FINGALIAN RHYMES. 261 the balladist himself, the last remnant of the Fingalian host, are represented as going to hunt in the "Glen of Mist," attended by fifty dogs a piece, or five hundred in all-surely an unnecessary, if not an impossible number. In these ballads, besides, you find frequent reference to scarcity of food, and the shifts the "heroes" were often put to, to provide for the barest wants of the passing day; and yet, if such an army of dogs was necessary, it also had to be fed, which one conceives must have been a matter of some difficulty, when the heroes themselves were, as the ballads inform us, frequently reduced to the necessity of splitting "marrow bones," when all the flesh that covered them had already been used up. The whole question of the natural history of these old ballads is well worth more attention than has yet been bestowed on it. Some day or other we shall devote a special chapter to it. Meantime, let us merely say that we decided many years ago against the authenticity and genuineness of one at least of Dr. Smith's so-called Ancient Lays, because of the incorrectness of a reference to the natural history of a well-known bird, the common pigeon. Here are the lines in Gaul which first made us shake our head in dubiety over the genuineness of the composition "Mar cholum an carraig na h-Ulacha, 'S i solar dhearca da h-àl beag, 'S a' pilltinn gu tric, gun am blasad i fein, As a dove on the rock of Ulla, That gathereth berries for her young; Oft she returns, nor tastes herself the food, On which passage we would first of all remark that pigeons are not berry eaters, and even if they were, they would not carry them to their young in such wise as the poet clearly implies. A pigeon itself eats the food meant for its young, and only after undergoing a certain process of maceration and digestion in the parent's crop, is it again regurgitated in form suitable for the young. In genuine Gaelic poetry, the natural history is in a very remarkable manner almost invariably correct. Here it was not, and we recollect tossing the volume aside, and remarking that while much of Gaul might certainly be "ancient," quite as much was modern, and that, wittingly or unwittingly, Dr. Smith had been dealing in patchwork. Dr. Smith cites a parallel passage to the above from Thomson's Spring "Away they fly, Affectionate, and, undesiring, bear The most delicious morsel to their young." But the context shows that Thomson is not referring to doves, but to Turdi and warblers that build Of hazel pendent o'er the plaintive stream." And these do feed their callow young as represented in the poem, though the Columbida certainly do not. We observe that Mr. T. B. Snowie, of Inverness, has recently been so fortunate as to secure a specimen of the spotted crake or Crex porzana, a very rare bird indeed, of which we never saw a living specimen. It seems, however, to be a more regular visitor to our shores than is imagined, specimens having from time to time been met with in almost all parts of Scotland. Our friend Mr. Robert Gray, in his excellent volume on The Birds of the West of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, writes of the spotted crake as follows:-"So far as I have observed, the spotted crake is a very uncommon species in the western counties; it is, however, more numerously distributed throughout the eastern counties, extending from Orkney to Berwickshire. In Aberdeen and Forfar shires, according to Macgillivray, it can scarcely be called very rare. 'In Scotland,' says Mr. More in the Ibis, 'the nest has been found only in Perth, Aberdeen, and at Loch Spynie, in Elgin; but as THE SPOTTED CRAKE. 263 birds have been repeatedly taken in the breeding season in Banffshire, Fife, East Lothian, and Berwick, it is not unreasonable to infer that the species nest in these counties also. In the west of Scotland, the spotted crake has been taken in Wigtonshire, Renfrewshire, and Argyllshire; but I have no authentic instance of its occurrence north of the last-named district. In its habits this bird closely resembles its congener the water-rail, and, like it, is not easily flushed from its haunts. Although a migratory species, the spotted crake appears to come early, specimens being occasionally taken about the beginning of April; as a rule, it also lingers much later than other migratory birds, stray examples having been shot in November, December, and even January, so that it is absent not more than two or three months. It may, indeed, be yet found to be, in some of the southern districts, permanently