THE SPARROW 77 



footprints. The scene is in Northumbria in ancient 

 Edwin's day, and at a General Assembly convoked 

 for the purpose of settling the national religion. 

 200 Paulinus may have been present, tall and pale and 

 wasted, listening with peculiar interest to the debates. 

 It was then that the aged ealderman of Bede's narra- 

 tive spoke the famous sparrow simile : 



' So seems to me the life of man, king, as a 

 sparrow's flight through the hall, when you sit at 

 meat in winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on 

 the hearth, and the icy rainstorm battering without. 

 The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for 

 a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire; 

 210 then, flying forth through the other, vanishes into 

 the darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment 

 the life of a man in our sight, but what is before it, 

 or what after it, we do not know. Now, if this new 

 religion tell us certainly of these things, let us 

 receive it.' 



The hedge-sparrow, popularly known on the female The hedge- 

 side as ' Blue Jenny ', from her lovely eggs of fairy s ^^^ 

 blue, is a wholly misnamed bird : it is no variety or sparrow. 

 relation of the true sparrow race, which it merely 

 220 resembles in size and markings. It should be known 

 to the public as the hedge-accentor but the name is 

 not a taking one. It is soft-billed, modest, and almost 

 timid; the common dupe of the cuckoo which the 

 true sparrow is too alert ever to be ; and has a slight 

 gift of song, which it publishes, from the top of a low 

 twig, for local and limited circulation only. Its 

 markings, though like those of passer domesticus on 

 a casual glance, are yet on inspection very different 

 from them. 



