258 
The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare s Time . 
Leigh, in his Natural History of Lancashire , 1700, 
Curlew s P ea ^ s of l wo sorts of Curlews, “ the curlew 
and the curlew-hilp, these are the larger, and 
not very unlike the woodcock; they frequent the sea-coasts, 
and are very good meat.” 
Shakspeare has no mention of the curlew, but, as he 
was a dweller in a midland county, this omission is easily 
explained. 
Any peculiarity of bird or animal was sure to lead to 
the investment of its possessor with some supernatural 
qualities, and the curlew was no exception to this rule. 
Sir J. Emerson Tennent remarks that— 
“ the prayer for protection against f witches and warlocks, and lang- 
nebbed things/ is familiar amongst the peasantry of Scotland, by 
whom it has also been implanted in the folk-lore of Ulster. The word 
whaap, which is the popular name of the curlew, a bird notorious for 
the length of its bill, is also the term used to signify a hobgoblin; 
which, as Jamieson says in his Scottish Dictionary, is believed to have 
a long beak, and to haunt the eaves of houses after nightfall. Wright, 
in his History of Caricature and Grotesque , has given numerous 
examples from the 16th to the 18th century, in which the artists have 
always combined a prolonged beak with the other attributes of 
demons.” (Notes and Queries , 3rd series, vol. vii. p. 334.) 
Another correspondent in this periodical, quoting Waring, 
mentions a different mode by which the curlew inspired 
dread among the benighted peasantry:— 
“Mr. William Weston Young describes the nocturnal cry of a 
flight of curlews as not unlike the cry of hounds and huntsmen in full 
chase. This sound, heard at night, and in desolate places, might well 
cause terror. The own ivybr, dogs of the sky, otherwise called cwn 
annwn , dogs of hell, are imaginary spirits of the same family as the 
diabolical sky hunts of German demonology.” (Page 404.) 
“ The whistler shrill that whoso hears doth die,” 
referred to by Spenser, may be either the curlew, or the 
green or golden plover, whose shrill cry sounds more like 
a human note than that of a bird, and may well startle 
the belated traveller. 
