Soft- winged Children of Night 357 



the moors in other places ; but nowhere are they more 

 abundant than on the hazel-covered hillsides, down towards 

 Drws-y-nant, and Dolgelly. There, towards the close of a 

 summer evening, when the shadows, lengthening across 

 your path, begin to blur the outlines of near things, and 

 only the contour of the mountain, behind which the sun 

 went down an hour ago, stands sharply out, you may always 

 count upon seeing Goatsuckers flitting noiselessly past, or 

 wheeling, swallow-like, round the trees overhead, in pursuit 

 of those other soft-winged children of the night, the silvery 

 moths. The gloaming has quickened each into activity, and 

 scarcely are the goings and comings of the one more 

 uncertain, and ghost-like, than the other. The eerie purring, 

 too, which is the male bird's serenade of his mistress, is a 

 sound peculiarly in keeping with the scene, and with the 

 hour. Though never loud, it has the penetrating power of 

 a stage whisper, and vibrates through the trees till distance 

 becomes an altogether uncertain quantity. One moment it 

 is pulsating in the ear, in a manner strangely suggestive of 

 a disturbance of sound waves ; the next, as the bird turns 

 his head, it becomes softened to a mere echo of its former 

 volume. Perhaps, while you pause undecided as to whether 

 you are listening to one or more performers, the song comes 

 suddenly to an end, and the mystery of the numbers of the 

 orchestra is still further heightened by a succession of whip- 

 thong-like notes emitted as the bird, or birds, flit by unseen, 

 and on such silent wing, that it is from their vocal efforts 

 only that their presence can be recognised. Need we 

 wonder that in an age, and amongst a people prone to 

 superstitions, such a creature should have come to be 

 regarded as uncanny ? 



" Neither substance quite nor shadow, 

 Haunting lonely moor and meadow." l 



Here, the Nightjar is called Deryn corff^ or " corpse bird," 

 and hardly a death occurs in the village but someone will 

 tell you that he " heard a strange bird last night, and knew 

 some spirit was passing into the unknown world." It is, 



1 Scott's Monastery. 



