Chapter VI: Birds (2)

"And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore."

Some read "quarry;" see "Notes to Macbeth." Clark and Wright,
p. 77. It denotes the square-headed bolt of a cross-bow; see
Douce's "Illustrations," 1839, p. 227; Nares's "Glossary," vol.
ii. p. 206.

Another term in falconry is "stoop," or "swoop," denoting the hawk's violent descent from a height upon its prey. In "Taming of the Shrew" (iv. 1) the expression occurs, "till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged." In "Henry V." (iv. 1), King Henry, speaking of the king, says, "though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing." In "Macbeth" (iv. 3), too, Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, exclaims, "What! ... at one fell swoop?"[232] Webster, in the "White Devil,"[233] says:

"If she [_i. e._, Fortune] give aught, she deals it in small parcels,
That she may take away all at one swoop."

[232] See Spenser's "Fairy Queen," book i. canto xi. l. 18:

"Low stooping with unwieldy sway."

[233] Ed. Dyce, 1857, p. 5.

Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk's trappings. Thus, in "Lucrece" he says:

"Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells."

And in "As You Like It" (iii. 3),[234] Touchstone says, "As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires." The object of these bells was to lead the falconer to the hawk when in a wood or out of sight. In Heywood's play entitled "A Woman Killed with Kindness," 1617, is a hawking scene, containing a striking allusion to the hawk's bells. The dress of the hawk consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they assisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for the hawk's attack came in sight. Thus in "Henry V." (iii. 7), the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dauphin, says, "'Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate."[235] And again, in "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2), Juliet says:

"Hood my unmann'd[236] blood, bating in my cheeks."

[234] See "3 Henry VI." i. 1.

[235] A quibble is perhaps intended between bate, the term of
falconry, and abate, _i. e._, fall off, dwindle. "Bate is a
term in falconry, to flutter the wings as preparing for flight,
particularly at the sight of prey." In '1 Henry IV.' (iv. 1):

"'All plumed like estridges, that with the wind
Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.'"

--Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 60.

[236] "Unmann'd" was applied to a hawk not tamed.

The "jesses" were two short straps of leather or silk, which were fastened to each leg of a hawk, to which was attached a swivel, from which depended the leash or strap which the falconer[237] twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says:

"Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings."

[237] See Singer's "Notes to Shakespeare," 1875, vol. x. p. 86;
Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 448.

We find several allusions to the training of hawks.[238] They were usually trained by being kept from sleep, it having been customary for the falconers to sit up by turns and "watch" the hawk, and keep it from sleeping, sometimes for three successive nights. Desdemona, in "Othello" (iii. 3), says:

"my lord shall never rest;
I'll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
I'll intermingle everything he does
With Cassio's suit."

[238] See passage in "Taming of the Shrew," iv. 1, already
referred to, p. 122.

So, in Cartwright's "Lady Errant" (ii. 2):

"We'll keep you as they do hawks,
Watching until you leave your wildness."

In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), where Page says,

"Nay, do not fly: I think we have watch'd you now,"

the allusion is, says Staunton, to this method employed to tame or "reclaim" hawks.

Again, in "Othello" (iii. 3),[239] Iago exclaims:

"She that, so young, could give out such a seeming,
To seel her father's eyes up close as oak;"

in allusion to the practice of seeling a hawk, or sewing up her eyelids, by running a fine thread through them, in order to make her tractable and endure the hood of which we have already spoken.[240] King Henry ("2 Henry IV." iii. 1), in his soliloquy on sleep, says:

"Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge."

[239] Also in same play, i. 3.

[240] Turbervile, in his "Booke of Falconrie," 1575, gives some
curious directions as "how to seele a hawke;" we may compare
similar expressions in "Antony and Cleopatra," iii. 13; v. 2.

In Spenser's "Fairy Queen" (I. vii. 23), we read:

"Mine eyes no more on vanity shall feed,
But sealed up with death, shall have their deadly meed."

It was a common notion that if a dove was let loose with its eyes so closed it would fly straight upwards, continuing to mount till it fell down through mere exhaustion.[241]

[241] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 777, 778; cf. Beaumont
and Fletcher, "Philaster," v. 1.

In "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen, referring to Posthumus, says:

"I grieve myself
To think, when thou shalt be disedged by her
That now thou tir'st on,"--

this passage containing two metaphorical expressions from falconry. A bird was said to be _disedged_ when the keenness of its appetite was taken away by _tiring_, or feeding upon some tough or hard substance given to it for that purpose. In "3 Henry VI." (i. 1), the king says:

"that hateful duke,
Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,
Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle
Tire on the flesh of me and of my son."

In "Timon of Athens" (iii. 6), one of the lords says: "Upon that were my thoughts tiring, when we encountered."

In "Venus and Adonis," too, we find a further allusion:

"Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone," etc.

Among other allusions to the hawk may be mentioned one in "Measure for Measure" (iii. 1):

"This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth _emmew_,
As falcon doth the fowl"

--the word "emmew" signifying the place where hawks were shut up during the time they moulted. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 4), Lady Capulet says of Juliet:

"To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness;"

and in "Taming of the Shrew" (i. 1), Gremio, speaking of Bianca to Signor Baptista, says: "Why will you mew her?"

