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“Hood my unmann’d²³⁵ blood, bating in my cheeks.”
 

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 falconer²³⁶ twisted round his hand. Othello (iii. 3) says:

 
“Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings.”
 

We find several allusions to the training of hawks.²³⁷ 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.”
 

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

 
“Nay, do not fly: I think we have watch’d you now,”
 

Again, in “Othello” (iii. 3),²³⁸ 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.²³⁹ 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.”
 

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.²⁴⁰

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 imp²⁴¹ 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.”
 

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.²⁴² 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 staniel²⁴³ checks at it”
 

– staniel being a corruption of stangdall, a name for the kestrel hawk.²⁴⁴ “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.”
 

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.²⁴⁵ Shakespeare here alludes to a proverbial saying, “He knows not a hawk from a handsaw.”²⁴⁶ Mr. J. C. Heath²⁴⁷ 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.”

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,²⁴⁸ hath betray’d him.”
 

Kestrel. A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed,²⁴⁹ 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.”
 

By some²⁵⁰ 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,²⁵¹ 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. Holinshed²⁵² 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. Dyce²⁵³ also considers kestrel distinct from coistrel.

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.²⁵⁴

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.²⁵⁵ 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.²⁵⁶ Mr. Dyce²⁵⁷ 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.”

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,²⁵⁸ in the “White Devil” (1857, p. 13), says:

 
“forward lapwing!
He flies with the shell on’s head.”
 

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.”²⁵⁹

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.”²⁶⁰
 

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,²⁶¹ 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.”
 

In Scotland²⁶² 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.”
 

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,²⁶³ 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.”
 

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

 
“chattering pies in dismal discords sung.”
 

There are numerous rhymes²⁶⁴ 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.”
 

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 Sweden²⁶⁵ 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.

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.”
 

Forster²⁶⁶ 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.”
 

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 Browne²⁶⁷ 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?”²⁶⁸ 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.”
 

Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old superstition²⁶⁹ that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself awake, lest the glow-worm should devour her. The classical fable²⁷⁰ 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.”
 

Sometimes the nightingale is termed Philomel, as in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2, song):²⁷¹

 
“Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby.”
 

Osprey. This bird,²⁷² 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.”
 

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 bird²⁷³ is said to be shown by its swallowing iron and other hard substances.²⁷⁴ 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,²⁷⁵ 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,²⁷⁶ 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.

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. Vergil²⁷⁷ describes its death-howl from the top of the temple by night, a circumstance introduced as a precursor of Dido’s death. Ovid,²⁷⁸ 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,²⁷⁹ as well as to its being the bird of night.²⁸⁰ It has generally been associated with calamities and deeds of darkness.²⁸¹ 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.”
 

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 cries²⁸² 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?”
 

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”²⁸³ 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,²⁸⁴ 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!”
 

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.”²⁸⁵ 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.”
 

Ariel,²⁸⁶ 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.” Douce²⁸⁷ 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.²⁸⁸

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:²⁸⁹

 
“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.”
 

The rewards given to parrots to encourage them to speak are mentioned in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 2):²⁹⁰ “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).

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.”²⁹¹
 

The third and fourth folios read pajock,²⁹² 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.

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.²⁹³ The peacock has also been regarded as the emblem of pride and arrogance, as in “1 Henry VI.” (iii. 3):²⁹⁴

 
“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.”
 

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.”²⁹⁵
 

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”²⁹⁶ 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.²⁹⁷