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PICTURES OF BIRD LIFE. 
Cupid, too, is made in “The Tempest” (iv. i) to 
“Swear he will shoot no more, 
\ 
But play with Sparrows.” 
And when Cressida is waiting for her lover— 
“She fetches her breath as short as a new-ta’en Sparrow .”—Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2. 
The Laureate shows that he has studied ornithology by the line in “ Maud ” :— 
“ The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the Sparrow speared by the shrike.” 
Mariana’s solitude, too, in the moated grange is intensified by the noisy chirping 
of this bird : — 
“ The Sparrow’s chirrup on the roof, 
The slow clock ticking, and the sound 
Which to the wooing wind aloof 
The poplar made, did all confound 
Her sense.” 
Bishop Mant supplies us with two characteristic pictures of the Sparrow’s nest and 
its roosting in a company during winter :—• 
“ Here on the lawn, in laurustine 
Or holly, see the chaffinch twine 
With hair his moss-wove home compact. 
Here with like zeal but less exact 
Of skill, th’ intrusive Sparrow weaves 
His in the spout or jutting eaves.” 
“Hark! what twitting noise is there? 
What sound of rustling through the air ? 
Close lurking in the laurel boughs 
My steps a host of Sparrows rouse. 
Up from their couch at once they spring, 
Wheel off to yonder leafless trees; 
There sit they, thick as clustering bees, 
Till, past the terror, back they crowd, 
And, with tumultuous clamour loud, 
From twig to twig aspiring hop, 
And struggle for the loftiest top.” 
The Sparrow is rather an ill-omened bird in folk-lore. If it taps at the 
window when any one is seriously ill, it forebodes death. In Lancashire it shares 
popular obloquy together with the spink (chaffinch)— 
“The spink and the Sparrow, 
Are the de’il’s bow and arrow.” 
In Scotland, on the other hand, the pretty little yellow-hammer is called the “ devil’s 
bird,” and a superstitious dislike to it extends as far south as Northumberland.* 
See Henderson’s “Folk-lore of the Northern Counties,” p. 123. 