When the wing or tail feathers of a hawk were dropped, forced out, or broken, by any accident, it was usual to supply or repair as many as were deficient or damaged, an operation called "to imp[242] a hawk." Thus, in "Richard II." (ii. 1), Northumberland says:

"If, then, we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
Imp out our drooping country's broken wing."

[242] Imp, from Anglo-Saxon, _impan_, to graft. Turbervile has
a whole chapter on "The way and manner how to ympe a hawke's
feather, howsoever it be broken or bruised."

So Massinger, in his "Renegado" (v. 8), makes Asambeg say:

"strive to imp
New feathers to the broken wings of time."

Hawking was sometimes called birding.[243] In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 3) Master Page says: "I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast; after, we'll a-birding together, I have a fine hawk for the bush." In the same play (iii. 5) Dame Quickly, speaking of Mistress Ford, says: "Her husband goes this morning a-birding;" and Mistress Ford says (iv. 2): "He's a-birding, sweet Sir John." The word hawk, says Mr. Harting, is invariably used by Shakespeare in its generic sense; and in only two instances does he allude to a particular species. These are the kestrel and sparrow-hawk. In "Twelfth Night" (ii. 5) Sir Toby Belch, speaking of Malvolio, as he finds the letter which Maria has purposely dropped in his path, says:

"And with what wing the staniel[244] checks at it"

--staniel being a corruption of stangdall, a name for the kestrel hawk.[245] "Gouts" is the technical term for the spots on some parts of the plumage of a hawk, and perhaps Shakespeare uses the word in allusion to a phrase in heraldry. Macbeth (ii. 1), speaking of the dagger, says:

"I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood."

[243] Harting's "Ornithology of Shakspeare," p. 72.

[244] The reading of the folios here is stallion; but the word
wing, and the falconer's term _checks_, prove that the bird
must be meant. See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 832.

[245] See kestrel and sparrow-hawk.

_Heron._ This bird was frequently flown at by falconers. Shakespeare, in "Hamlet" (ii. 2), makes Hamlet say, "I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw;" handsaw being a corruption of "heronshaw," or "hernsew," which is still used, in the provincial dialects, for a heron. In Suffolk and Norfolk it is pronounced "harnsa," from which to "handsaw" is but a single step.[246] Shakespeare here alludes to a proverbial saying, "He knows not a hawk from a handsaw."[247] Mr. J. C. Heath[248] explains the passage thus: "The expression obviously refers to the sport of hawking. Most birds, especially one of heavy flight like the heron, when roused by the falconer or his dog, would fly down or with the wind, in order to escape. When the wind is from the north the heron flies towards the south, and the spectator may be dazzled by the sun, and be unable to distinguish the hawk from the heron. On the other hand, when the wind is southerly the heron flies towards the north, and it and the pursuing hawk are clearly seen by the sportsman, who then has his back to the sun, and without difficulty knows the hawk from the hernsew."

[246] "Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 159.

[247] Ray's "Proverbs," 1768, p. 196.

[248] Quoted in "Notes to Hamlet," by Clark and Wright, p. 159;
see Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 416.

_Jay._ From its gay and gaudy plumage this bird has been used for a loose woman, as "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 3): "we'll teach him to know turtles from jays," _i. e._, to distinguish honest women from loose ones. Again, in "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen says:

"Some jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting,[249] hath betray'd him."

[249] That is, made by art: the creature not of nature, but of
painting; cf. "Taming of the Shrew," iv. 3; "The Tempest," ii. 2.

_Kestrel._ A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed,[250] and therefore used by Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (II. iii. 4), to signify base:

"Ne thought of honour ever did assay
His baser breast, but in his kestrell kynd
A pleasant veine of glory he did fynd."

[250] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482.

By some[251] it is derived from "coystril," a knave or peasant, from being the hawk formerly used by persons of inferior rank. Thus, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 3), we find "coystrill," and in "Pericles" (iv. 6) "coystrel." The name kestrel, says Singer,[252] for an inferior kind of hawk, was evidently a corruption of the French _quercelle_ or _quercerelle_, and originally had no connection with coystril, though in later times they may have been confounded. Holinshed[253] classes coisterels with lackeys and women, the unwarlike attendants on an army. The term was also given as a nickname to the emissaries employed by the kings of England in their French wars. Dyce[254] also considers kestrel distinct from coistrel.

[251] Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 74.

[252] "Notes," vol. iii. pp. 357, 358.

[253] "Description of England," vol. i. p. 162.

[254] "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 88.

_Kingfisher._ It was a common belief in days gone by that during the days the halcyon or kingfisher was engaged in hatching her eggs, the sea remained so calm that the sailor might venture upon it without incurring risk of storm or tempest; hence this period was called by Pliny and Aristotle "the halcyon days," to which allusion is made in "1 Henry VI." (i. 2):

"Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days."

Dryden also refers to this notion:

"Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be,
As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea."

Another superstition connected with this bird occurs in "King Lear" (ii. 2), where the Earl of Kent says:

"turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters;"

the prevalent idea being that a dead kingfisher, suspended from a cord, would always turn its beak in that direction from whence the wind blew. Marlowe, in his "Jew of Malta" (i. 1), says:

"But now how stands the wind?
Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill?"

