Chapter III: Part 3

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,――
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Each poet seeks to interpret for himself the meaning of the song of the bird and the sources of its inspiration. To Wordsworth the Cuckoo seems to be

Babbling to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers.

To Keats the Nightingale was singing of “summer.” Shelley asks the Skylark:

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

Again, to the poet’s ear the bird-music awakens memories of the past. To Wordsworth the notes of the Cuckoo brought “a tale of visionary hours” in his boyhood when, in his endeavour to set eyes upon the bird, he would

Often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou were still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

To Keats the vista unfolded of the past reached far beyond his own time:

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown;
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic easements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

The modern poet finds in the varied notes of the birds not the bodings and portents, superstitiously associated in the olden time with such cries as those of the raven and the owl, but high and solemn thoughts of death and the hereafter. Shelley wrote of his Skylark:

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

And Keats found his heart attuned by the voice of the Nightingale to the contemplation of his own dissolution:

Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain――
To thy high requiem become a sod.

What the future course of English Poetry will be in this same domain cannot be confidently predicted. Already, after the lapse of another century since the three poems appeared which we have been considering, a certain change in the poetic mood with regard to living Nature can be more or less distinctly perceived. With such a splendid past to contemplate, we may be well assured that our Poetry will continue to be radiant with sympathy for all living things. The birds will not fail to retain their “pride of place” in the affections of each generation of poets, and their voices, in the future as in the past, will abide with man as the source of some of the purest pleasure that can solace his heart.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Legende of Goode Women_, Prologue, 30.

Again he declares:

As for myn entent
The birdes song was more convient
And more pleasaunt to me by many fold
Than mete or drink or any other thing.
_Flower and Leaf_, 118.

[2] Prologue, 9.

[3] _Parlement of Foules_, 190.

[4] _The Flower and the Leaf_, 34. Even if this poem be
held not to have come from the pen of Chaucer, it
shows that he was not alone at an early time in his
enthusiasm for birds and their song.

[5] _Much Ado about Nothing_, II. i. 197.

[6] _3 Henry VI._ II. ii. 26.

[7] _Titus Andronicus_, II. i. 93.

[8] _Macbeth_, IV. ii. 34.

[9] _2 Henry VI._ I. iii. 86.

[10] _Hamlet_, III. iii. 67.

[11] _3 Henry VI._ V. vi. 13.

[12] _Lucrece_, 87.

[13] _Venus and Adonis_, 601, 604.

[14] _Ib._ 67.

[15] _Lucrece_, 457.

[16] _3 Henry VI._ IV. vi. 10.

[17] _King Lear_, V. iii. 8.

[18] II. i. 31.

[19] IV. iii. 103.

[20] II. v. 1.

[21] V. iii. 17.

[22] II. i. 15.

[23] II. i. 22.

[24] II. i. 46. The dramatist may perhaps have been
thinking of this scene when he afterwards put into
Hamlet’s mouth a reiteration of the same view of the
indifference of the crowd:

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play,
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
Thus runs the world away.
_Hamlet_, III. ii. 265.

[25] _Venus and Adonis_, 680.

[26] _Ib._ 697.

[27] III. i. 80.

[28] _King Lear_, IV. i. 37.

[29] _Titus Andronicus_, V. i. 141.

[30] _Venus and Adonis_, 316.

[31] _Titus Andronicus_, III. ii. 52.

[32] _2 Henry IV._ IV. iv. 91.

[33] _Titus Andronicus_, II. iii. 12.

[34] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi.

[35] _Ibid._ xx.

[36] _Sonnet_, lxxiii.

[37] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 908.

[38] _Titus Andronicus_, V. iii. 68.

[39] _Venus and Adonis_, 431.

[40] _Lucrece_, 869.

[41] _Henry V._ I. i. 60.

[42] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi.

[43] _Lucrece_, 1107-1125.

[44] _Phoenix and Turtle_, 9.

