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According to another idea²⁹⁸ 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.

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.”

Phœnix. 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 phœnix,
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 phœnix, 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 phœnix that shall make all France afeard.”²⁹⁹
 

Sir Thomas Browne³⁰⁰ tells us that there is but one phœnix 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 Phœnix and Turtle,” it is said,

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

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.” Malone³⁰¹ quotes from Lyly’s “Euphues and his England” (p. 312, ed. Arber): “For as there is but one phœnix 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 phœnix sits.”

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.³⁰² 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?”
 

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.”³⁰³

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.³⁰⁴ 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,³⁰⁵ 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 fighting³⁰⁶ 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.”
 

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.³⁰⁷ 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 day³⁰⁸ 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.

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.”³⁰⁹
 

It seems that the superstitious dread³¹⁰ attaching to this bird has chiefly arisen from its supposed longevity,³¹¹ 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 faculty³¹² 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.”
 

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.”³¹³

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.³¹⁴ In “3 Henry VI.” (v. 6) King Henry says:

 
“The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time.”
 

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,³¹⁵ “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.”
 

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!”³¹⁶
 

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,³¹⁷ 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”³¹⁸ 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.”
 

Drayton, too, in “The Owl,” has the following lines:

 
“Cov’ring with moss the dead’s unclosed eye,
The little redbreast teaching charitie.”
 

Rook. As an ominous bird this is mentioned in “Macbeth” (iii. 4). Formerly the nobles of England prided themselves in having a rookery³¹⁹ in the neighborhood of their castles, because rooks were regarded as “fowls of good omen.” On this account no one was permitted to kill them, under severe penalties. When rooks desert a rookery³²⁰ it is said to foretell the downfall of the family on whose property it is. A Northumbrian saying informs us that the rooks left the rookery of Chipchase before the family of Reed left that place. There is also a notion that when rooks haunt a town or village “mortality is supposed to await its inhabitants, and if they feed in the street it shows that a storm is at hand.”³²¹

The expression “bully-rook,” in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 3), in Shakespeare’s time, says Mr. Harting,³²² had the same meaning as “jolly dog” nowadays; but subsequently it became a term of reproach, meaning a cheating sharper. It has been suggested that the term derives its origin from the rook in the game of chess; but Douce³²³ considers it very improbable that this noble game, “never the amusement of gamblers, should have been ransacked on this occasion.”

Snipe. This bird was in Shakespeare’s time proverbial for a foolish man.³²⁴ In “Othello” (i. 3), Iago, speaking of Roderigo, says:

 
“For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit.”
 

Sparrow. A popular name for the common sparrow was, and still is, Philip, perhaps from its note, “Phip, phip.” Hence the allusion to a person named Philip, in “King John” (i. 1):

 
Gurney. Good leave, good Philip.
Bastard.Philip? – sparrow!
 

Staunton says perhaps Catullus alludes to this expression in the following lines:

 
“Sed circumsiliens, modo huc, modo illuc,
Ad solam dominam usque pipilabat.”
 

Skelton, in an elegy upon a sparrow, calls it “Phyllyp Sparowe;” and Gascoigne also writes “The praise of Philip Sparrow.”

In “Measure for Measure” (iii. 2), Lucio, speaking of Angelo, the deputy-duke of Vienna, says: “Sparrows must not build in his house-eaves, because they are lecherous.”³²⁵

Sparrow-hawk. A name formerly given to a young sparrow-hawk was eyas-musket,³²⁶ a term we find in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 3): “How now, my eyas-musket! what news with you?” It was thus metaphorically used as a jocular phrase for a small child. As the invention, too, of fire-arms took place³²⁷ at a time when hawking was in high fashion, some of the new weapons were named after those birds, probably from the idea of their fetching their prey from on high. Musket has thus become the established name for one sort of gun. Some, however, assert that the musket was invented in the fifteenth century, and owes its name to its inventors.

Starling. This was one of the birds that was in days gone by trained to speak. In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 3), Hotspur says:

 
“I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.”
 

Pliny tells us how starlings were taught to utter both Latin and Greek words for the amusement of the young Cæsars; and there are numerous instances on record of the clever sentences uttered by this amusing bird.

Swallow. This bird has generally been honored as the harbinger of spring, and Athenæus relates that the Rhodians had a solemn song to welcome it. Anacreon has a well-known ode. Shakespeare, in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 3), alludes to the time of the swallow’s appearance in the following passage:

 
“daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”
 

And its departure is mentioned in “Timon of Athens” (iii. 6): “The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship.”

We may compare Tennyson’s notice of the bird’s approach and migration in “The May Queen:”

 
“And the swallow ’ll come back again with summer o’er the wave.”
 

It has been long considered lucky for the swallow to build its nest on the roof of a house, but just as unlucky for it to forsake a place which it has once tenanted. Shakespeare probably had this superstition in his mind when he represents Scarus as saying, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 12):

 
“Swallows have built
In Cleopatra’s sails their nests: the augurers
Say, they know not, – they cannot tell; – look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge.”
 

Swan. According to a romantic notion, dating from antiquity, the swan is said to sing sweetly just before its death, many pretty allusions to which we find scattered here and there throughout Shakespeare’s plays. In “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 2), Portia says:

 
“he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.”
 

Emilia, too, in “Othello” (v. 2), just before she dies, exclaims:

 
“I will play the swan,
And die in music.”
 

In “King John” (v. 7), Prince Henry, at his father’s death-bed, thus pathetically speaks:

 
“’Tis strange that death should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.”
 

Again, in “Lucrece” (1611), we have these touching lines:

 
“And now this pale swan in her watery nest,
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.”
 

