200 AN INOFFENSIVE BIRD. 



Scarcely, we think, can this be the bird spoken of by 

 Dray ton in his ' Polyolbion ' 



The Yellow-pate, although she hurt the blooming tree, 

 Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she ; 



although we know not to what other the allusion is in- 

 tended. Grahame's lines are very descriptive : 



Even in a bird the simplest notes have charms ; 



For mo I love the Yellow Hammer's song. 



"When earliest buds begin to bulge, his note, 



Simple reiterated, oft is heard 



On leafless briar, or half-grown hedge-row thin, 



Nor does he cease his note till autumn's leaves 



Fall fluttering round his golden head so bright. 



Fair-plumaged bird ! cursed by the causeless hate 



Of every schoolboy, still by me thy lot 



Was pitied! Never did I tear thy nest: 



I loved thee, pretty bird, for 't was thy nest 



Which first, unhelped by older eyes, I found. 



The very spot I think I now behold ! 



Forth from my low-roofed home I wandered blithe 



Down to thy side, sweet Cart, where 'cross the stream 



A range of stones below a shallow ford 



Stood in the place of the now spanning arch. 



Up from that ford a little bank there was, 



With alder-copse and willow overgrown, 



Now worn away by mining winter floods ; 



There, at a bramble root, sunk in the grass, 



The hidden prize of withered field-straws formed. 



Well lined with many a coil of hair and moss, 



And in it laid five red-veined spheres, I found. 



Mudie says that 



The abundance and beauty of these birds do not, in any way, 

 win them favour. Boys destroy the nests of Yellow Buntings from 

 mere wantonness, and in some parts of the country break their eggs 

 with a sort of superstitious abhorrence. The bird does not haunt 

 cairns which have been collected over graves in the wilds, and 

 thereby associate itself with the terrors of these, as is the case with 

 the Wheatear ; neither does it abound most about those other places 

 which popular superstition is prone to invest with supernatural 

 terrors, and to link with the malignant powers of the spiritual 

 world. It is a bird of the fields and the daylight, offending in 

 nothing, except the want of song be an offence; and certainly not so 



