334 The Folk-Lore of Natural History. [Sess. 
somehow or other receives a drop of the devil’s blood every May 
morning.” In the ‘Proceedings of the Berwickshire Nat. 
Club,’ vol. i. p. 219, we find this account: “ Children hang by 
the neck all the yellow-hammers they can lay hold of. They 
often take the bare gorbals or unfledged young of this bird and 
suspend these by a thread tied round the neck to one end of a 
cross-beam: they then suddenly strike the other end and drive 
the poor bird into the air. This operation they call ‘spangie 
hewit.’” In my younger days at Cramond school I can re- 
member the same process, only it went by the name of 
“spring wheasling.” In revenge for the treatment which it 
received, the yellow-hammer was supposed to curse its per- 
secutors in its song of— 
“ Dell, de’il tak’ ye, 
For me to big a bonnie nest, 
And you to take it frae me ;” 
or— 
“ Whetit te, whetit te, whee, 
Harry my nest and de’il tak’ ye.” 
It is to be hoped, however, that the present generation of 
school children know nothing of these fine arts of savagery, 
and that no more 
“The weary yeldrins have to wail 
Their little nestlings torn.” 
—Tannahill. 
THE WHITETHROAT 
is another bird whose nest is often found by boys, who seldom 
scruple to harry it, from a prejudice against the wheatie, on 
account of their belief that it sucks the eggs of other birds. 
One of its popular names in Berwickshire is “ Jenny cut-throat.” 
The bird, of course, lives entirely on insects and small 
fruits. An old school conundrum which country boys used 
to puzzle their town friends with ran thus :— 
“ A wheetie and a whitebird, 
A laverock and a lark, 
A blackie and a blackbird, 
How many birds is that ?” 
In some parts of Scotland the stonechat or stanechacker 
is exempted from the pains of harrying, in consequence of a 
