but abroad where the plovers are called the The Tribe 

 Wandering Jews, from an old legend that the of the 

 first of the clan were the transmuted souls of over * 

 those Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion. 

 An old woman who gave me some plovers' 

 eggs told me in all good faith that the feadag 

 (the Gaelic name, equivalent to flute-note or 

 mellow whistle) neither ate nor drank but fed 

 upon the wind ... a superstition said to have 

 been almost universal in the Middle Ages. 



As for many of us, surely they are birds of 

 our love. The cry of the curlew on the hill, 

 the wail of the lapwing in waste places, have 

 not these something of the same enthralling 

 spell, the same entrancing call — the summons 

 to the wilderness, whether that be only to 

 solitude, or to wild loneliness, or to the 

 lonelier solitudes, the dim limitless wilderness 

 of the imagination — that the wind has, at 

 night, coming with rain through woods, or 

 that the sea has, heard in inland hollows, or 

 when athwart a long shore or among fallen 

 rocks the tide rises on the breast -swell of 

 coming storm ? They call us to the wild. 



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