Plover. 



The Tribe a Highland saying places it with the herons 

 of the an d wild-geese. 'When a man has shot six 

 herons, six wild-geese, and six curlews, he 

 may call himself a sportsman.' 



When the Golden Plover, or Grey Plover 

 as he is sometimes called, wheels in Spring 

 above the fallowlands of the North the 

 ploughman hears in his cry Plough weelf Sow 

 weelf Harrow weel! This beautiful bird — of 

 whom no poet has written a finer line than 

 Burns in 



"The deep-toned plover grey, wild whistling on the hill " — 



is not exempt from the common tradition of 

 uncanniness. He, too, is classed with the 

 dreaded ' Seven Whistlers ' : and from Corn- 

 wall to Iceland he is often vituperated as one 

 of these, or as of the spectral pack called 

 Gabriel's Hounds, or as of Odin's Phantom 

 Chase. I spoke of a name I had heard in 

 Iona and Mull for the whimbrel, but applicable 

 also to any plover or curlew . . . the Guilchais- 

 meachd or Wail of Warning, the Alarm Bird 

 so to say : and this repute is held by the 

 plover in many mining parts of England, 

 where it is said that the miners will not 

 descend a pit if the 'Whistlers' be heard 

 lamenting overhead. To this day there are 

 many regions not only in our own country 



no 