[45] Chaucer places at the head of his large company of
feathered creatures “the royal egle that with his
sharpe look perceth the Sonne,” _Parlement of Foules_,
330.

[46] _Richard II._ III. iii. 68.

[47] _3 Henry VI._ II. i. 91.

[48] IV. iii. 327.

[49] IV. iii. 222.

[50] _Timon of Athens_, IV. iii. 222.

[51] _Coriolanus_, III. i. 136.

[52] _Troilus and Cressida_, I. ii. 235.

[53] _Richard III._ I. iii. 70.

[54] _Ib._ I. i. 132.

[55] _Henry V._ I. ii. 169.

[56] _Cymbeline_, III. iii. 19.

[57] _Timon of Athens_, I. i. 51.

[58] _Titus Andronicus_, IV. iv. 83.

[59] _Venus and Adonis_, 55.

[60] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 320.

[61] _Taming of the Shrew_, IV. i. 172.

[62] _Romeo and Juliet_, II. ii. 158. The tassel-gentle
or tercel-gentle was the male gos-hawk, much used in
falconry.

[63] _2 Henry VI._ II. i. 1-46.

[64] Chaucer alludes to

The gentil faucon, that with his feet distreyneth
The Kinges hond.
_Parliament_, 337.

[65] _Macbeth_, II. iv. 12.

[66] _Richard II._ I. iii. 61.

[67] _Lucrece_, 506.

[68] II. v. 102.

[69] _Merry Wives of Windsor_, III. iii. 18. Musket
or Musquet-hawk was an old name for the cock
Sparrow-hawk, and ‘eyas’ meant a fledgling.

Before passing from the subject of hawks and hawking,
I should state that the sport is not yet wholly extinct
in this country, and that we have at least two extant
memorials of the time when it was a favourite pastime
here. There is still among our King’s Court officials
a Hereditary Grand Falconer, the office being held in
the family of the Duke of St. Albans. In old times,
and for many generations, the royal stud of hawks was
kept at Charing Cross in buildings that were known as
The Mews. In the reign of Henry VIII. these mews were
turned into stables for horses, but the time-honoured
name still clung to them. It became customary to call
by this name lanes flanked with stables, and this
practice has continued down to our own day. When we
speak of “mews,” however, it is always horses and
never hawks that come into our minds.

[70] _Taming of the Shrew_, II. i. 206.

[71] _Dictionary of Birds_, p. 67.

[72] _2 Henry VI._ III. ii. 191. Chaucer refers to “the
coward Kyte.”

[73] III. i. 248.

[74] II. iii. 184.

[75] _Julius Caesar_, V. i. 84.

[76] 2 _Henry VI._ V. ii. 9.

[77] _Winter’s Tale_, IV. iii. 23.

[78] _Lear_ I. iv. 262.

[79] _Coriolanus_, IV. vii. 33.

[80] _Macbeth_, IV. iii. 73.

[81] _Venus and Adonis_, 551; _Lucrece_, 556.

[82] _1 Henry VI._ IV. iii. 47.

[83] _Lear_, II. iv. 132.

[84] _2 Henry IV._ II. iv. 249.

[85] _As You Like It_, IV. i. 134.

[86] _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 52.

[87] _Othello_, II. iii. 270.

[88] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 95.

[89] _1 Henry IV._ I. iii. 33-52.

[90] _1 Henry IV._ IV. i. 97.

[91] _2 Henry VI._ IV. x. 27.

[92] _Richard II._ II. i. 38. _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, I. i.
4. _Coriolanus_, I. i. 119. _Troilus and Cressida_,
II. ii. 6.

[93] _Hamlet_, IV. v. 142.

[94] _Lear_, III. iv. 71.

[95] _Macbeth_, V. iii. 11.

[96] IV. vi. 17.

[97] II. iii. 82.

[98] Thus in the song of the “Ewie wi’ the crooked horn”
the knave that did the mischief is thus maledicted:

O had I but the loon that did it,
I hae sworn as well as said it,
Though the parson should forbid it
I wad gie his neck a thraw.