Occasionally one may still see this bird hung up in cottages, a remnant, no doubt, of this old superstition.[255]

[255] Sir Thomas Browne's "Vulgar Errors," bk. iii. chap. 10.

_Kite._ This bird was considered by the ancients to be unlucky. In "Julius Cæsar" (v. 1) Cassius says:

"ravens, crows, and kites,
Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us."

In "Cymbeline" (i. 2), too, Imogen says,

"I chose an eagle,
And did avoid a puttock,"

puttock, here, being a synonym sometimes applied to the kite.[256] Formerly the kite became a term of reproach from its ignoble habits. Thus, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13), Antony exclaims, "you kite!" and King Lear (i. 4) says to Goneril, "Detested kite! thou liest." Its intractable disposition is alluded to in "Taming of the Shrew," by Petruchio (iv. 1). A curious peculiarity of this bird is noticed in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), where Autolycus says: "My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen"--meaning that his practice was to steal sheets; leaving the smaller linen to be carried away by the kites, who will occasionally carry it off to line their nests.[257] Mr. Dyce[258] quotes the following remarks of Mr. Peck on this passage: "Autolycus here gives us to understand that he is a thief of the first class. This he explains by an allusion to an odd vulgar notion. The common people, many of them, think that if any one can find a kite's nest when she hath young, before they are fledged, and sew up their back doors, so as they cannot mute, the mother-kite, in compassion to their distress, will steal lesser linen, as caps, cravats, ruffles, or any other such small matters as she can best fly with, from off the hedges where they are hanged to dry after washing, and carry them to her nest, and there leave them, if possible to move the pity of the first comer, to cut the thread and ease them of their misery."

[256] Also to the buzzard, which see, p. 100.

[257] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. iv. p. 67.

[258] "Glossary," p. 243.

_Lapwing._ Several interesting allusions are made by Shakespeare to this eccentric bird. It was a common notion that the young lapwings ran out of the shell with part of it sticking on their heads, in such haste were they to be hatched. Horatio ("Hamlet," v. 2) says of Osric: "This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head."

It was, therefore, regarded as the symbol of a forward fellow. Webster,[259] in the "White Devil" (1857, p. 13), says:

"forward lapwing!
He flies with the shell on's head."

[259] "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 495; see Yarrell's "History of
British Birds," 2d edition, vol. ii. p. 482.

The lapwing, like the partridge, is also said to draw pursuers from her nest by fluttering along the ground in an opposite direction or by crying in other places. Thus, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 2), Shakespeare says:

"Far from her nest the lapwing cries away."

Again, in "Measure for Measure" (i. 4), Lucio exclaims:

"though 'tis my familiar sin,
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,
Tongue far from heart."

Once more, in "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 1), we read:

"For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs,
Close by the ground, to hear our conference."

Several, too, of our older poets refer to this peculiarity. In Ben Jonson's "Underwoods" (lviii.) we are told:

"Where he that knows will like a lapwing fly,
Farre from the nest, and so himself belie."

Through thus alluring intruders from its nest, the lapwing became a symbol of insincerity; and hence originated the proverb, "The lapwing cries tongue from heart," or, "The lapwing cries most, farthest from her nest."[260]

[260] Ray's "Proverbs," 1768, p. 199.

_Lark._ Shakespeare has bequeathed to us many exquisite passages referring to the lark, full of the most sublime pathos and lofty conceptions. Most readers are doubtless acquainted with that superb song in "Cymbeline" (ii. 3), where this sweet songster is represented as singing "at heaven's gate;" and again, as the bird of dawn, it is described in "Venus and Adonis," thus:

"Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty."[261]

[261] Cf. "Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iv. 1). "the morning
lark;" "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), "the lark, the herald of
the morn."

In "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2, song) we have a graphic touch of pastoral life:

"When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks."

The words of Portia, too, in "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), to sing "as sweetly as the lark," have long ago passed into a proverb.

It was formerly a current saying that the lark and toad changed eyes, to which Juliet refers in "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5):

"Some say, the lark and loathed toad change eyes;"

Warburton says this popular fancy originated in the toad having very fine eyes, and the lark very ugly ones. This tradition was formerly expressed in a rustic rhyme:

"to heav'n I'd fly,
But that the toad beguil'd me of mine eye."

In "Henry VIII." (iii. 2) the Earl of Surrey, in denouncing Wolsey, alludes to a curious method of capturing larks, which was effected by small mirrors and red cloth. These, scaring the birds, made them crouch, while the fowler drew his nets over them:

"let his grace go forward,
And dare us with his cap, like larks."

In this case the cap was the scarlet hat of the cardinal, which it was intended to use as a piece of red cloth. The same idea occurs in Skelton's "Why Come Ye not to Court?" a satire on Wolsey:

"The red hat with his lure
Bringeth all things under cure."

The words "tirra-lirra" ("Winter's Tale," iv. 3) are a fanciful combination of sounds,[262] meant to imitate the lark's note; borrowed, says Nares, from the French _tire-lire_. Browne, "British Pastorals" (bk. i. song 4), makes it "teery-leery." In one of the Coventry pageants there is the following old song sung by the shepherds at the birth of Christ, which contains the expression:

"As I out rode this endenes night,
Of three joli sheppards I sawe a syght,
And all aboute there fold a stare shone bright,
They sang terli terlow,
So mereli the sheppards their pipes can blow."

