18 DICTIONARY OF NAMES OF BRITISH BIRDS. 
Bitter Bank or Birreriz. Scottish Border names for the 
SAND-MARTIN, supposed to have arisen from its habit 
of biting the bank as it makes its nesting-tunnel (Bolam). 
Birrer, Byrrer, or Brrrer Bum: The BITTERN. (Provincial.) 
Drayton (‘‘ Polyolbion ”’) has the “ buzzing bitter.’ Nelson 
and Clarke cite “ Bytter or Bitter” as occurring in 
‘“ Neville’s Marriage Feast,” 1526. 
BITTERN [No. 268]. This fine species formerly bred com- 
monly in many parts of the British Islands. The name 
Bittern is from Old English bitoure, bittour, bittourn, 
bytoure, botor, or buttour, cognate with Fr. butor, Low 
Lat. butorius. Dr. Murray says the word is of doubtful 
origin, but it seems probable that it is from the medizval 
name for bitterns, Botawrus, which again was no doubt 
originally derived from the taurus of Pliny (bk. x., c. 42), 
a bird that imitated the lowing of an ox, and was no doubt 
the Bittern. The name occurs as “ Buttour or bittour ” 
in Turner (1544), as “‘ Bittur ” in Spenser (““ Faerie Queene ’’), 
as “* Bitter’ in Drayton (‘‘ Polyolbion ”’) and as “ Bittour 
or Bittern or Mire-drum ” in Willughby (1678), who says, 
“it is called by later writers Butorius and Botaurus because 
it seems to imitate boatum tauri, the bellowing of a bull.” 
He also writes, “They say that it gives always an odd 
number of bombs at a time, viz. three or five, which in my 
own observation I have found to be false. It begins to 
bellow about the beginning of February, and ceases when 
breeding-time is over. The common people are of opinion 
that it thrusts its bill into a reed, by the help whereof 
it makes that lowing or drumming noise. Others say that 
it thrusts its bill into the water or mud or earth.” In 
Thomson’s “‘ Spring ” we find this idea expressed :— 
The Bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht 
To shake the surrounding marsh. 
Burns also expresses the same belief :— 
Ye Bitterns, till the quagmire reels 
Rair for his sake ! 
Subsequent writers, after Willughby, call it the Bittern. 
When more common, its flesh was accounted a deticacy, 
and even in Montagu’s day (1802) we are told the 
poulterers valued it at not less than half-a-guinea. 
BrrteRN Heron: The BITTERN. (Pennant.) 
Birrour, Brrrourn, or Brrrur: The BITTERN (formerly). 
The first name occurs in Turner, the second in Merrett, 
and the third in Spenser. Montagu gives Bittour as a 