[99] _Hamlet_, IV. v. 40.

[100] _Venus and Adonis_, 529.

[101] _2 Henry VI._ I. iv. 16.

[102] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 899.

[103] _3 Henry VI._ II. i. 130.

[104] _Macbeth_, II. iv. 13.

[105] _Macbeth_, II. ii. 2-4.

[106] _Ibid._ II. iii. 57.

[107] _Julius Caesar_, I. iii. 26.

[108] _Richard II._ III. iii. 182.

[109] _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. i. 364. Chaucer refers
to “The oule that of dethe the bode bringeth.”
_Parlement_, 343.

[110] _Henry VI._ V. vi. 44.

[111] _Macbeth_, IV. i. 17.

[112] _Tempest_, V. i. 88.

[113] _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, II. ii. 5.

[114] II. ii. 188.

[115] V. ii. 881.

[116] _Merchant of Venice_, V. i. 110.

[117] _1 Henry IV._ III. ii. 75.

[118] _Anthony and Cleopatra_, II. vi. 28.

[119] _Lucrece_, 848.

[120] _1 Henry IV._ II. iv. 343.

[121] _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 61.

[122] _Hamlet_, I. iii. 115.

[123] _Twelfth Night_, II. v. 77.

[124] _Winter’s Tale_, IV. iv. 727.

[125] _Much Ado about Nothing_, II. i. 128.

[126] _Othello_, I. iii. 379. In Shakespeare’s time the
bird was also called snite, under which form it is
referred to by his contemporary poet, Drayton, who
speaks of

The witless woodcock and his neighbour snite.

The use of the word “snipe” as a disparaging epithet for
an individual is not yet extinct in the north.

[127] _Antony and Cleopatra_, II. iii. 34.

[128] _Troilus and Cressida_, V. i. 48.

[129] _Comedy of Errors_, IV. ii. 27. It was this instinct
of deception that Chaucer had in mind when he wrote of
“the false lapwing ful of trecherye.” _Parlement_, 347.

[130] _Much Ado about Nothing_, III. i. 23.

[131] _Measure for Measure_, I. iv. 31.

[132] _1 Henry IV._ II. ii. 95.

[133] _Antony and Cleopatra_, III. x. 19.

[134] _Venus and Adonis_, 85.

[135] _Sonnets_, CXXVII.

[136] _Romeo and Juliet_, III. ii. 17.

[137] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, II. ii. 113.

[138] _King John_, IV. iii. 152.

[139] _Twelfth Night_, V. i. 125.

[140] _Romeo and Juliet_, III. ii. 75.

[141] _Titus Andronicus_, II. iii. 153.

[142] _As You Like It_, II. iii. 43.

[143] _Othello_, IV. i. 20.

[144] _Macbeth_, I. v. 35.

[145] _Macbeth_, III. ii. 50.

[146] _Sonnet_, lxx.

[147] _Romeo and Juliet_, I. v. 45.

[148] _Lucrece_, 1009.

[149] _Romeo and Juliet_, I. ii. 86.

[150] _King Lear_, IV. vi. 11.

[151] _Ibid._ 58.

[152] _Hamlet_, V. ii. 85.

[153] _Tempest_, II. i. 254. Chaucer’s epithet for the
Chough was “the theef.”

[154] _All’s Well that Ends Well_, IV. i. 19.

[155] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, III. ii. 19. The chough,
by association with man, may become a companionable
creature. At Ardkinglas, Loch Fyne, Lady Noble has
kept for some years a couple of choughs, brought from
Ireland, which are at liberty to fly about the woods
and hills, but come back to the mansion house for food
and attend their mistress or her guests along the
pathways. They even come into the house and perch on
the hand of any one who has the courage to invite them.

[156] _Macbeth_, III. iv. 123.

[157] _1 Henry IV._ I. iii. 221.

[158] _1 Henry VI._ II. iv. 16.

[159] _3 Henry VI._ V. vi. 46. Chaucer’s epithet for this
bird was “the jangling pye.”

