tgo1-1902.]| The Folk-Lore of Natural History. 335 
malediction which the bird itself is supposed to be pro- 
nouncing :— 
‘* Stane chack, devil tak’, 
They wha harry ma nest 
Will never rest, 
Will meet the pest. 
Deil brak their long back 
Wha my eggs wad tak-tak.” 
The lark is supposed to have ugly eyes, and there is a 
reference to this in “ Romeo and Juliet,” Act III. se. v.:— 
“ Some say the lark and loathéd toad change eyes.” 
I have given some instances of wanton cruelty to birds on 
account of superstition. We will now take the other and 
more pleasing side of the picture, where first we find 
THE Rosin. 
“ And thou the bird whom men love best, 
The pious bird with scarlet breast, 
The bird who by some name or other 
All men who know thee call thee brother.” 
The earliest Scottish poet who mentions the redbreast is 
Holland, in ‘The Howlat,’ written about 1453, and, appar- 
ently from its familiar disposition, he calls it “the hennis 
man” or family servant. ‘The Robins are too muckle about 
the doors the day for guid weather,” is an expression that at 
one time was common. Boys used to believe that the robins 
followed them into the woods for the purpose of intimating 
any danger that might waylay them, and sometimes the belief 
was so impressed upon them that they would take to their 
heels if the birds approached too closely. In some districts 
of the country the robin is looked upon as a hallowed bird, 
and very few boys will kill one, it being said that if they do, 
its spirit will some day return and seek the blood of the 
slayer. The story of the robins in the “ Babes of the Wood” 
is familiar to all, and the popular belief in robins covering 
dead bodies is very old. 
“No burial this pretty pair of any man receives, 
Till Robin redbreast piously did cover them with leaves.” 
Isaac Walton, in the ‘Compleat Angler’ (1653), speaks of the 