[262] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 886; Douce's
"Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 217.

In Scotland[263] and the north of England the peasantry say that if one is desirous of knowing what the lark says, he must lie down on his back in the field and listen, and he will then hear it say:

"Up in the lift go we,
Tehee, tehee, tehee, tehee!
There's not a shoemaker on the earth
Can make a shoe to me, to me!
Why so, why so, why so?
Because my heel is as long as my toe."

[263] Chambers's "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," 1870, p. 192.

_Magpie._ It was formerly known as magot-pie, probably from the French _magot_, a monkey, because the bird chatters and plays droll tricks like a monkey. It has generally been regarded with superstitious awe as a mysterious bird,[264] and is thus alluded to in "Macbeth" (iii. 4):

"Augurs and understood relations, have
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."

[264] See "English Folk-Lore," p. 81.

And again, in "3 Henry VI." (v. 6), it is said:

"chattering pies in dismal discords sung."

There are numerous rhymes[265] relating to the magpie, of which we subjoin, as a specimen, one prevalent in the north of England:

"One is sorrow, two mirth,
Three a wedding, four a birth,
Five heaven, six hell,
Seven the de'il's ain sell."

[265] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 127.

In Devonshire, in order to avert the ill-luck from seeing a magpie, the peasant spits over his right shoulder three times, and in Yorkshire various charms are in use. One is to raise the hat as a salutation, and then to sign the cross on the breast; and another consists in making the same sign by crossing the thumbs. It is a common notion in Scotland that magpies flying near the windows of a house portend a speedy death to one of its inmates. The superstitions associated with the magpie are not confined to this country, for in Sweden[266] it is considered the witch's bird, belonging to the evil one and the other powers of night. In Denmark, when a magpie perches on a house it is regarded as a sign that strangers are coming.

[266] Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," vol. ii. p. 34; Brand's
"Pop. Antiq.," 1849, pp. 215, 216; see also Harland and
Wilkinson's "Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1867, pp. 143, 145.

_Martin._ The martin, or martlet, which is called in "Macbeth" (i. 6) the "guest of summer," as being a migratory bird, has been from the earliest times treated with superstitious respect--it being considered unlucky to molest or in any way injure its nest. Thus, in the "Merchant of Venice" (ii. 9), the Prince of Arragon says:

"the martlet
Builds in the weather, on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casualty."

Forster[267] says that the circumstance of this bird's nest being built so close to the habitations of man indicates that it has long enjoyed freedom from molestation. There is a popular rhyme still current in the north of England:

"The martin and the swallow
Are God Almighty's bow and arrow."

[267] "Atmospherical Researches," 1823, p. 262.

_Nightingale._ The popular error that the nightingale sings with its breast impaled upon a thorn is noticed by Shakespeare, who makes Lucrece say:

"And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part
To keep thy sharp woes waking."

In the "Passionate Pilgrim" (xxi.) there is an allusion:

"Everything did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity."

Beaumont and Fletcher, in "The Faithful Shepherdess" (v. 3), speak of

"The nightingale among the thick-leaved spring,
That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing
Whole nights away in mourning."

Sir Thomas Browne[268] asks "Whether the nightingale's sitting with her breast against a thorn be any more than that she placeth some prickles on the outside of her nest, or roosteth in thorny, prickly places, where serpents may least approach her?"[269] In the "Zoologist" for 1862 the Rev. A. C. Smith mentions "the discovery, on two occasions, of a strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the nightingale's nest." Another notion is that the nightingale never sings by day; and thus Portia, in "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), says:

"I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren."

[268] Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. i. p. 378.

[269] See "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 515.

Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old superstition[270] that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself awake, lest the glow-worm should devour her. The classical fable[271] of the unhappy Philomela turned into a nightingale, when her sister Progne was changed to a swallow, has doubtless given rise to this bird being spoken of as _she_; thus Juliet tells Romeo (iii. 5):

"It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree;
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

[270] Southey's "Commonplace Book." 5th series. 1851, p. 305.

[271] Ovid's "Metamorphoses," bk. vi. ll. 455-676; "Titus
Andronicus," iv. 1.

Sometimes the nightingale is termed Philomel, as in "Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 2, song):[272]

"Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby."

[272] Cf. "Lucrece," ll. 1079, 1127.

_Osprey._ This bird,[273] also called the sea-eagle, besides having a destructive power of devouring fish, was supposed formerly to have a fascinating influence, both which qualities are alluded to in the following passage in "Coriolanus" (iv. 7):

"I think he'll be to Rome,
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature."

[273] See Yarrell's "History of British Birds," 1856, vol. i.
p. 30; Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 620; also Pennant's
"British Zoology;" see Peele's Play of the "Battle of Alcazar"
(ii. 3), 1861, p. 28.

Drayton, in his "Polyolbion" (song xxv.), mentions the same fascinating power of the osprey:

"The osprey, oft here seen, though seldom here it breeds,
Which over them the fish no sooner do espy,
But, betwixt him and them by an antipathy,
Turning their bellies up, as though their death they saw,
They at his pleasure lie, to stuff his gluttonous maw."