[160] _Tempest_, II. ii. 158.

[161] _Merry Wives_, III. iii. 34.

[162] _Cymbeline_, III. iv. 47.

[163] _Taming of the Shrew_, IV. iii. 165.

[164] _1 Henry IV._ II. i. 15. Chaucer’s reference to the
bird is “The cok, that orloge is of thorpes lyte.”
_Parlement_, 350.

[165] _Romeo and Juliet_, IV. iv. 3.

[166] _Tempest_, I. ii. 384.

[167] _Hamlet_, I. i. 147-164.

[168] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, III. ii. 20.

[169] _King Lear_, II. iv. 45.

[170] _As You Like It_, II. vii. 86.

[171] _Romeo and Juliet_, II. iv. 69.

[172] _Cymbeline_, III. iv. 138.

[173] _1 Henry IV._ V. iii. 56.

[174] _Titus Andronicus_, IV. ii. 101.

[175] _Antony and Cleopatra_, III. ii. 48.

[176] _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 19.

[177] _Lucrece_, 1611. Chaucer had already chronicled “the
jalous swan, ayens his deth that singeth.” _Parlement
of Foules_, 342.

[178] _King John_, V. vii. 20.

[179] _Othello_, V. ii. 249.

[180] _Merchant of Venice_, III. ii. 43.

[181] V. i. 14.

[182] _Twelfth Night_, II. v. 28.

[183] _1 Henry IV._ II. i. 25.

[184] _1 Henry VI._ III. iii. 5. Chaucer refers to

The pecock, with his aungels fethres brighte.

[185] _Troilus and Cressida_, III. iii. 244.

[186] _King Henry V._ IV. i. 195.

[187] _Comedy of Errors_, IV. iii. 74.

[188] _Venus and Adonis_, 1190.

[189] _Merchant of Venice_, II. vi. 5.

[190] _2 Henry IV._ V. i. 25.

[191] _Merchant of Venice_, II. ii. 123.

[192] _3 Henry VI._ II. ii. 17.

[193] _Antony and Cleopatra_, III. xiii. 196.

[194] _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 40.

[195] Chaucer’s phrase is:

The wedded turtel, with hir herte trewe. _Parlement_, 355.

It was the moaning croon of the bird from the high elms
that dwelt in Virgil’s memory.

[196] _1 Henry VI._ II. ii. 30.

[197] IV. iv. 154.

[198] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 315.

[199] _Hamlet_, II. ii. 572.

[200] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, III. i. 114.

[201] _Venus and Adonis_, 853.

[202] _Troilus and Cressida_, IV. ii. 8.

[203] II. iii. 19.

[204] _Romeo and Juliet_, III. v. 1-32.

[205] _2 Henry IV._ III. ii. 7. I have heard in East
Lothian a remarkably dark-complexioned child called “a
blacket ouzel.”

[206] _Winter’s Tale_, IV. iii. 9.

[207] _Macbeth_, IV. ii. 8.

[208] _Cymbeline_, IV. ii. 304.

[209] _Merchant of Venice_, V. i. 104.

[210] _2 Henry VI._ III. ii. 42.

[211] _King Lear_, II. ii. 59.

[212] II. v. 5.

[213] _Cymbeline_, IV. ii. 219. Chaucer speaks of “the tame
ruddock.”

[214] _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. i. 16.

[215] _1 Henry IV._ III. i. 260.

[216] _King Lear_, I. iv. 214.

[217] _Troilus and Cressida_, V. i. 34.

[218] _Hamlet_, V. ii. 212.

[219] _As You Like It_, II. iii. 44.

[220] _Tempest_, IV. i. 99.

[221] _Troilus and Cressida_, II. i. 67.

[222] Chaucer regarded this bird from another point of
view:――

The swalow, mordrer of the flyës smale
That maken hony of floures fresshe of hewe.
_Parlement_, 353.

[223] _Richard III._ V. ii. 23.

[224] _Titus Andronicus_, II. ii. 23.

