82



Mr. Hubert D. Astley,



when they hear their wild brothers and sisters and cannot see

them. Call? no wonder they call. But why haven’t their cries

been heard through all these many years by the Church of the

country. Is it because to preach against such horrors would be

unpopular, is it because it matters not what the people do so long

as coffers are full. Bah ! and if you complain to the Priests they

shrug their shoulders. The dumb animals are not Christians,

and they who should and could have (it is getting rather too late

now) taught their people the spirit of mercy, are amongst the

first to fill their bellies with Robins, Titmice and even Golden-

crested Wrens, some of which have been lured to their death by

blinded birds.


I think that the man in the roccolo ‘ sat up’ that day when

I told him what I thought about it all, and a wooden cross was

erected on the top of the turret where he crouched like a large

spider awaiting flies. I asked him whether it signified the

crucifixion of the birds? I asked him whether he supposed the

‘ Santissima Vergine ’ smiled upon him when he went to Mass,

leaving his birds with their scorched and lifeless eyes in the

Roccolo.


The Roccolo! My indignation has drawn me from the

description of the turret. At the back is a flight of stone steps

leading first of all into a small lobby where food is kept for the

fowlers, and from thence you ascend a short ladder which brings

you into the upper chamber overlooking and surmounting the

death-bower. There is no window, but a large opening, with

boards fixed at either side in which are gaps for peeping through,

and a space in the centre. Behind the boards, which are as it

were rough shutters, the fowler sits holding what at first sight

might be taken for a rosary, but is really small brass bird-calls

of various notes and sounds strung on a string, one of these

calls he keeps to his lips and from time to time imitates

first one bird and then another. Suddenly he rises up. Two

or three birds, attracted by the decoys or by the artificial calls,

have settled on the bent saplings. At the fowler’s feet is a heap

of wicker racquets, or what look like short-handled racquets:

one of these he siezes and quickly hurls it through the open

space between the shutters, through the window one might say,



