228 THE LAPWING. 



The eggs are highly esteemed as luxuries for the table, 

 and Mr. Howard Saunders, in the fourth edition of Yarrell, 

 says that the earliest "fetch such fancy prices as 15s. a- 

 piece, and a leading West End poulterer recently informed 

 the editor that if he were assured of having the first ten 

 eggs, he would not hesitate to give £5 for them. As the 

 supply increases the value rapidly falls, until it reaches 

 4s. 6d. per dozen, which is the average London price in the 

 season." ^ 



As the Peeseweep, when nesting, has a habit of flying 

 and screaming round any intruder upon her domain, this, in 

 Covenanting times, often led to the discovery of poor fugitive 

 Presbyterians in the moors and mosses of the hills by the 

 soldiers who were in search of them. On that account the 

 bird acquired a bad name amongst the country people ^ which 

 is thus alluded to by Grahame in his Birds of Scotland : — 



Ill-omened bird ! oft in the times 

 When monarchs owned no sceptre but the sword, 



Thou, hovering o'er the panting fugitive, 

 Througli dreary moss and moor, hast screaming led 

 The keen pursuer's eye ; oft hast thou hung, 

 Like a death flag, above the assembled throng, 

 Whose lips hymned praise. 



Some remnant of this ill-feeling towards the bird seems still 

 to linger in parts of the county, as may be gathered from 

 the following account of the Peeseweep given by a shepherd 

 at Godscroft to Mr. Hardy : — " When near their nests they 

 jouk down and rin away the contrair way ; they are very 



1 Yarrell's British Birds, fourth edition, vol. iii. p. 284. 



2 See Tales of a Orairuifathei; second series, p. 238. Tannahill says in his 

 Soldier's Return — 



The Peesweep's scraighin' owre the spunkie-cairn .' 

 My heart bodes ill. 



The bird seems, however, to have borne a bad character long before Covenanting 

 times, for Chaucer, in his Assembly of Foules (1561), calls it 



The false Lapwing ful of trecherye. 



