tgo1-1902.| The Folk-Lore of Natural History. 333 
own Doric, “ I’ve a craw tae pluck wi’ you, my man.” There 
is a widespread belief that the rooks are very punctual in 
starting their nest-building, and the following rhyme is won- 
derfully accurate as regards dates :— 
“ On the first of March 
The craws begin to search ; 
On the first of April 
They are sittin’ still ; 
By the end of May 
They’re a’ flown away, 
Croupin’ greedy back again 
Wi October’s wind and rain.” 
I do not remember ever seeing the crows building in 
February, but I have many a time seen them carrying sticks 
on the 1st of March, and this year was no exception. 
THE YELLOW-HAMMER. 
“Fair plumaged bird, cursed by the causeless hate 
Of every schoolboy.” 
—Graham’s ‘ Birds of Scotland’ 
This beautiful little bird is the subject of unaccountable 
superstition on the part of the peasantry in England and 
Scotland as well. Its nest therefore receives less mercy than 
that of almost any other bird. Its somewhat extraordinary 
appearance, nearly all of one colour, and that an unusual one 
in birds, is the only imaginable cause of the antipathy with 
which it is regarded. The yellow-hammer was accounted one 
of the devil’s birds, as instanced in the rhyme— 
“ Yellow, yellow yorlin’, 
Drink a drap o’ the de’il’s bluid 
Ilka Monday morning ”— 
and it was further believed that the devil, crouching in the 
form of a toad, sat upon the yellow-hammer’s eggs and hatched 
them and fed the young :— 
“Quarter puddock, quarter taed, 
Half a yellow yourlie.” 
Jamieson, in his ‘Scottish Dictionary, says: “The super- 
stition of the country has rendered it a very common belief 
among the illiterate and children that this bird, the yeldring, 
