Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/362

 Rh Pale as corpse, and trembling, weeping,
 * See the king's fair child appearing,—
 * Bold and proud, as nothing fearing,

Gaily smiling, walks Sir Olaf.

And, with lips so red and smiling,
 * To the gloomy king thus speaks he,
 * "Father of my wife, I greet thee,

Though my head must pay the forfeit.

I must die to-day, yet let me,
 * Only let me live till midnight,
 * That, with feast and dance by torchlight,

I may celebrate my bridal;

Let me live till the last goblet
 * To the last drop I have drained,
 * Till the last wild dance is ended,—

Let me, let me live till midnight."

And the king speaks to the headsman,—
 * "To the bridegroom grant we respite,
 * But his life must end at midnight.

Keep, oh! keep, thy good axe ready."

the least interesting side of ornithology is a knowledge of the associations connected with birds. These, as a few specimens will show, are multitudinous, and range over many departments of learning. The classics, ancient history and mythology, mediæval manners and customs, sacred lore and modern æsthetics, have each of them a point where they come in contact with ornithology. Hardly a single bird that we see in our walks is without a relation to the past or some reference to the home life of our own days.

We will begin with our own British birds. Seldom as it is seen with us now, the eagle soaring amongst the clouds is still to the classical scholar Jove's bird that bore off Ganymede to Olympus. The peacock sunning its many-eyed tail on the terrace recalls the pomp and state of Juno. Minerva, goddess of the wisdom that loves silence and the night hours, has her noise less winged owl, just as Venus delighted in her Paphian doves. Around the osprey (Pandion), the hoopoe, kingfisher (Halcyon), unhappy Philomela and the swallow (Procne), crystallises many a legend of the old mythology. The woodpecker (Picus), takes us back to the cradle of Romulus and Remus, while the vulture, of which two or three specimens have been taken in Great Britain, recalls the foundation of the Eternal City: geese are for ever associated with its capitol. How appropriately is the Orphean warbler named! When spring brings back the cuckoo, and its attendant the cuckoo-maid (as country folks call the wry neck), who is not instantly transported to the sunny hills of Campania in Horace's time, and the vine-dresser vying with the passer-by in the rustic witticism of shouting "cuckoo" to each other? The cocks and hens in the farmyard tell us of the Indian jungles where their ancestors strutted ages ago, just as the very mention of a pheasant bears us off to Colchis, and shows us Medea brewing her unholy potions by the Phasis. Very suitably has the wren, with its small body and curious propensity for burrowing into hedge-bottoms, received the name of Troglodytes Europœus, carrying us away to Africa, the fairy-land of the old