The Starlings Suit. 31 



his tale of " The Starling." The bird of that tale was 

 able to say, "I'm Charlie's bairn;" and as he would 

 do so on the Sawbath day, and thus attract the atten- 

 tion of the youngsters on their way to church, Mr. 

 Porteous, the minister, severe with all the severity of 

 the Scotch Calvinism of half a century ago, insisted on 

 the poor sergeant putting away the bird. This the 

 sergeant would not do, because the starling was asso- 

 ciated in his memory with a dead child, and the manner 

 in which Mr. Porteous was brought round and even 

 reconciled both to the starling and to the sergeant is 

 very touching, and well shows the strength of Dr.__ 

 Macleod as a story-teller of the simple, mixed humorous, 

 and pathetic kind. Mr. Robert Buchanan, too, has used 

 the starling in a very effective poem, in which a little 

 drunken, swearing tailor has a chorus in his only friend, 

 a starling. Sterne's starling everyone remembers. 



The cleverness of the starling, together with a touch 

 of diablerie in some of its looks and expressions, make 

 it very susceptible of treatment in this way. It is a 

 most striking bird in appearance, too, when you see it 

 in freedom. You would fancy it is black, with, at 

 certain seasons, a touch of buff on the wings, and other 

 markings here and there ; but it really is predominantly 

 a mixture of very dark green and purple and steel- 

 blue, as you would realise if you had ever seen a 

 starling go smartly over a hedge to escape from you in 

 the sunlight. There then is a flash of indescribable 

 dark colour, like the hidden hues of a black opal, which 

 the strong light only reveals. It is best seen on the 

 bird when flying between you and the light. 



It has been well said that, in the fields at a distance, 

 the starling looks as if he dressed in the blackbird's 

 old clothes ; but the writer goes on to add that this is a 