_Ostrich._ The extraordinary digestion of this bird[274] is said to be shown by its swallowing iron and other hard substances.[275] In "2 Henry VI." (iv. 10), the rebel Cade says to Alexander Iden: "Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the king by carrying my head to him; but I'll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part." Cuvier,[276] speaking of this bird, says, "It is yet so voracious, and its senses of taste and smell are so obtuse, that it devours animal and mineral substances indiscriminately, until its enormous stomach is completely full. It swallows without any choice, and merely as it were to serve for ballast, wood, stones, grass, iron, copper, gold, lime, or, in fact, any other substance equally hard, indigestible, and deleterious." Sir Thomas Browne,[277] writing on this subject, says, "The ground of this conceit in its swallowing down fragments of iron, which men observing, by a forward illation, have therefore conceived it digesteth them, which is an inference not to be admitted, as being a fallacy of the consequent." In Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History" (No. 6, p. 32) we are told of an ostrich having been killed by swallowing glass.

[274] Called _estridge_ in "1 Henry IV." iv. 1.

[275] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 365.

[276] "Animal Kingdom," 1829, vol. viii. p. 427.

[277] See Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 334-337.

_Owl._ The dread attached to this unfortunate bird is frequently spoken of by Shakespeare, who has alluded to several of the superstitions associated with it. At the outset, many of the epithets ascribed to it show the prejudice with which it was regarded--being in various places stigmatized as "the vile owl," in "Troilus and Cressida" (ii. I); and the "obscure bird," in "Macbeth" (ii. 3), etc. From the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen, and Pliny tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, the very abomination of human kind. Vergil[278] describes its death-howl from the top of the temple by night, a circumstance introduced as a precursor of Dido's death. Ovid,[279] too, constantly speaks of this bird's presence as an evil omen; and indeed the same notions respecting it may be found among the writings of most of the ancient poets. This superstitious awe in which the owl is held may be owing to its peculiar look, its occasional and uncertain appearance, its loud and dismal cry,[280] as well as to its being the bird of night.[281] It has generally been associated with calamities and deeds of darkness.[282] Thus, its weird shriek pierces the ear of Lady Macbeth (ii. 2), while the murder is being committed:

"Hark!--Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good night."

[278] "Æneid," bk. iv. l. 462.

[279] "Metamorphoses," bk. v. l. 550; bk. vi. l. 432; bk. x. l.
453; bk. xv. l. 791.

[280] "2 Henry VI." iii. 2; iv. 1.

[281] "Titus Andronicus," ii. 3.

[282] Cf. "Lucrece," l. 165; see Yarrell's "History of British
Birds," vol. i. p. 122.

And when the murderer rushes in, exclaiming,

"I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?"

she answers:

"I heard the owl scream."

Its appearance at a birth has been said to foretell ill-luck to the infant, a superstition to which King Henry, in "3 Henry VI." (v. 6), addressing Gloster, refers:

"The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign."

Its cries[283] have been supposed to presage death, and, to quote the words of the _Spectator_, "a screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers." Thus, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 1), we are told how

"the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud;"

and in "1 Henry VI." (iv. 2), it is called the "ominous and fearful owl of death." Again, in "Richard III." (iv. 4), where Richard is exasperated by the bad news, he interrupts the third messenger by saying:

"Out on ye, owls! nothing but songs of death?"

[283] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 209.

The owl by day is considered by some equally ominous, as in "3 Henry VI." (v. 4):

"the owl by day,
If he arise, is mock'd and wonder'd at."

And in "Julius Cæsar" (i. 3), Casca says:

"And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
'These are their reasons,--they are natural;'
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon."

Considering, however, the abhorrence with which the owl is generally regarded, it is not surprising that the "owlet's wing"[284] should form an ingredient of the caldron in which the witches in "Macbeth" (iv. 1) prepared their "charm of powerful trouble." The owl is, too, in all probability, represented by Shakespeare as a witch,[285] a companion of the fairies in their moonlight gambols. In "Comedy of Errors" (ii. 2), Dromio of Syracuse says:

"This is the fairy land: O, spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites.
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue!"

[284] The spelling of the folios is "howlets." In Holland's
translation of Pliny (chap. xvii. book x.), we read "of owlls
or howlets." Cotgrave gives "Hulotte."

[285] Halliwell-Phillipps's, "Handbook Index," 1866, p. 354.

Singer, in his Notes on this passage (vol. ii. p. 28) says: "It has been asked, how should Shakespeare know that screech-owls were considered by the Romans as witches?" Do these cavillers think that Shakespeare never looked into a book? Take an extract from the Cambridge Latin Dictionary (1594, 8vo), probably the very book he used: "Strix, a _scritche owle_; an unluckie kind of bird (as they of olde time said) which sucked out the blood of infants lying in their cradles; a witch, that changeth the favour of children; an hagge or fairie." So in the "London Prodigal," a comedy, 1605: "Soul, I think I am sure crossed or witch'd with an owl."[286] In "The Tempest" (v. 1) Shakespeare introduces Ariel as saying:

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip's bell I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry."

