(_To the Editor._)
The following account of the origin and antiquity of Halcyon Days will,
I feel convinced, prove a valuable addition to that given by your
intelligent correspondent P.T.W., in No. 471 of _The Mirror_:--
Halcyon Days, in antiquity, implied seven days before, and as many
after, the winter solstice--because the halcyon laid her eggs at this
time of the year, and the weather during her incubation being, as
your correspondent observes, usually calm. The phrase was afterwards
employed to express any season of transient prosperity, or of brief
tranquillity--the _septem placidae dies_ of human life:
The winter solstice just elapsed; and now
Silent the season, sad alcyone
Builds near the sleeping wave her tranquil nest.
_Eudosia._
When great Augustus made war's tempest cease,
His halcyon days brought forth the arts of peace.
_Dryden._
The halcyon built her nest on the rocks adjacent to the brink of the
ocean, or, as some maintain, on the surface of the sea itself:
Alcyone compress'd
Seven days sits brooding on her wat'ry nest,
A wintry queen; her sire at length is kind,
Calms every storm, and hushes every wind.
_Ovid, by Dryden._
It is also said, that during the period of her incubation, she herself
had absolute sway over the seas and the winds:
May halcyons smooth the waves, and calm the seas,
And the rough south-east sink into a breeze;
Halcyons of all the birds that haunt the main,
Most lov'd and honour'd by the Nereid train.
_Theocritus, by Fawkes._
Alcyone, or Halcyone, we are informed, was the daughter of Aeolus (king
of storms and winds), and married to Ceyx, who was drowned in going to
consult an oracle. The gods, it is said, apprized Alcyone, in a dream,
of her husband's fate; and when she discovered, on the morrow, his body
washed on shore, she precipitated herself into the watery element, and
was, with her husband, metamorphosed into birds of a similar name, who,
as before observed, keep the waters serene, while they build and sit on
their nests.
_Romford._