184 THE YELLOW BUNTING. 



is a beautiful bird, and is seen sitting on low trees or hedge- 

 rows along our roadsides in spring and summer, uttering 

 his somewhat mournful notes, which have been likened 

 to — " A little bit o' bread, and no che — e — se." Its 

 song continues from early spring until autumn,^ and is 

 frequently heard on hot summer days when all other birds 

 are silent, being one of the pleasing rural sounds of summer, 

 which charm the ear of the lover of nature. It is likewise 

 one of our earliest morning songsters. 



Berwickshire boys are said to have handed down from 

 an ancient date to their successors a hatred of the Yellow 

 Hammer, by calling it one of the Deil's birds ; and hence 

 they delighted to harry its nest. They repeated the follow- 

 ing rhyme — 



Yellow, Yellow Yorlin, 



Drink a drap o' the Deil's blude 



Ilka Monday morning ; ^ 



and believed that the devil, crouching in the form of a toad, 

 sat upon its eggs, hatched them, and fed the young — 



Quarter piiddock, quarter taid, 

 Half a Yellow Yourlie. 



1 1 heard a Yellow Hammer singing at Paxton in 1888, as early as the 22nd of 

 January. Mr. Hardy has favoured me with the following notes on this bird : — 

 " Penmanshiel and Oldcambus, 18th Feb. 1838. — Singing for iirsttime, although 

 ground covered with snow and hard frost — the sunshine awoke it. 10th Feb. 

 1872. — Beginning to sing. 17th July 184-3. — Sings first, and saluted us about 

 3 A.M. 23rd July 1868.— Still in song. " 



" Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary says : — "The superstition of the country 

 has rendered it a very common belief among the illiterate and children that this 

 bird (the Yeldring) somehow or other receives a drop of the devil's blood every 

 May morning." 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 them 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 is called Spangie hewit. In other parts of Scotland this devoted bird's 

 communications with the devil are believed to be far more frequent, for it is said 

 to receive three drops of his blood every morning. Mr. Hardy says that he 

 heard this rhyme from a gentleman who passed his youth in the hills between 

 Berwick and Roxburgh shires, where it may still linger. — Hist. Ber. Nat. Cluh. 

 vol. i. p. 219. 



