The Tribe though Summer tarries still among the fields 



of the of France. 



Because of their association with solitary 

 and waste places it is not strange that these 

 harbingers of Swallow-time should everywhere 

 have an evil repute. Even amid the un- 

 imaginative Sussex or Wilts peasants, the cry 

 of the curlew, the wail of the lapwing, 

 forebode sorrow, cover a vague menace : 

 heard, at least, at dusk or at night, or in the 

 grey gloaming at the edge of day. 



The Cornish or Devon moorlander has 

 many wild tales of the whimbrel, whose swift- 

 repeated whistle hurtling suddenly in lonely 

 places has given rise to innumerable legends 

 of the Seven Whistlers, the Demon Huntsmen, 

 the Hunted Souls. In lona and along the 

 Earraid of Mull, where the whimbrel or ' little 

 curlew ' is rarely heard till May, though it is 

 generally called Chiilbinnach, a diminutive of 

 the Gaelic name of the curlew, Guilbin 

 (pronounced sometimes Kooley-pin or guley- 

 pin and sometimes gwilley-pin), a compound 

 word signifying wailing music, I have heard 

 it called Guilbhron (Kwillyvrone), Wail of 

 Sorrow, and again * Keenyvas ' or Death-Cry, 

 and once, either in a tale or poem, by the 

 singular name Guikhaismeachd, the Wail of 

 Warning. Any lowland cottar, from west of 

 102 



