They are mentioned among the ominous signs of that terrible night on which Duncan is so treacherously slain (“Macbeth,” ii. 3):
“the obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.”
And in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) Hotspur assigns as a reason for the earthquakes the following theory:
“Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down
Steeples, and moss-grown towers.”
Equinox. The storms that prevail in spring at the vernal equinox are aptly alluded to in “Macbeth” (i. 2):
“As whence the sun ’gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring, whence comfort seem’d to come,
Discomfort swells.”
– the meaning being: the beginning of the reflection of the sun is the epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder season, opening, however, with storms.
Wind. An immense deal of curious weather-lore147 has been associated with the wind from the earliest period; and in our own and foreign countries innumerable proverbs are found describing the future state of the weather from the position of the wind, for, according to an old saying, “every wind has its weather.” Shakespeare has introduced some of these, showing how keen an observer he was of those every-day sayings which have always been much in use, especially among the lower classes. Thus the proverbial wet which accompanies the wind when in the south is mentioned in “As You Like It” (iii. 5):
“Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain.”
And again, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 1):
“The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his [i. e., the sun’s] purposes;
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest, and a blustering day.”
A popular saying to the same effect, still in use, tells us that:
“When the wind is in the south,
It is in the rain’s mouth.”
Again, in days gone by, the southerly winds were generally supposed to be bearers of noxious fogs and vapors, frequent allusions to which are given by Shakespeare. Thus, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), Caliban says:
“a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o’er.”
A book,148 too, with which, as already noticed, Shakespeare appears to have been familiar, tells us, “This southern wind is hot and moist. Southern winds corrupt and destroy; they heat, and make men fall into the sickness.” Hence, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1), Thersites speaks of “the rotten diseases of the south;” and in “Coriolanus” (i. 4), Marcius exclaims:
“All the contagion of the south light on you.”
Once more, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 3), Cloten speaks in the same strain: “The south fog rot him.”
Flaws. These are sudden gusts of wind. It was the opinion, says Warburton, “of some philosophers that the vapors being congealed in the air by cold (which is the most intense in the morning), and being afterwards rarefied and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and impetuous gusts of wind which were called ‘flaws.’” Thus he comments on the following passage in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 4):
“As humorous as winter, and as sudden
As flaws congealed in the spring of day.”
In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) these outbursts of wind are further alluded to:
“And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage
Until the golden circuit on my head,
Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams,
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.”
Again, in “Venus and Adonis” (425), there is an additional reference:
“Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”
In the Cornish dialect a flaw signifies primitively a cut.149 But it is also there used in a secondary sense for those sudden or cutting gusts of wind.150
Squalls. There is a common notion that “the sudden storm lasts not three hours,” an idea referred to by John of Gaunt in “Richard II.” (ii. 1):
“Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short.”
Thus, in Norfolk, the peasantry say that “the faster the rain, the quicker the hold up,” which is only a difference in words from the popular adage, “after a storm comes a calm.”
Clouds. In days gone by, clouds floating before the wind, like a reek or vapor, were termed racking clouds. Hence in “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 1), Richard speaks of:
“Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds.”
This verb, though now obsolete, was formerly in common use; and in “King Edward III.,” 1596, we read:
“Like inconstant clouds,
That, rack’d upon the carriage of the winds,
Increase,” etc.
At the present day one may often hear the phrase, the rack of the weather, in our agricultural districts; many, too, of the items of weather-lore noticed by Shakespeare being still firmly credited by our peasantry.
CHAPTER VI
BIRDS
In the present chapter we have not only a striking proof of Shakespeare’s minute acquaintance with natural history, but of his remarkable versatility as a writer. While displaying a most extensive knowledge of ornithology, he has further illustrated his subject by alluding to those numerous legends, popular sayings, and superstitions which have, in this and other countries, clustered round the feathered race. Indeed, the following pages are alone sufficient to show, if it were necessary, how fully he appreciated every branch of antiquarian lore; and what a diligent student he must have been in the pursuit of that wide range of information, the possession of which has made him one of the most many-sided writers that the world has ever seen. The numerous incidental allusions, too, by Shakespeare, to the folk-lore of bygone
See Swainson’s “Weather-Lore.”
Batman upon Bartholomæus – “De Proprietatibus Rerum,” lib. xi. c. 3.
Polwhele’s “Cornish Vocabulary.”
Cf. “Macbeth,” iii. 4, “O, these flaws and starts.”
