BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 173 



" Amidst the Jlashtng and feathery foam 

 The stormy-petrel finds a home, 

 A home if such a place may be 

 For her ivho lives on the wide, wide sea, 

 On the craggy ice, in the frozen air. 

 And only scekcth her rocky lair 

 To zuarm her young and teach them spring 

 At once oer the wave on their stormy iving." 



Barry Cornwall. 



Nestino- with them, in some of these haunts on the wild 

 west coast of Scotland, is found the stormy-petrel, the tiny 

 bird which sailors, in the old days of sailing-ships, held in such 

 superstitious dread, and which are still called Mother Carey's 

 chickens. Who Mother Carey was Jack probably did not 

 care, thinking only that she was a personage of very evil 

 intentions towards ships and those "who go down to the 

 sea" in them, and wishing, when he saw the litde things 

 running along the waves that held the ship in chase, that 

 she had kept her chickens at home. But wiser bookmen 

 tell us that the name comes from Mater Cara, quoting in 

 proof of it, that the French call the petrels " les oiseaux 

 de Notre Dame," which may or may not be the explanation- 

 most probably not. For in the same dull way they tell us 

 that Davey Jones' locker means the locker of the ghost of the 