resident. From its shy and unobtrusive habits, and its life of seclusion and silence in marshy places, from which it but rarely issues, it is much less frequently seen than birds which try to escape by flight when disturbed. Rather than take wing, it will thrust itself, when molested, into any hole or tuft of grass, and remain concealed until quiet is restored; and on this account the comparative numbers of the species cannot readily be ascertained.”” The bird is, however, unquestionably a rara avis, a rarissima avis even, in the north of Scotland, and to have seen the bird as Mr. Snowie was privileged to see and handle it, we should cheerfully have walked ten miles, were it the coldest day in mid-winter. CHAPTER XLIII. Whelks and Periwinkles-An Ossianic Reading-The Sea-shore after a Storm-The Rejectamenta of the Deep-An amusing Story of a Shore-Searcher-Severity of Winter-WildBirds' Levee-Woodcock-Snipe-Blue Jay. It has been our habit for many years [January 1875] to take our morning walk along our beautiful sea-beach, one of the coziest and prettiest silver-sanded bays on the West Coast, descending now and again, when the tide is at ebb, to search for objects of interest in marine animal and vegetable life, in every likely spot along what Ossian calls "tràigh na faoch," the periwinkled shore. Our friend and neighbour Dr. Clerk, by the way, in his admirable edition of the great Celtic bard, renders it "the shore of whelks," and in a note gives us to understand that he thinks the expression so unpoetical, infra dig., and every way inappropriate, as almost to warrant its rejection as a corruption of the text. As a conjectural emendation, he suggests "tràigh na faobh," the shore of spoils, as probably the true reading. Faoch, however, is not the whelk, but the periwinkle or wilk. The whelk is the Buccinum undatum, the cnogag or cnocag of the Gaels of the Western seaboard and Hebrides. The wilk or periwinkle is the faoch or faochag; and to it and not to the whelk the passage clearly refers. The whelk or cnogag rarely allows itself to be left behind on the beach by the receding waters, even in spring tides, when ebbs are at their lowest. The periwinkle, on the contrary, sticks, regardless of the receding waves, to its place or stone or algae stem and frond, until the ebbing waters have returned, as return he knows full well they shall; so that at any time after half ebb, a suitable shore, rich in algæ, presents a THE SEA-SHORE AFTER A STORM. 265 most interesting sight, every stone and smallest bit of sea-weed covered with millions of periwinkles at all stages of growth. It is to a scene of this kind that the poet refers, and very happily we think : "the periwinkled shore is a thousand times better than the "barren, barren shore" of Tennyson. No one objects to "daisied mead" or "daisied lea," and "periwinkled shore," as we have seen it, and as hundreds, we make no doubt, of our readers have also seen it, is, to our thinking, every whit as poetical, and in no sense inconsistent even with epic dignity. Wilks having within recent years become an article of considerable marketable value, being carefully gathered on every beach, the "periwinkled shore' of Ossian is, of course, a rarer sight now-a-days than it used to be. Nearly as plentiful on our shores as the common periwinkle itself is its first cousin, the Purpura lapillus of conchologists, or yellow periwinkle, one of those creatures that furnished the famous purple dye of the ancients. It has a bitter, astringent taste, and is in consequence not eaten like its congener, the wilk. We have said that our favourite morning walk is invariably, if we can accomplish it, along the sea-beach; and hardly a day passes but we can show something interesting and new, picked up in these our littoral perambulations. After a storm particularly, we endeavour, whatever our other engagements, to devote an hour at least to a ramble along the shore, and it is rarely we return empty-handed: some curious waif or other, cast up by the storm, seldom fails to be forthcoming as the reward of our matutinal diligence. After a severe gale one morning last week, we found a dead kittiwake, but perfectly plump and fresh, lying on the top of a mass of drift tangle. The bird itself was no great rarity, for the kittiwake (Larus rissa, Linn.), a very pretty little gull, is common on all our shores, even in winter. The curious thing was that, on taking up the bird in our hand, we found that one of its feet was firmly held in the vice-like grasp of a large mussel, the mussel in its turn |