THE SWALLOWS. 
123 
Folk-lore has much to say about Swallows, of which, however, we can here 
only allude to a tithe. Pliny states that Swallows are as incapable of being taught 
among birds, as mice among animals. White may have adopted his favourite 
theory from him, for Pliny relates that when Swallows leave they only retire to 
the sunny recesses of neighbouring mountains, and when found there are without 
feathers. They will not build at Thebes, because it has been so often taken by 
storm ; nor at Bizya in Thrace, remembering the ill deeds of Tereus, who was born 
there. A certain Caecina, too, he tells of, who was wont to take Swallows with 
him on a campaign, and let them fly home, having first rubbed on them the colour 
which was to signify that victory had been gained. “ I think ’tis not to be doubted,” 
says Walton (“ Compleat Angler,” i. 1), “ that Swallows have been taught to carry 
letters between two armies.” The so-called combats, too, of Swallows and Martins, 
fighting against each other in the air, were thought of old to portend wars. Every 
one knows the value of the Swallow’s flight as a familiar meteorological forecast. In 
the west of Scotland the Swallow is thought to have a drop of the “de’il’s” blood in 
its veins; it is therefore feared, and left unharmed. Its nests under a house’s eaves 
have always and everywhere been thought lucky, but woe to the inmates, in the 
north of England, says Mr. Henderson (“ Folk-lore,” p. 48), if a Swallow tumbles down 
the chimney. It portends a death in the house as certainly as seeing three butter¬ 
flies together. In Ireland the poor Swallow is called “ the devil’s bird,” and it is 
believed that there is a certain hair on every one’s head, which if a Swallow can 
pick off, the man is doomed to eternal perdition. Brighter thoughts, however, are 
connected with the Swallow if we listen to the poets :— 
True hope is swift, and flies on Swallow’s wings .”—Richard III., v. 2. 
Seeing, too, the virtues of the Swallow-stone, we must not, in conclusion, forget 
the children of Grand Prd, how— 
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, 
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone which the Swallow 
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings; 
Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the Swallow!” 
Evangeline. 
