Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 31

[307] Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, pp. 19, 97, 677; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.

It appears that c.o.c.ks as well as quails were sometimes made to fight within a broad hoop-hence the term _inhoop'd_-to keep them from quitting each other. Quail-fights were well known among the ancients, and especially at Athens.[308] Julius Pollux relates that a circle was made, in which the birds were placed, and he whose quail was driven out of this circle lost the stake, which was sometimes money, and occasionally the quails themselves. Another practice was to produce one of these birds, which being first smitten with the middle finger, a feather was then plucked from its head. If the quail bore this operation without flinching, his master gained the stake, but lost it if he ran away. Some doubt exists as to whether quail-fighting prevailed in the time of Shakespeare. At the present day[309] the Sumatrans practise these quail combats, and this pastime is common in some parts of Italy, and also in China. Mr. Douce has given a curious print, from an elegant Chinese miniature painting, which represents some ladies engaged at this amus.e.m.e.nt, where the quails are actually inhooped.

[308] Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 367.

[309] Marsden's "History of Sumatra," 1811, p. 276.

_Raven._ Perhaps no bird is so universally unpopular as the raven, its hoa.r.s.e croak, in most countries, being regarded as ominous. Hence, as might be expected, Shakespeare often refers to it, in order to make the scene he depicts all the more vivid and graphic. In "t.i.tus Andronicus"

(ii. 3), Tamora, describing "a barren detested vale," says:

"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe: Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds, Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven."

And in "Julius Caesar" (v. 1), Ca.s.sius tells us how ravens

"Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us, As we were sickly prey."[310]

[310] Cf. "2 Henry VI." iii. 2; "Troilus and Cressida," v. 2.

It seems that the superst.i.tious dread[311] attaching to this bird has chiefly arisen from its supposed longevity,[312] and its frequent mention and agency in Holy Writ. By the Romans it was consecrated to Apollo, and was believed to have a prophetic knowledge-a notion still very prevalent. Thus, its supposed faculty[313] of "smelling death"

still renders its presence, or even its voice, ominous. Oth.e.l.lo (iv. 1) exclaims,

"O, it comes o'er my memory, As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all."

[311] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 211, 212.

[312] "English Folk-lore," 1878, p. 78.

[313] See Hunt's "Popular Romances of West of England," 1881, p. 380.

There is no doubt a reference here to the fanciful notion that it was a constant attendant on a house infected with the plague. Most readers, too, are familiar with that famous pa.s.sage in "Macbeth" (i. 5) where Lady Macbeth, having heard of the king's intention to stay at the castle, exclaims,

"the raven himself is hoa.r.s.e That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, uns.e.x me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty!"

We may compare Spenser's language in the "Fairy Queen" (bk. ii. c. vii.

l. 23):

"After him owles and night ravens flew, The hateful messengers of heavy things, Of death and dolor telling sad tidings."

And once more the following pa.s.sage from Drayton's "Barons' Wars" (bk.

v. stanza 42) ill.u.s.trates the same idea:

"The ominous raven often he doth hear, Whose croaking him of following horror tells."

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 3), the "night-raven" is mentioned.

Bened.i.c.k observes to himself: "I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it." This inauspicious bird, according to Steevens, is the owl; but this conjecture is evidently wrong, "being at variance with sundry pa.s.sages in our early writers, who make a distinction between it and the night-raven."[314]

[314] Dyce's "Glossary," 1876, p. 288.

Thus Johnson, in his "Seven Champions of Christendom" (part i.), speaks of "the dismal cry of night-ravens, ... and the fearefull sound of schriek owles." Cotgrave regarded the "night-crow" and the "night-raven"

as synonymous; and Mr. Yarrell considered them only different names for the night-heron.[315] In "3 Henry VI." (v. 6) King Henry says:

"The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time."

[315] See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," pp. 101, 102; Yarrell's "History of British Birds," vol. ii. p. 581.

Goldsmith, in his "Animated Nature," calls the bittern the night-raven, and says: "I remember, in the place where I was a boy, with what terror the bird's note affected the whole village; they consider it as the presage of some sad event, and generally found or made one to succeed it. If any person in the neighborhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; but if n.o.body happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave completion to the prophecy."

According to an old belief the raven deserts its own young, to which Shakespeare alludes in "t.i.tus Andronicus" (ii. 3):

"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests."

"It was supposed that when the raven," says Mr. Harting,[316] "saw its young ones newly hatched and covered with down, it conceived such an aversion that it forsook them, and did not return to the nest until a darker plumage had shown itself." To this belief the commentators consider the Psalmist refers, when he says, "He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry" (Psalm cxlvii. 9). We are told, too, in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto G.o.d, they wander for lack of meat" (x.x.xviii. 41). Shakespeare, in "As You Like It" (ii. 3), probably had the words of the Psalmist in his mind:

"He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow."

[316] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 107.

The raven has from earliest times been symbolical of blackness, both in connection with color and character. In "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 2), Juliet exclaims:

"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Dove-feather'd raven!"[317]

[317] Cf. "Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 2; "Twelfth Night," v. 1.

Once more, ravens' feathers were formerly used by witches, from an old superst.i.tion that the wings of this bird carried with them contagion wherever they went. Hence, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says:

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both!"

_Robin Redbreast._ According to a pretty notion,[318] this little bird is said to cover with leaves any dead body it may chance to find unburied; a belief which probably, in a great measure, originated in the well-known ballad of the "Children in the Wood," although it seems to have been known previously. Thus Singer quotes as follows from "Cornucopia, or Divers Secrets," etc. (by Thomas Johnson, 1596): "The robin redbreast, if he finds a man or woman dead, will cover all his face with moss; and some think that if the body should remain unburied that he would cover the whole body also." In Dekker's "Villaines Discovered by Lanthorn and Candlelight" (1616), quoted by Douce, it is said, "They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are robin redb.r.e.a.s.t.s that bring strawes in their bills to cover a dead man in extremitie." Shakespeare, in a beautiful pa.s.sage in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2), thus touchingly alludes to it, making Arviragus, when addressing the supposed dead body of Imogen, say:

"With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would, With charitable bill,-O bill, sore-shaming Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie Without a monument!-bring thee all this; Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none To winter-ground thy corse"-

the "ruddock"[319] being one of the old names for the redbreast, which is nowadays found in some localities. John Webster, also, refers to the same idea in "The White Devil" (1857, ed. Dyce, p. 45):

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men."

[318] "English Folk-Lore," pp. 62-64; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.,"

1849, vol. iii. p. 191; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 424; Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 380.

[319] Cf. Spenser's "Epithalamium," v. 8:

"The thrush replies, the mavis descant plays, The ouzell shrills, the ruddock warbles soft."

Drayton, too, in "The Owl," has the following lines:

"Cov'ring with moss the dead's unclosed eye, The little redbreast teaching charitie."