[225] _2 Henry IV._ IV. iii. 31.

[226] _Winter’s Tale_, IV. iv. 118.

[227] _Timon of Athens_, III. vi. 29.

[228] _Merchant of Venice_, II. ix. 28.

[229] _Macbeth_, I. vi. 3.

[230] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi.

[231] _Lucrece_, 1079.

[232] _Sonnet_, cii.

[233] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, II. ii. 13.

[234] _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 178, V. iv. 1.

[235] _Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, Scene ii. 33.

[236] _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, I. ii. 72.

[237] _Merchant of Venice_, V. i. 102.

Index.

Arden, Forest of, 14, 16, 18.

_As You Like It_, scenery of, 13.

Autumn and Bird-life, 24.

Birds, varied attractions of, 1;
modes of capture of, 9-12;
at different seasons, 23;
list of Shakespeare’s, 28;
of prey, 30;
of the Crow family, 69;
of the Farmyard, 81.

Blackbird, 96.

Bunting, 99.

Buzzard, 42.

Chaucer, his love of Nature, 2;
his delight in birds, 3, 4;
on the Nightingale, 5;
on the Eagle, 31;
on the Falcon, 39;
on the Kite, 43;
on the Owl, 58;
on the Lapwing, 67;
on the Chough, 76;
on the Magpie, 79;
on the Cock, 81;
on the Swan, 86;
on the Peacock, 89;
on the Turtle-dove, 92;
on the Swallow, 103.

Chough, 74.

Cock, 81.

Cormorant, 51.

Crows, 33, 72, 94.

Cuckoo, 60, 93, 113.

Dabchick or Dive-dapper, 68.

Daws, 38, 78.

Deer-hunting, 18.

Doves, 90.

Duck, wild, 68.

Eagle, 30.

Estridge, 50.

Falcon, 39.

Falconer, Hereditary Grand, 41, note.

Falconry, 36-39.

Finch, 93.

Flies, 20.

Game-birds, 63.

Goose, 83.

Grebes, 58, 68.

Hare-coursing, 20.

Hawks and Hawking, 36, 39.

Hedge-Sparrow, 101.

House-Martin, 104.

House-Sparrow, 101.

Jackdaw, 78.

Jay, 80.

Keats’ “Ode to the Nightingale,” 113.

Kestrel, 40.

Kite, 42.

Lapwing, 67.

Lark, 93, 94, 113.

Loon or Lown, 52.

Mallard, 68.

Magpie, 79.

Martlet, 104.

Mews, origin of, 41, note.

Nature, contrasts in, 26.

Newton, Prof., cited, 42.

Night and its birds, 56, 95.

Nightingale, 95, 106, 113.

Osprey, 46.

Ostrich, 50.

Ousel, 93, 96.

Owl, 54.

Papingo, in Archery, 50.

Parrot, 48.

Partridge, 65.

Peacock, 89.

Pelican, 51.

Peregrine Falcon, 40.

Pheasant, 64.

Philomela or Nightingale, 106.

Pigeon, 90, 92.

Popinjay, 49.

Quail, 66.

Raven, 69.

Redbreast, 100.

Rook, 72.

Ruddock, 100.

Shakespeare’s youthful surroundings, 6;
his sports, 7, 8, 9;
his sympathy with living creatures, 7.

Shelley’s “Ode to the Skylark,” 113.

Snipe, 66.

Sparrow-hawk, 41.

Spring and birds, 24.

Starling, 78.

Summer, birds in, 23.

Swallow, 103.

Swan, 85.

Thrush or Throstle, 93, 97.

Turkey-cock, 88.

Turtle-dove, 91.

Vulture, 46.

Wagtail, 99.

Wild-duck, 68.

Wild-goose, 83.

Winter, birds in, 25.

Woodcock, 63.

Wordsworth’s “Ode to the Cuckoo,” 113.

Wren, 93, 98.

Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and Co. Ltd.

Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. Two misspelled words were corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the book. Some illustrations were moved nearer to the relevant text.

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