44 TUCK: THE ORNITHOLOGY OF TENNYSON. 
There are few Tennysonian characters better known than his 
‘Northern Farmer.’ The old man, lying on his deathbed, tells his 
daughter of the improvements he has made in his holding, the chief 
of which was his having ‘stubbed Thurnaby waste.’ Here there 
was a ‘ boggle,’ or ghost, which had summary notice to quit. 
Moist loike a butter- bump, fur I heerd * um aboot an’ aboot, 
But I stubb’d ‘um oop wi’ the lot, an’ raaved an’ rembled ’um oot. 
r. Cordeaux, in his ‘ Birds of the Humber District’ (p. 104), gives 
st 
the name of ‘butter bump’ would doubtless have been about 1820 
a ‘household word’ at Somersby Rectory 
The passages in the ‘ Princess’ relating to birds are not many, 
but most interesting. Hilarion, speaking of his ambition to win the 
Princess Ida, is made to say, 
‘ The crane,’ I said, ‘may chatter of haa crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I 
An eagle clang an eagle to the ceatad 
In this poem is introduced the song to ‘the swallow winging south,’ 
and when the voice of the disguised Hilarion sounds rough and 
~coarse in comparison with the tuneful trebles of the ‘sweet girl- 
graduates,’ the Princess thus criticises his sae 
-divers sae 
Shall croak Wee state er, or the co iis 
Grate her harsh kindred in shee 
Hilarion declares that in his boyish pie ove jie spoke to him 
of her to whom his first love was given: 
At ond Natit 
With Ida, Ida, Ida rang ha 
The leader wild-swan in pratt tha. stars 
Would clang it. 
Perhaps the best comment that could be made on these lines is 
M de 
Some years ago, during the prevalence of a severe “blast,” I saw 
forty-two of these noble birds pass over our marshes, flying in the 
same familiar arrow-head formation as wild geese use—a sight not to 
be forgotten, not alone for their large size and snowy whiteness, but 
their grand trumpet-notes. Now single, clear, distinct, clarion-like, 
a solitary bugle sounds the advance—or the tongue of some old 
hound, uplifted when the pack runs mute with a breast-high scent; 
then, as if in emulation of their leader’s note, the entire flock would 
Naturalist, 
