HO BIRDS IN LEGEND 



periodical Nature Notes (VI, 189) the following, trans- 

 lated from the Treasury of Brunetti Latini, a teacher of 

 Dante in the poet's youth: "By the song of the cock we 

 may know the hour of the night, and even as the cock 

 before it singeth beateth its body with its wings, so should 

 a man before he prays flagellate himself." To this added 

 a fourteenth-century chant, as follows: 



Cock at midnight croweth loud, 



And in this delighteth: 

 But before he crows, his sides 



With his wings he smiteth: 

 So the priest at midnight, when 



Him from rest he raiseth, 

 Firstly doeth penitence, 



After that he praiseth. 



Ratzel mentions that in Abyssinia cocks were often 

 placed in churches as living alarm-clocks. It is a tradition 

 that at the moment of the great Birth the cock crowed : 

 Christus natus est! Hence as early as the 4th century 

 arose the belief in its crowing always on Christmas 

 eve — a legend alluded to by Shakespeare: 



Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 

 Whereon our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 

 The bird of dawning singeth all night long. 



By a similar passage in Hamlet, where Bernardo, 

 Heraldo, and Marcellus are discussing the apparition of 

 the ghost of Hamlet's father, the reader learns of an- 

 other ancient superstition: 



Bern. It was about to speak when the cock crew. 



Her. And then it started like a guilty thing 

 Upon a fearful summons. I have heard 

 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 



