118 THE GREEN WOODPECKER 



trout are open at the moment the fly is seized, it is drawn 

 far into the mouth, and the hook can scarcely be with- 

 drawn without fixing itself. But when the gills remain 

 closed in the act of taking the fly, it is expelled with the 

 water returning through the open mouth; the angler 

 either feels nothing or but a light touch, and the fish goes 

 free. 



XXVIII 



Writing in the thirteenth century, Thomas the Rhymer 

 The Green began his lay of Sir Tristrem with the folio w- 

 woodpecker i ng pre tty picture 



' In a mery mornynge of Maye, 

 By Huntly bankkes my selfe allone, 

 I herde the jay and the throstylle cokke, 

 The mawys menyde hir of hir song, 

 The wodewale beryde as a belle, 

 That all the wode abowte me ronge.' 



Now this Huntly was not the town and district of that 

 name in Aberdeenshire, but Huntly Burn, which, run- 

 ning through the Rhymer's Glen, forms the southerly 

 march of the estate of Abbotsford, or ' Clarty Hole,' as 

 it was called before a mightier wizard than True Thomas 

 gave it a more romantic title. The name Huntly was 

 carried to the north by the Gordons when they migrated 

 from their home on Tweedside. The jay, the throstle or 

 storm thrush, and the mavis or song thrush still make 

 the Rhymer's Glen to resound ; but the woodwail, yaffle, 

 or green woodpecker may be heard no more in that fair 

 land. It is one of those children of the forest which lost 

 its Scottish birthright when the old woodland disappeared 

 under a reckless system of cut-and-come-again ; and it 

 is a bird which no effort should be spared to re-establish, 



