Cock-crowing in mediæval days received mystical importance from a belief that it was in the dawn of the morning that our Saviour was born; it was regarded, too, as a warning voice telling of the coming of the day of Judgment,[89] and from its association with St. Peter’s grievous denial of his Master a warning against self-sufficiency and base cowardice. It was thought that during the hours of darkness evil spirits and the souls of the departed were abroad and that these fled at daybreak: hence Shakespeare makes the ghost of Hamlet’s father vanish at this season—“It faded on the crowing of the cock.” To the belief that on Christmas Eve the night was entirely free from any such spiritual manifestation he refers in the beautiful lines:— “Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long, And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike. No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious in the time.” In the quaint and delightful “Armonye of Byrdes” with its mingled Latin and English:— “The Cock dyd say: I use alway To crow both first and last. Lyke a Postle I am, For I preache to man And tell him the nyght is past.[90] “I bring new tydyngis That the king of kynges In tactu profundit chorus: Then sang he, mellodious, Te Gloriosus, Apostolorum chorus.” This poem, of which only one ancient copy is in existence, has been reproduced by the Percy Society. The author is unknown, but is conjectured to be John Skelton. No date appears on it, but the name of the printer, John Wyght, shows that it must have been published somewhere about the year 1550. The poem begins:— “Whan Dame Flora In die Aurora Had covered the meadow with flowers, And all the fylde Was over dystylde With lusty Aprell showers, For my desporte Me to comforte Whan the day began to spring Foorth I went With a good intent To hear the byrdes syng.” The poem then goes on to tell us of the birds all “praisyng Our Lorde without discord, with goodly armony,” the popyngay, the mavys, partryge, pecocke, thrusshe, nyghtyngale, larke, egle, dove, phenix, wren, the tyrtle trew, the hawke, the pellycane, the swalowe, all singing in quaint blending of Latin and English the praise of God. The raven, “the hoarse night-raven, trompe of doleful drere,”[91] has been at almost all periods regarded with superstitious awe. Shakespeare, for instance, writes of the raven “that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan,”[92] and again, in Othello, we find the illustrative passage— “It comes o’er my memory As doth the raven o’er the infected house, Boding to all.” Marlowe, in like spirit, in his “Rich Jew of Malta,” dwells on the sad presaging raven