Folk-lore of Shakespeare

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 woeIn 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 prodigiesDo so conjointly meet, let not men say,‘These are their reasons, – they are natural;’For, I believe, they are portentous thingsUnto 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 displayUpon 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 wasOf Jove himself; and now reigns hereA 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 fathersShould have thus little mercy on their flesh?Judicious punishment! ’Twas this flesh begotThose 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

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

“whenThe 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 forthA 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’dA 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 layOn 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 everBeat 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 hoarseThat croaks the fatal entrance of DuncanUnder my battlements. Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-fullOf 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’dWith raven’s feather from unwholesome fenDrop 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 lackThe flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, norThe azured harebell, like thy veins; no, norThe leaf of eglantine, whom not to slanderOut-sweeten’d not thy breath: the ruddock would,With charitable bill, – O bill, sore-shamingThose rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lieWithout a monument! – bring thee all this;Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are noneTo 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 wrenSince o’er shady groves they hover,And with leaves and flowers do coverThe 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: