58 
PICTURES OF BIRD LIFE. 
and redwing. We cannot find that folk-lore has much concerned itself with the 
Blackbird. In Meath, however, it is said that “when the Blackbird sings before 
Christmas, she will cry before Candlemas; ” that is, if the Blackbird be silent 
before Christmas, it foretells an early spring. In poetry our bird has obtained 
much recognition, chiefly as a herald of spring, though it is noticeable that 
Shakespeare merely accords it the scant mention we quoted at the beginning of 
its history. Mr. Harting thinks, too, that when Justice Shallow in “Henry V.’ 
asks Justice Silence, “And how doth my cousin?” and the latter answers, “Alas! 
a black ouzel, cousin Shallow,” that this allusion refers to much the same character 
as we now term, “ a black sheep,” and points to the Blackbird. Considering, 
however, that it is the worthy Shallow’s “ god-daughter, Ellen,” who is inquired 
after, we would fain believe that she is rather commended here as neatly made 
and black of hair and eyes and shy withal, like a Blackbird. The Blackbird 
appears in the quaint riddle of the Scotch popular rhymes— 
“ The Merle and the Blackbird, 
The laverock and the lark, 
The gouldy and the gowd-spink, 
How many birds be that?” 
The answer of course being three. Grahame has not forgotten him in a pretty 
spring picture— 
“ When snow-drops die and the green primrose-leaves 
Announce the corning flowers, the Merle’s note 
Mellifluous, rich, deep-toned, fills all the vale. 
And charms the ravished ear.” 
The Blackbird serves to intensify the grief of Cowper to mourning for the loss 
of his poplars— 
“ The Blackbird has fled to another retreat, 
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; 
And the scene where his melody charmed me before 
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.” 
One of the earliest birds which a child makes acquaintance with is the Blackbird, if 
not in nature, at least in the nursery song, “ Sing a Song of Sixpence,” while 
multitudes of artists have depicted for him the four-and-twenty Blackbirds baked in 
a pie. It was a favourite bird, as might be expected from the character of the 
country round Yarrow and Abbotsford, of both Sir W. Scott and Hogg. That great 
lover of rural sights and sounds, Izaak Walton, duly celebrates among “ those little 
nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties with which nature 
