7 
CHAPTER II. 
HISTORICAL AND LITERARY. 
Tiie Tigcon Fancy is of very old date, as might be shown by many extracts from the classical 
writers. These, however, have been so often quoted that we shall not go over the well-trodden 
ground again, or air once more those extracts which have so often done duty before that they must 
really stand now in some little need of rest. We will only remark that both Varro and Columella 
speak of prices being paid in their time for pairs of “ good birds ” which will bear some comparison 
with those given even now; while Pliny, in discoursing of what must have been a veritable “ mania” 
in his day, states (see Lib. x. 53) that “ many are mad with the passion for these birds, and build 
towers for them on the tops of their roofs, and will relate the high breeding and ancestry of each 
[how natural this reads to a fancier !] after the ancient fashion. Before Pompey’s civil war,” he 
continues, “ Lucius Axius used to sell a single pair of pigeons for four hundred denarii,” which, at 
the usual value of 7 fd. for each coin, would amount to £\2 18s. 4d. With this single extract, 
however (which we take for its singular appositeness from Mr. Dixon’s “Dovecote and Aviary”), 
we pass to fresher and less trodden fields, seeking rather to illustrate the strange hold these 
fascinating birds have kept on some of the best minds in all ages, by various allusions scattered 
throughout our own English literature* 
And to take first the most gigantic of them all — Shakespeare was evidently a close observer, 
if not an actual student of pigeons. It is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was at 
heart, if not in practice, a fancier, his intimate knowledge of them comes out in so many different 
ways. Thus, he alludes as follows to the mode in which they feed their young : — 
“ Celia. Here comes Monsieur le Beau. 
Rosalind. With his mouth full of news. 
Celia. Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young. 
Rosalind. Then shall we be news-crammed.” 
So again, in the same play (Act iv., Scene 1) : — 
As You Like It (Act i., Scene 2). 
“ I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon over his hen.” 
Which may be taken, by the way, as collateral if not strictly historical proof of the great antiquity 
of the Barb. Such allusions as these, it is true, only prove a general acquaintance with the birds ; 
but when the great poet makes Hamlet say — 
“ But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall 
To make oppression bitter,” 
* For these extracts, and for the particulars regarding the older pigeon writers, we are almost entirely indebted to notes (chiefly 
in MS.) collected throughout many years’ reading by the Rev. Alexander Headley, Hardenhuish Rectory, near Chippenham. He 
will be already known to many as the “Wiltshire rector” of the preceding chapter, in which the quotation from Crabbe is 
from the same kind hand. We only wish “our chaplain” could have strung his own notes together in his own way; but as this 
could not be, under the pressure of more important duties, we have gladly made the best of the materials so kindly placed 
at our disposal. 