And once more, in “The Phœnix and Turtle:”

 
“Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.”
 

This superstition, says Douce,³²⁸ “was credited by Plato, Chrysippus, Aristotle, Euripides, Philostratus, Cicero, Seneca, and Martial. Pliny, Ælian, and Athenæus, among the ancients, and Sir Thomas More, among the moderns, treat this opinion as a vulgar error. Luther believed in it.” This notion probably originated in the swan being identified with Orpheus. Sir Thomas Browne³²⁹ says, we read that, “after his death, Orpheus, the musician, became a swan. Thus was it the bird of Apollo, the bird of music by the Greeks.” Alluding to this piece of folk-lore, Carl Engel³³⁰ remarks: “Although our common swan does not produce sounds which might account for this tradition, it is a well-known fact that the wild swan (Cygnus ferus), also called the ‘whistling swan,’ when on the wing emits a shrill tone, which, however harsh it may sound if heard near, produces a pleasant effect when, emanating from a large flock high in the air, it is heard in a variety of pitches of sound, increasing or diminishing in loudness according to the movement of the birds and to the current of the air.” Colonel Hawker³³¹ says, “The only note which I ever heard the wild swan make, in winter, is his well-known ‘whoop.’”³³²

Tassel-Gentle. ³³³ The male of the goshawk was so called on account of its tractable disposition, and the facility with which it was tamed. The word occurs in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 2):

 
“O, for a falconer’s voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!”
 

Spenser, in his “Fairy Queen” (bk. iii. c. iv. l. 49), says:

 
“Having far off espied a tassel-gent
Which after her his nimble wings doth straine.”
 

This species of hawk was also commonly called a “falcon-gentle,” on account of “her familiar, courteous disposition.”³³⁴

Turkey. This bird, so popular with us at Christmas-tide, is mentioned in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), where the First Carrier says: “God’s body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.” This, however, is an anachronism on the part of Shakespeare, as the turkey was unknown in this country until the reign of Henry VIII. According to a rhyme written in 1525, commemorating the introduction of this bird, we are told how:

 
“Turkies, carps, hoppes, piccarell, and beere,
Came into England all in one yeare.”
 

The turkey is again mentioned by Shakespeare in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), where Fabian says of Malvolio: “Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him: how he jets under his advanced plumes!”

Vulture. In several passages Shakespeare has most forcibly introduced this bird to deepen the beauty of some of his exquisite passages. Thus, in “King Lear” (ii. 4), when he is complaining of the unkindness of a daughter, he bitterly exclaims:

 
“O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here.”
 

What, too, can be more graphic than the expression of Tamora in “Titus Andronicus” (v. 2):

 
“I am Revenge, sent from the infernal kingdom,
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind.”
 

Equally forcible, too, are Pistol’s words in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 3): “Let vultures gripe thy guts.”

Johnson considers that “the vulture of sedition” in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 3) is in allusion to the tale of Prometheus, but of this there is a decided uncertainty.

Wagtail. In “King Lear” (ii. 2), Kent says, “Spare my grey beard, you wagtail?” the word being used in an opprobrious sense, to signify an officious person.

Woodcock. In several passages this bird is used to denote a fool or silly person; as in “Taming of the Shrew” (i. 2): “O this woodcock! what an ass it is!” And again, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (v. 1), where Claudio, alluding to the plot against Benedick, says: “Shall I not find a woodcock too?” In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3) Biron says:

 
“O heavens, I have my wish!
Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish.”
 

The woodcock has generally been proverbial as a foolish bird – perhaps because it is easily caught in springes or nets.³³⁵ Thus the popular phrase “Springes to catch woodcocks” meant arts to entrap simplicity,³³⁶ as in “Hamlet” (i. 3):

 
“Aye, springes to catch woodcocks.”
 

A similar expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Loyal Subject” (iv. 4):

 
“Go like a woodcock,
And thrust your neck i’ th’ noose.”
 

“It seems,” says Nares, “that woodcocks are now grown wiser by time, for we do not now hear of their being so easily caught. If they were sometimes said to be without brains, it was only founded on their character, certainly not on any examination of the fact.”³³⁷ Formerly, one of the terms for twilight³³⁸ was “cock-shut time,” because the net in which cocks, i. e., woodcocks, were shut in during the twilight, was called a “cock-shut.” It appears that a large net was stretched across a glade, and so suspended upon poles as to be easily drawn together. Thus, in “Richard III.” (v. 3), Ratcliff says:

 
“Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself,
Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop,
Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers.”
 

In Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Gypsies” we read:

 
“Mistress, this is only spite;
For you would not yesternight
Kiss him in the cock-shut light.”
 

Sometimes it was erroneously written “cock-shoot.” “Come, come away then, a fine cock-shoot evening.” In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iv. 1) we find the term “cock-light.”

Wren. The diminutive character of this bird is noticed in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1, song):

 
“The wren with little quill.”
 

In “Macbeth” (iv. 2), Lady Macbeth says:

 
“the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.”
 

Considering, too, that as many as sixteen young ones have been found in this little bird’s nest, we can say with Grahame, in his poem on the birds of Scotland:

 
“But now behold the greatest of this train
Of miracles, stupendously minute;
The numerous progeny, claimant for food
Supplied by two small bills, and feeble wings
Of narrow range, supplied – ay, duly fed —
Fed in the dark, and yet not one forgot.”
 

The epithet “poor,” applied to the wren by Lady Macbeth, was certainly appropriate in days gone by, when we recollect how it was cruelly hunted in Ireland on St. Stephen’s day – a practice which prevailed also in the Isle of Man.³³⁹