[246] "Notes to Hamlet," Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 159.
[248] Quoted in "Notes to Hamlet," by Clark and Wright, p. 159; see Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 416.
_Jay._ From its gay and gaudy plumage this bird has been used for a loose woman, as "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iii. 3): "we'll teach him to know turtles from jays," _i. e._, to distinguish honest women from loose ones. Again, in "Cymbeline" (iii. 4), Imogen says:
"Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting,[249] hath betray'd him."
[249] That is, made by art: the creature not of nature, but of painting; cf. "Taming of the Shrew," iv. 3; "The Tempest," ii. 2.
_Kestrel._ A hawk of a base, unserviceable breed,[250] and therefore used by Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (II. iii. 4), to signify base:
"Ne thought of honour ever did assay His baser breast, but in his kestrell kynd A pleasant veine of glory he did fynd."
[250] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482.
By some[251] it is derived from "coystril," a knave or peasant, from being the hawk formerly used by persons of inferior rank. Thus, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 3), we find "coystrill," and in "Pericles" (iv. 6) "coystrel." The name kestrel, says Singer,[252] for an inferior kind of hawk, was evidently a corruption of the French _quercelle_ or _quercerelle_, and originally had no connection with coystril, though in later times they may have been confounded. Holinshed[253] classes coisterels with lackeys and women, the unwarlike attendants on an army. The term was also given as a nickname to the emissaries employed by the kings of England in their French wars. Dyce[254] also considers kestrel distinct from coistrel.
[251] Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 74.
[253] "Description of England," vol. i. p. 162.
_Kingfisher._ It was a common belief in days gone by that during the days the halcyon or kingfisher was engaged in hatching her eggs, the sea remained so calm that the sailor might venture upon it without incurring risk of storm or tempest; hence this period was called by Pliny and Aristotle "the halcyon days," to which allusion is made in "1 Henry VI." (i. 2):
"Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days."
"Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be, As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea."