Where the forest murmurs : $b Nature essaysSharp, William
History
Where the forest murmurs : $b Nature essays
Sharp, William
Natural history -- Outdoor books
if a nightingale come ‘with Song upon it’ into the room of a sleeping
person, that person will go mad, or that if the eyes of a nightingale
found dead or slain be dissolved in any liquid, the drinker will become
blind. I have heard, too, a tale (though the bird was there alluded to
as the _smeorach-oidhche_ or ‘night-thrush’) where the nightingale,
the owl, and the bat are called moon-children, the Moon-Clan; three
birds, it is said, with three animals of the land and three of the
water, three fish, three insects, three trees, three plants, three
flowers, and three stones were thrown to the earth as a farewell gift
the day the Moon died. Among the three birds the teller included the
bat, and I daresay there are many who still regard the bat as a bird.
The three animals of land and water were the weasel, the badger, and
the fox, the seal, the otter, and the kelpie (_sic_). The three fish
were the fluke, the eel, and the moon-glistered herring. The three
insects were the white moth, the grey gnat, and the cockchafer. The
three trees were the ash, the thorn, and the elder. The three plants
were the ivy, the moon-fern or bracken, and the mistletoe. The three
flowers were the meadowsweet, the white water-lily, and the ‘lusavone’
(? _Lus-Mhonaidh_...? Bog-cotton). The three stones were, I think,
granite, basalt, and trap, though I am uncertain about the second and
still more so about the third, which was called _clach-liath_, ‘the
grey stone.’
But though in the north the nightingale is no longer a haunter of the
dusk, the other clans of the night are to be met with everywhere,
‘from the Rhinns of Islay to the Ord of Sutherland’ as the Highland
saying goes in place of the wider ‘from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.’
First and foremost is the owl. But of the owl and the nightjar and the
midsummer night I wish to speak in a succeeding paper. The corncrake
will next occur to mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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