[286] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 302.

Ariel,[287] who sucks honey for luxury in the cowslip's bell, retreats thither for quiet when owls are abroad and screeching. According to an old legend, the owl was originally a baker's daughter, to which allusion is made in "Hamlet" (iv. 5), where Ophelia exclaims: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be." Douce[288] says the following story was current among the Gloucestershire peasantry: "Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat; the mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size; the dough, however, immediately began to swell, and presently became a most enormous size, whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, 'Heugh, heugh, heugh!' which owl-like noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into that bird for her wickedness." Another version of the same story, as formerly known in Herefordshire, substitutes a fairy in the place of our Saviour. Similar legends are found on the Continent.[289]

[287] See Singer's "Notes to The Tempest," 1875, vol. i. p. 82.

[288] See _Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1804, pp. 1083,
1084. Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie."

[289] See Dasent's "Tales of the Norse," 1859, p. 230.

_Parrot._ The "popinjay," in "1 Henry IV." (i. 3), is another name for the parrot--from the Spanish _papagayo_--a term which occurs in Browne's "Pastorals" (ii. 65):

"Or like the mixture nature dothe display
Upon the quaint wings of the popinjay."

Its supposed restlessness before rain is referred to in "As You Like It" (iv. 1): "More clamorous than a parrot against rain." It was formerly customary to teach the parrot unlucky words, with which, when any one was offended, it was the standing joke of the wise owner to say, "Take heed, sir, my parrot prophesies"--an allusion to which custom we find in "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 4), where Dromio of Ephesus says: "prophesy like the parrot, _beware the rope's end_." To this Butler hints, where, speaking of Ralpho's skill in augury, he says:[290]

"Could tell what subtlest parrots mean,
That speak and think contrary clean;
What member 'tis of whom they talk,
When they cry _rope_, and _walk, knave, walk_."

[290] "Hudibras," pt. i. ch. i.

The rewards given to parrots to encourage them to speak are mentioned in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 2):[291] "the parrot will not do more for an almond." Hence, a proverb for the greatest temptation that could be put before a man seems to have been "An almond for a parrot." To "talk like a parrot" is a common proverb, a sense in which it occurs in "Othello" (ii. 3).

[291] In "Much Ado About Nothing" (i. 1), Benedick likens
Beatrice to a "parrot-teacher," from her talkative powers.

_Peacock._ This bird was as proverbially used for a proud, vain fool as the lapwing for a silly one. In this sense some would understand it in the much-disputed passage in "Hamlet" (iii. 2):

"For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
A very, very--peacock."[292]

[292] This is the reading adopted by Singer.

The third and fourth folios read _pajock_,[293] the other editions have "paiock," "paiocke," or "pajocke," and in the later quartos the word was changed to "paicock" and "pecock," whence Pope printed peacock.

[293] "Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, pp. 179, 180.

Dyce says that in Scotland the peacock is called the peajock. Some have proposed to read _paddock_, and in the last scene Hamlet bestows this opprobrious name upon the king. It has been also suggested to read _puttock_, a kite.[294] The peacock has also been regarded as the emblem of pride and arrogance, as in "1 Henry VI." (iii. 3):[295]

"Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while,
And, like a peacock, sweep along his tail;
We'll pull his plumes, and take away his train."

[294] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 645; Singer's
"Notes," vol. ix. p. 228.

[295] Cf. "Troilus and Cressida," iii. 3.

_Pelican._ There are several allusions by Shakespeare to the pelican's piercing her own breast to feed her young. Thus, in "Hamlet" (iv. 5), Laertes says:

"To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood."

And in "King Lear," where the young pelicans are represented as piercing their mother's breast to drink her blood, an illustration of filial impiety (iii. 4), the king says:

"Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! 'Twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters."[296]

[296] Cf. "Richard II." i. 1.

It is a common notion that the fable here alluded to is a classical one, but this is an error. Shakespeare, says Mr. Harting, "was content to accept the story as he found it, and to apply it metaphorically as the occasion required." Mr. Houghton, in an interesting letter to "Land and Water"[297] on this subject, remarks that the Egyptians believed in a bird feeding its young with its blood, and this bird is none other than the vulture. He goes on to say that the fable of the pelican doubtless originated in the Patristic annotations on the Scriptures. The ecclesiastical Fathers transferred the Egyptian story from the vulture to the pelican, but magnified the story a hundredfold, for the blood of the parent was not only supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also able to reanimate the dead offspring. Augustine, commenting on Psalm cii. 6--"I am like a pelican of the wilderness"--remarks: "These birds [male pelicans] are said to kill their offspring by blows of their beaks, and then to bewail their death for the space of three days. At length, however, it is said that the mother inflicts a severe wound on herself, pouring the flowing blood over the dead young ones, which instantly brings them to life." To the same effect write Eustathius, Isidorus, Epiphanius, and a host of other writers.[298]

[297] Mr. Harting, in his "Ornithology of Shakespeare," quotes
an interesting correspondence from "Land and Water" (1869), on
the subject.

[298] See Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. ii. pp. 1-4.

According to another idea[299] pelicans are hatched dead, but the cock pelican then wounds his breast, and lets one drop of blood fall upon each, and this quickens them.

