Folk-lore of Shakespeare

“Man-hod I am, therefore I me delyghtTo hunt and hawke, to nourish up and fedeThe greyhounde to the course, the hawke to th’ flight,And to bestryde a good and lusty stede.”

In noticing, then, Shakespeare’s allusions to this sport, we have a good insight into its various features, and also gain a knowledge of the several terms associated with it. Thus frequent mention is made of the word “haggard” – a wild, untrained hawk – and in the following allegory (“Taming of the Shrew,” iv. 1), where it occurs, much of the knowledge of falconry is comprised:

“My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty;And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,224For then she never looks upon her lure.Another way I have to man my haggard,To make her come, and know her keeper’s call;That is, to watch her, as we watch these kitesThat bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not.”225

Further allusions occur in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 1), where Viola says of the Clown:

“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;And to do that well craves a kind of wit:He must observe their mood on whom he jests,The quality of persons, and the time;And, like the haggard, check at every featherThat comes before his eye.”

In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Hero, speaking of Beatrice, says that:

“her spirits are as coy and wildAs haggards of the rock.”

And Othello (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening her to a hawk, exclaims:

“if I do prove her haggard, —I’d whistle her off.”226

The word “check” alluded to above was a term in falconry applied to a hawk when she forsook her proper game and followed some other of inferior kind that crossed her in her flight227– being mentioned again in “Hamlet” (iv. 7), where the king says:

“If he be now return’dAs checking at his voyage.”228

Another common expression used in falconry is “tower,” applied to certain hawks, etc., which tower aloft, soar spirally to a height in the air, and thence swoop upon their prey. In “Macbeth” (ii. 4) we read of

“A falcon, towering in her pride of place;”

in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 1) Suffolk says,

“My lord protector’s hawks do tower so well;”

and in “King John” (v. 2) the Bastard says,

“And like an eagle o’er his aery229 towers.”

The word “quarry,” which occurs several times in Shakespeare’s plays, in some instances means the “game or prey sought.” The etymology has, says Nares, been variously attempted, but with little success. It may, perhaps, originally have meant the square, or enclosure (carrée), into which the game was driven (as is still practised in other countries), and hence the application of it to the game there caught would be a natural extension of the term. Randle Holme, in his “Academy of Armory” (book ii. c. xi. p. 240), defines it as “the fowl which the hawk flyeth at, whether dead or alive.” It was also equivalent to a heap of slaughtered game, as in the following passages. In “Coriolanus” (i. 1), Caius Marcius says:

“I’d make a quarryWith thousands of these quarter’d slaves.”

In “Macbeth” (iv. 3)230 we read “the quarry of these murder’d deer;” and in “Hamlet” (v. 2), “This quarry cries on havock.”

Another term in falconry is “stoop,” or “swoop,” denoting the hawk’s violent descent from a height upon its prey. In “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1) the expression occurs, “till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged.” In “Henry V.” (iv. 1), King Henry, speaking of the king, says, “though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.” In “Macbeth” (iv. 3), too, Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, exclaims, “What! … at one fell swoop?”231 Webster, in the “White Devil,”232 says:

“If she [i. e., Fortune] give aught, she deals it in small parcels,That she may take away all at one swoop.”

Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk’s trappings. Thus, in “Lucrece” he says:

“Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tellsWith trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells.”

And in “As You Like It” (iii. 3),233 Touchstone says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.” The object of these bells was to lead the falconer to the hawk when in a wood or out of sight. In Heywood’s play entitled “A Woman Killed with Kindness,” 1617, is a hawking scene, containing a striking allusion to the hawk’s bells. The dress of the hawk consisted of a close-fitting hood of leather or velvet, enriched with needlework, and surmounted with a tuft of colored feathers, for use as well as ornament, inasmuch as they assisted the hand in removing the hood when the birds for the hawk’s attack came in sight. Thus in “Henry V.” (iii. 7), the Constable of France, referring to the valor of the Dauphin, says, “’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.”234 And again, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:

“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 doesWith 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 mastSeal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brainsIn 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 myselfTo think, when thou shalt be disedged by herThat 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 eagleTire 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 wordNips 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 impNew 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 assayHis baser breast, but in his kestrell kyndA 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 beaksWith 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 breastThe 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 lureBringeth 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 earthCan 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, haveBy magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forthThe 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 martletBuilds 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 swallowAre 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 partTo 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 singWhole 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 thoughtNo 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 itBy 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.