WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 157 



nests in lesser holes in the thatch ; sometimes they 

 use a swallow's nest built of mortar under the eaves, 

 to which the owners have not returned. 



The older folk still retain some faint superstitions 

 about swallows, looking upon them as semi-consecrated, 

 and not to be killed or interfered with. They will not 

 have their nests knocked down. If they do not return 

 to the eaves, but desert their nests, it is a sign of mis- 

 fortune impending over. the household. So, too, if 

 the rooks quit the rookery, or the colonies of bees in 

 the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and 

 do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. 

 If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in 

 the darkness as they will sometimes in a great storm 

 of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by 

 the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light 

 within the knocking of their wings betokens that 

 something sad is about to happen. If an invalid asks 

 for a pigeon taking a fancy to a dish of pigeons to 

 eat it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of 

 extreme illness. 



But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, 

 and soon begin to repair their nests or build new ones 

 with mortar from the roads ; a rainy day is very use- 

 ful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles, 

 finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them 

 there. In such weather they will fly backwards and 

 forwards by the side of a hedge for a length of time, 

 skimming just above the grass, when, looking down 

 on them instead of up at them, the white bar across 



