87 



FIELD WORDS AND WAYS. 



The robin, 'jolly Robin!' is an unlucky bird in some 

 places. When the horse-chestnut leaves turn scarlet the 

 redbreast sings in a peculiarly plaintive way, as if in tone 

 with the dropping leaves and the chill air that follows 

 the early morning frost. You may tell how much 

 moisture there is in the air in a given place by the 

 colours of the autumn leaves ; the horse-chestnut, scarlet 

 near a stream, is merely yellowish in drier soils. Cock 

 robin sings the louder for the silence of other birds, and 

 if he comes to the farmstead and pipes away day by 

 day on a bare cherry tree or any bou^h that is near the 

 door, after his custom, the farmer thinks it an evil omen. 

 For a robin to sing persistently near the house winter or 

 summer is a sign that something is about to go wrong. 

 Yet the farmer will not shoot him. The roughest 

 poaching fellows who would torture a dog will not kill a 

 robin ; it is bad luck to have anything to do with it. 

 Most people like to see fir boughs and holly brought 

 into the house to brighten the dark days with their 

 green, but the cottage children tell you that they must 

 not bring a green fir branch indoors, because as it withers 

 their parents will be taken ill and fade away. Indeed 

 the labouring people seem in all their ways and speech 

 to be different, survivals perhaps of a time when their 

 words and superstitions were the ways of a ruder 

 England. The lanes and the gateways in the fields, as 



