187 
FIELD WORDS AND WAYS. 
THE robin, ‘jolly Robin!’ is an unlucky bird in some 
places. When the horse-chestnut leaves turn scarlet the 
redbreast sings ina peculiarly plaintive way, as if in tone 
with the dropping leaves and the chill air that follows 
the early morning frost. You may tell how much 
moisture there is in the air in a given place by the 
colours of the autumn leaves ; the horse-chestnut, scarlet 
near a stream, is merely yellowish in drier soils. Cock 
robin sings the louder for the silence of other birds, and 
if he comes to the farmstead and pipes away day by 
day on a bare cherry tree or any bough that is near the 
door, after his custom, the farmer thinks it an evil omen. 
For a robin to sing persistently near the house winter or 
summer is a sign that something is about to go wrong. 
Yet the farmer will not shoot him. The roughest 
poaching fellows who would torture a dog will not kill a 
robin ; it is bad luck to have anything to do with it. 
Most people like to see fir boughs and holly brought 
into the house to brighten the dark days with their 
green, but the cottage children tell you that they must 
not bring a-green fir branch indoors, because as it withers 
their parents will be taken ill and fade away. Indeed 
the labouring people seem in all their ways and speech 
to be different, survivals perhaps of a time when their 
words and superstitions were the ways of a ruder 
England. The lanes and the gateways in the fields, as 