[299] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 366, 367.

_Pheasant._ This bird is only once alluded to, in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4), where the Clown jokingly says to the Shepherd, "Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant; say, you have none."

_Phoenix._ Many allusions are made to this fabulous bird, which is said to rise again from its own ashes. Thus, in "Henry VIII." (v. 4), Cranmer tells how

"when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new create another heir,
As great in admiration as herself."

Again, in "3 Henry VI." (i. 4), the Duke of York exclaims:

"My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth
A bird that will revenge upon you all."

Once more, in "1 Henry VI." (iv. 7), Sir William Lucy, speaking of Talbot and those slain with him, predicts that

"from their ashes shall be rear'd
A phoenix that shall make all France afeard."[300]

[300] Cf. "The Tempest," iii. 3; "All's Well that Ends Well,"
i. 1; "Antony and Cleopatra," iii. 2; "Cymbeline," i. 6.

Sir Thomas Browne[301] tells us that there is but one phoenix in the world, "which after many hundred years burns herself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth up another." From the very earliest times there have been countless traditions respecting this wonderful bird. Thus, its longevity has been estimated from three hundred to fifteen hundred years; and among the various localities assigned as its home are Ethiopia, Arabia, Egypt, and India. In "The Phoenix and Turtle," it is said,

"Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be."

[301] Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 277-284.

Pliny says of this bird, "Howbeit, I cannot tell what to make of him; and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that there is never but one of them in the whole world, and the same not commonly seen." Malone[302] quotes from Lyly's "Euphues and his England" (p. 312, ed. Arber): "For as there is but one phoenix in the world, so is there but one tree in Arabia wherein she buyldeth;" and Florio's "New Worlde of Wordes" (1598), "Rasin, a tree in Arabia, whereof there is but one found, and upon it the phoenix sits."

[302] See Aldis Wright's "Notes to The Tempest," 1875, p. 129.

_Pigeon._ As carriers, these birds have been used from a very early date, and the Castle of the Birds, at Bagdad, takes its name from the pigeon-post which the old monks of the convent established. The building has crumbled into ruins long ago by the lapse of time, but the bird messengers of Bagdad became celebrated as far westward as Greece, and were a regular commercial institution between the distant parts of Asia Minor, Arabia, and the East.[303] In ancient Egypt, also, the carrier breed was brought to great perfection, and, between the cities of the Nile and the Red Sea, the old traders used to send word of their caravans to each other by letters written on silk, and tied under the wings of trained doves. In "Titus Andronicus" (iv. 3) Titus, on seeing a clown enter with two pigeons, says:

"News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.
Sirrah, what tidings? have you any letters?"

[303] _Daily Telegraph_, January 31, 1880; see Southey's
"Commonplace Book," 1849, 2d series, p. 447.

From the same play we also learn that it was customary to give a pair of pigeons as a present. The Clown says to Saturninus (iv. 4), "I have brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here."[304]

[304] See _Dove_, pp. 114, 115.

In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 3) the dove is used synonymously for pigeon, where the nurse is represented as

"Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall."

Mr. Darwin, in his "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" (vol. i. pp. 204, 205), has shown that from the very earliest times pigeons have been kept in a domesticated state. He says: "The earliest record of pigeons in a domesticated condition occurs in the fifth Egyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.C.; but Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, informs me that the pigeon appears in a bill of fare in the previous dynasty. Domestic pigeons are mentioned in Genesis, Leviticus, and Isaiah. Pliny informs us that the Romans gave immense prices for pigeons; 'nay, they are come to this pass that they can reckon up their pedigree and race.' In India, about the year 1600, pigeons were much valued by Akbar Khan; 20,000 birds were carried about with the court." In most countries, too, the breeding and taming of pigeons has been a favorite recreation. The constancy of the pigeon has been proverbial from time immemorial, allusions to which occur in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), and in "As You Like It" (iii. 3).

_Quail._ The quail was thought to be an amorous bird, and hence was metaphorically used to denote people of a loose character.[305] In this sense it is generally understood in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1): "Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails." Mr. Harting,[306] however, thinks that the passage just quoted refers to the practice formerly prevalent of keeping quails, and making them fight like game-cocks. The context of the passage would seem to sanction the former meaning. Quail fighting[307] is spoken of in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 3), where Antony, speaking of the superiority of Cæsar's fortunes to his own, says:

"if we draw lots, he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
When it is all to nought; and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhoop'd, at odds."

[305] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 704;
Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p.
398; Dyce's "Glossary," p. 345; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol.
vii. p. 264.

[306] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 218.

[307] Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 19, 97, 677;
Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.

It appears that cocks as well as quails were sometimes made to fight within a broad hoop--hence the term _inhoop'd_--to keep them from quitting each other. Quail-fights were well known among the ancients, and especially at Athens.[308] Julius Pollux relates that a circle was made, in which the birds were placed, and he whose quail was driven out of this circle lost the stake, which was sometimes money, and occasionally the quails themselves. Another practice was to produce one of these birds, which being first smitten with the middle finger, a feather was then plucked from its head. If the quail bore this operation without flinching, his master gained the stake, but lost it if he ran away. Some doubt exists as to whether quail-fighting prevailed in the time of Shakespeare. At the present day[309] the Sumatrans practise these quail combats, and this pastime is common in some parts of Italy, and also in China. Mr. Douce has given a curious print, from an elegant Chinese miniature painting, which represents some ladies engaged at this amusement, where the quails are actually inhooped.

