as

generosity itself, feels his royal title somewhat impaired by the rivalry

of the barn-door fowl, and that the pretension to royalty suggested by

the scarlet crest is distasteful to the king of beasts, who can brook no

idea of a rival.

There was throughout the Middle Ages an idea that one was able to

incorporate[85] any desirable quality by looking around for some

creature of which it was a characteristic, and then promptly making

some culinary preparation of which this creature’s flesh should be a

leading ingredient. “If,” says one of these sages, “you would have a

man talkative give him tongues, and seek out for him water-frogs, wilde

geese and ducks, and other such creatures, notorious for their continual

noise-making,” and thus the sturdy self-assertion and valour of the cock

naturally suggested the idea that the weakly and retiring would find in

him valuable nutriment. In an old cookery book we find “how to still a

cocke for a weak body that is in consumption, through long sicknesse.”

The cock selected must be a red one,[86] and not too old. Having cut him

into quarters, he must be put into an earthenware pot with “the rootes

of Fennell, Parcely and Succory, Corans, whole Mace, Annise seeds, and

liquorice scraped and slyced.” Half a pint of rose-water and a quart

of white wine are then to be added, together with “two or three cleane

Dates, a few prunes and raysons,” and then all must stew gently for the

space of twelve hours. Finally, “streine out the broth into some cleane

vessell, and give thereof unto the weak person morning and evening,

warmed and spiced as pleaseth the patient.” Our ancestors, even when in

rude health, quaffed a beverage known as cock-ale, in order that they

might preserve their vigour. This drink—strong ale mixed with the broth

of a boiled cock—is mentioned in the old plays, such as “Woman turned

Bully,” written in the year 1675; in Digby’s book of receipts—“The Closet

Open,”—published in 1648, and divers other medical and culinary works of

the Middle Ages.

In these same “good old times,” the liver of a male goat, the tail of a

shrew-mouse, the brain and comb of a cock, the worm under the tongue of

a mad dog, pounded ants, cuckoo-broth, were all suggested as remedies for

hydrophobia, though, like the fish-brine of Pliny or the pounded crab of

Galen, they must have been but sorry reeds to rest upon in the dreadful

paroxysms of this terrible malady.

The ancient Romans believed in the existence of a crystalline stone

which they called alectorius, as large as a bean, and to be found in the

gizzard of a cock, though not by any means, discoverable in every fowl

cut open. This stone was held to have the wonderful property of rendering

the human possessor of it invisible. It may indeed have had the same

effect on the original owner, as there could scarcely be an authentic

instance of a stone of such peculiar property being found, but if the

fowl itself could not be seen it is scarcely to be wondered at that the

stone within it should be equally invisible. The belief in some such

stone was one of the numerous articles of faith of the Middle Ages, but

instead of the property of invisibility being attached to its possessor

they sometimes substituted for it the much more prosaic idea that its

owner could never feel thirsty, while the way to discover the bird that

possessed it was simplicity itself, it being only necessary to discover

which fowl at feeding time never drank. The first belief is much the more

tenable, and is in fact impossible of refutation, as the world may be

full of the owners of alectorius, invisible to us, and therefore unknown.

The cock was at one time supposed to possess the power of laying eggs

from which were reared the deadly cockatrice. “When the cock is past

seven years old an egg grows within him, whereat he greatly wonders. He

seeks privately a warm place, and scratches a hole for a nest, to which

he goes ten times daily. A toad privily watches him, and examines the

nest every day to see if the egg be yet laid. When the toad finds the

egg he rejoices much, and at length hatches it, bringing forth an animal

with the head, neck, and breast of a cock, and from thence downward the

body of a serpent.”[87] In the year 1474 a cock at Basle was publicly

accused of having laid one of these very objectionable eggs, and after

a short trial[88] was sentenced to death and burnt, together with the

egg, in the market place, amid a great concourse of the towns-folk, who

were right joyfully thankful to feel that a great peril had been averted

by the prompt action of their rulers, for a cockatrice was indeed no

laughing matter to those who thought it one of the possibilities of life.

In England the hens have entirely usurped the egg-laying department, and

we are therefore spared the mortification of finding that our hoped-for

chick has assumed the less welcome form of a cockatrice.

The poison of a cockatrice was without cure, and the air was in such a

degree affected by it that no creature could live near it. It killed,

we are assured, not only by its touch, for even the sight of the

cockatrice, like that of the basilisk, was death. We read, for instance,

in Romeo and Juliet of “the death-darting eye of cockatrice,” and again

in King Richard III., “a cockatrice hast thou hatched into the world

whose unavoided eye is murtherous;” while in Twelfth Night we find the

passage, “this will so fright them both, that they will kill one another

by the look like cockatrices.” The good people of Basle might therefore,

believing all this, very heartily congratulate themselves on their escape

from a fearful peril.

The baleful cockatrice is often referred to in literature. Thus in the

book entitled “Some Yeares Trauels into Africa and Asia the Great,”

written by Sir Thomas Herbert, and published in London in the year

1677, the writer says that Mohamed, on finishing his Koran, was “so

transported, that to Mecca he goes to have it credited; but therein his

predictions fail him, for so soon as the Arabs perceived his design

(being formerly acquainted with his birth and breeding) they banish

him, and (but for his Wives’ relations) there had crushed him and his

Cockatrice egg, which was but then hatching.”

Legh, in his “Curiosities of Heraldry,” gives the usual details of the

death-dealing cockatrice, but adds, “Though he be venome withoute

remedye whilest he liueth, yet when he is dead and burnt to ashes he

loseth all his malice, and the ashes of him are good for alkumistes

in turnyng and chaungyng of metall.” Practically, therefore all that

stands, or shall we say lies, between ourselves and wealth beyond the

dreams of avarice is but a cockatrice moribund. Orthography was not a

strong point in these old writers, and the word which is now established

as cockatrice, may be met with as cocatrice, cokatrice, kokatrice,

kocatrice, cockatryse, cocatryse, cocautrice, cockautrice, coccatryse,

cocatris, kokatrix, chocatrix, and many other forms.

It has long been a belief in many parts of the country that if a cock

crow at midnight the Angel of Death is passing over the house, and that

if he delays to strike it is but for a short season. It is evident

however that a score or more of different households may hear the same

cock-crow, and we can scarcely conclude that it is to be fatal to all,

since such wholesale slaughter would quickly depopulate whole hamlets,

and we might really almost as well have the dread cockatrice at once.

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.