124 BRITISH BIRDS. 



And so throughout broad England 



He won the poor man's love, 

 While on his path look'd kindly down 



The God who dwells above ! 

 Nor, when forgotten was the might 



That fought at Azincour, 

 Did men forget the gentle knight 

 Who stood up boldly for the right 



Of the friendless and the poor. 

 Now still, although the times are changed. 



And many a year has fled. 

 And Reginald de Davenport 



And Isabel are dead, 

 Yet on the winter evenings, 



When round the blazing fires 

 The peasantry of Cheshire hear 



The legends of their sires. 

 While tears are in their eyes, they love, 



With gratefal words, to tell 

 Of the good knight Sir Reginald 



And Lady Isabel ! 

 And still, whene'er the floating isle 



Moves o'er the lonely Mere, 

 Remember how one angry word 



Caused many a bitter tear 

 To Reginald de Davenport 



And Isabel de Vere ! " 



The illustration of the " Stalking-horse on Whittlesea Mere " is a reduced 

 copy which I made, from a beautiful water-coloured drawing by J. M. Heath- 

 cote, Esq., of Connington Castle, Huntingdonshire, done by him in 1835, and 

 kindly lent for the use of this work. Though mine does not do justice 

 to the original, it is interesting as representing a real thing and not an effort 

 of imagination. 



Mr. Harting, in his ' Ornithology of Shakespeare ' (p. 238), gives several 

 references to this most ancient device (e. g. 



" Stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits." 



Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. So. 3), 