[308] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 367.

[309] Marsden's "History of Sumatra," 1811, p. 276.

_Raven._ Perhaps no bird is so universally unpopular as the raven, its hoarse croak, in most countries, being regarded as ominous. Hence, as might be expected, Shakespeare often refers to it, in order to make the scene he depicts all the more vivid and graphic. In "Titus Andronicus" (ii. 3), Tamora, describing "a barren detested vale," says:

"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe:
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven."

And in "Julius Cæsar" (v. 1), Cassius tells us how ravens

"Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey."[310]

[310] Cf. "2 Henry VI." iii. 2; "Troilus and Cressida," v. 2.

It seems that the superstitious dread[311] attaching to this bird has chiefly arisen from its supposed longevity,[312] and its frequent mention and agency in Holy Writ. By the Romans it was consecrated to Apollo, and was believed to have a prophetic knowledge--a notion still very prevalent. Thus, its supposed faculty[313] of "smelling death" still renders its presence, or even its voice, ominous. Othello (iv. 1) exclaims,

"O, it comes o'er my memory,
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all."

[311] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 211, 212.

[312] "English Folk-lore," 1878, p. 78.

[313] See Hunt's "Popular Romances of West of England," 1881, p. 380.

There is no doubt a reference here to the fanciful notion that it was a constant attendant on a house infected with the plague. Most readers, too, are familiar with that famous passage in "Macbeth" (i. 5) where Lady Macbeth, having heard of the king's intention to stay at the castle, exclaims,

"the raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!"

We may compare Spenser's language in the "Fairy Queen" (bk. ii. c. vii. l. 23):

"After him owles and night ravens flew,
The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings."

And once more the following passage from Drayton's "Barons' Wars" (bk. v. stanza 42) illustrates the same idea:

"The ominous raven often he doth hear,
Whose croaking him of following horror tells."

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 3), the "night-raven" is mentioned. Benedick observes to himself: "I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it." This inauspicious bird, according to Steevens, is the owl; but this conjecture is evidently wrong, "being at variance with sundry passages in our early writers, who make a distinction between it and the night-raven."[314]

[314] Dyce's "Glossary," 1876, p. 288.

Thus Johnson, in his "Seven Champions of Christendom" (part i.), speaks of "the dismal cry of night-ravens, ... and the fearefull sound of schriek owles." Cotgrave regarded the "night-crow" and the "night-raven" as synonymous; and Mr. Yarrell considered them only different names for the night-heron.[315] In "3 Henry VI." (v. 6) King Henry says:

"The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."

[315] See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," pp. 101, 102;
Yarrell's "History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 581.

Goldsmith, in his "Animated Nature," calls the bittern the night-raven, and says: "I remember, in the place where I was a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the whole village; they consider it as the presage of some sad event, and generally found or made one to succeed it. If any person in the neighborhood 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."

According to an old belief the raven deserts its own young, to which Shakespeare alludes in "Titus Andronicus" (ii. 3):

"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests."

"It was supposed that when the raven," says Mr. Harting,[316] "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." To this belief the commentators consider the Psalmist refers, when he says, "He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry" (Psalm cxlvii. 9). We are told, too, in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat" (xxxviii. 41). Shakespeare, in "As You Like It" (ii. 3), probably had the words of the Psalmist in his mind:

"He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow."

[316] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 107.

The raven has from earliest times been symbolical of blackness, both in connection with color and character. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2), Juliet exclaims:

"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven!"[317]

[317] Cf. "Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 2; "Twelfth Night," v. 1.

Once more, ravens' feathers were formerly used by witches, from an old superstition that the wings of this bird carried with them contagion wherever they went. Hence, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says:

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both!"

_Robin Redbreast._ According to a pretty notion,[318] this little bird is said to cover with leaves any dead body it may chance to find unburied; a belief which probably, in a great measure, originated in the well-known ballad of the "Children in the Wood," although it seems to have been known previously. Thus Singer quotes as follows from "Cornucopia, or Divers Secrets," etc. (by Thomas Johnson, 1596): "The robin redbreast, if he finds a man or woman dead, will cover all his face with moss; and some think that if the body should remain unburied that he would cover the whole body also." In Dekker's "Villaines Discovered by Lanthorn and Candlelight" (1616), quoted by Douce, it is said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are robin redbreasts that bring strawes in their bills to cover a dead man in extremitie." Shakespeare, in a beautiful passage in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2), thus touchingly alludes to it, making Arviragus, when addressing the supposed dead body of Imogen, say:

"With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would,
With charitable bill,--O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!--bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none
To winter-ground thy corse"--

the "ruddock"[319] being one of the old names for the redbreast, which is nowadays found in some localities. John Webster, also, refers to the same idea in "The White Devil" (1857, ed. Dyce, p. 45):

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men."

[318] "English Folk-Lore," pp. 62-64; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.,"
1849, vol. iii. p. 191; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 424;
Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 380.