The flaw in this whole matter is the unwarranted inference made by the Bedouins who talked with Herr Ebling, and by wiser persons, namely, that _all_ the wagtails and other little birds annually perform their overseas journeys by aid of stronger-winged friends. That is reasoning from some to all, which is bad logic. It is as if a stranger in town noticed a few schoolboys hopping on the back of a wagon, and immediately noted down that in Pequaket boys in general rode to school on the tailboards of farm-wagons. Little birds, like small boys, have sense enough in their migrations to utilize a convenience when it is going their way—in other words a very few lucky ones each year manage to “steal a ride.”
Thus far we have been dealing with a matter pretty close to actual ornithology; but it is only within recent years that study has made clear to us “the way of an eagle in the air,” which, as a symbol of the semiannual movement of bird-hosts, was such a mystery to our forefathers. They imagined many quaint explanations, often no more sensible than the theory of the Ojibway Indians, who say that once bird-folk played ball with the North Wind. The latter won the game, and those kinds of birds who were on his side now stay in the North all winter, while those of the defeated side are obliged to flee southward every autumn, as their ancestors did at the end of the great ball-game.
Sir Walter Scott recalls in one of his novels the fond conceit of the little nuns in the abbey of Whitby, on the Northumberland coast, that the wee immigrants arriving there after their flight across the North Sea fluttered to earth not in weariness of wings but to do homage to Hilda, their saintly abbess. That was fifteen long centuries ago; but the story is true, for you may still see the ruins, at least, of Hilda’s abbey, and still, spring by spring, do tired birds pause beside it as if to pay their devotions.
Much less pleasant is the dread inspired in the hearts of those who listen to the Seven Whistlers. Formerly no Leicestershire miner would go down into a pit, after hearing them, until a little time had elapsed, taking the sounds as a warning that an accident was impending; and doubtless coincident mishaps occurred often enough to confirm faith in the presentiment. Level-headed men knew well enough what the Seven Whistlers were—“it’s them long-billed curlews, but I never likes to hear ’em,” said one. The northern name of these birds is “whimbrel,” a form of the English _whimperer_. As these curlews when migrating often travel low on dark nights, and are unseen, it is not strange that their unearthly cries should chill the imagination of the superstitious, and that the Scotch should call them “corpse-hounds.” “Gabble retchet” is another Scotch term; and probably the Irish banshee had a similar origin. Still another name is “Gabriel hounds,” originating, it is thought in Scandinavia, and explained by the fact that there the calling to one another of bean-geese in their nocturnal journeys, in spring, have a singular resemblance to the yelping of beagles; and the story is that Gabriel is obliged to follow his spectral pack, said to be human-headed, high in the dark air, as a punishment for having once hunted on Sunday.