60 THE HALCYON, OR KINGFISHER 



history, for, in the same outburst of anger, he finds 120 

 Oswald successively like a wagtail, a kingfisher, and 

 a goose, and every time to his discredit ! 



The But there is a yet more ancient connexion of the 



^Allione kingfisher or halcyon with the weather than the 

 mediaeval practice of converting the dead bird into 

 a vane. Its appearance was the certain sign and 

 assurance of calm weather, and it became the emblem 

 of peace. As such it was known, of course, to Ben 

 Jonson who (as every schoolboy knows) wore a 

 ' learned sock '. We, therefore, find him, in the elabo- 120 

 rate tableau vivant which he prepared for the Corona- 

 tion entertainment of King James, providing Quiet 

 with (among other accessories) 'an upright level as 

 the ensign of rest, on the top of which sat an halcyon 

 or king's fisher '. Ben's emblematical design (or ? 

 indeed, the still current phrase of * halcyon days ') 

 carries us back to the classical myth of Ceyx and 

 Alcyone, which caught the poetical fancy of Ovid, and 

 over which one memorable night Dan Chaucer fell 

 asleep and forgot his domestic discomfort. The myth HO 

 tells how, in reward for her lovingness in his lifetime, 

 and her loyalty after his death for her husband 

 drowned at sea, the gods changed Alcyone into the 

 beautiful bird that still in poetry bears her name, and" 

 gave her at the winter solstice a period of utter calm 

 in which to build her nest and rear her sea-borne 

 young. Hence Milton's fine allusion in the Nativity 

 Ode to ' the bird of calm ' that on the first Christmas- 

 eve sat ' brooding on the charmed wave '. 



The King- The kingfisher, if the weather be not too severe and 150 

 unsociable ^ OO( * ^ e pl ent ^ u ^ stays in the same locality the whole 

 bird. year round. It is an unsociable bird, being seldom 



