Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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—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:
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.[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.”
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:
Whose mother was her painting,[249] hath betray’d him.”
Kestrel. A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed,[250] and therefore used by Spenser, in his “Fairy Queen” (II. iii. 4), to signify base:
His baser breast, but in his kestrell kynd
A pleasant veine of glory he did fynd.”
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.
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):
Dryden also refers to this notion:
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:
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:
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]
Kite. This bird was considered by the ancients to be unlucky. In “Julius Cæsar” (v. 1) Cassius says:
Fly o’er our heads, and downward look on us.”
In “Cymbeline” (i. 2), too, Imogen says,
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.”
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:
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:
Again, in “Measure for Measure” (i. 4), Lucio exclaims:
With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,
Tongue far from heart.”
Once more, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), we read:
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:
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]
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:
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty.”[261]
In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2, song) we have a graphic touch of pastoral life:
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):
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:
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:
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:
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:
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 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:
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,[264] and is thus
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