FABLE AND FOLKLORE 89 



faith in the presentiment. Level-headed men knew well 

 enough what the Seven Whistlers were — "it's them long- 

 billed curlews, but I never likes to hear 'em," said one. 

 The northern name of these birds is "whimbrel," a form 

 of the English whimperer. As these curlews when mi- 

 grating often travel low on dark nights, and are unseen, 

 it is not strange that their unearthly cries should chill the 

 imagination of the superstitious, and that the Scotch 

 should call them "corpse-hounds." "Gabble retchet" is 

 another Scotch term ; and probably the Irish banshee had 

 a similar origin. Still another name is "Gabriel hounds," 

 originating, it is thought in Scandinavia, and explained 

 by the fact that there the calling to one another of bean- 

 geese in their nocturnal journeys, in spring, have a 

 singular resemblance to the yelping of beagles; and the 

 story is that Gabriel is obliged to follow his spectral pack, 

 said to be human-headed, high in the dark air, as a 

 punishment for having once hunted on Sunday. 



Wordsworth in one of his sonnets connects this belief 

 with the German legend of the Wild Huntsman, "doomed 

 the flying hart to chase forever on aerial grounds." A 

 Lancashire explanation, quoted by Moncure D. Conway 

 is that these migrants, there deemed to be plovers, were 

 "Wandering Jews," so called because they contained the 

 souls of Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion, and in con- 

 sequence were condemned to float in the air forever. A 

 curious coincidence, given by Skeat, 7 is that the Malays 

 have an elaborate story of a spectral huntsman, and hear 

 him in the nocturnal notes of the birikbirik, a nightjar. 



It is hardly more than a century ago that intelligent 

 men abandoned the belief that certain birds hibernated in 

 hollow trees, caverns, or even buried themselves every 

 autumn in the mud at the bottom of ponds, and then re- 



