102 THE NIGHT-CROW : 



bird which the vulgar call the night-raven, and have a 

 great dread of."* 



The bittern was one of the very few birds which Gold- 

 smith, in his " Animated Nature," described from personal 

 observation, and he, too, calls it the " night-raven." Its 

 hollow boom, he says, caused it to be held in detestation 

 by the vulgar. " I remember, in the place where I was 

 a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the whole 

 village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event, 

 and generally found, or made one to succeed it. If any 

 person in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it could 

 not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it ; but 

 if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep 

 gave completion to the prophecy." 



Sometimes it was called the night-crow — 



" The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time." 



Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 6. 



Shakespeare has introduced an allusion to the raven with 

 much effect, in the fifth scene of the first act in Macbeth, 

 where an attendant enters the chamber of Lady Macbeth 

 to announce — 



" The king comes here to-night. 

 Lady M. Thou 'rt mad to say it ! — 



Is not thy master with him ? who, were't so, 

 Would have informed for preparation. 



* Willughby's "Ornithology," folio, 1678. Book I. p. 25. 



