The martlet is very similar in form to a swallow, but is always represented as without feet, while the French heralds also deprive it of beak. A good early example of its use may be seen in the arms of William de Valence, emblazoned on his shield at Westminster, and dating from the year 1296; later instances of its employment are so common that it is hardly worth while to particularise any special illustration. The martlet, according to Gwillim, in his elaborate treatise on heraldry, "hath leggs exceeding short, that they can by no means go: and therefore it seemeth the Grecians do call them _Apodes, quasi sine pedibus_; not because they do want feet, but because they have not such use of their feet as other birds have. And if perchance they fall upon the ground, they cannot raise themselves upon their feet as others do, and so prepare themselves to flight. For this cause they are accustomed to make their Nests upon Rocks or other high Places, from whence they may easily take their flight, by means of the support of the Air. Hereupon it came that this Bird is painted in Arms without feet: and for this cause it is also given as a difference of younger Brethren, to put them in mind to trust to their wings of vertue and merit to raise themselves, and not to their leggs, having little Land to set their foot on."
In mediæval days the Bird of Paradise was in like manner thought to be without feet. The error arose in a very natural but most prosaic way, and simply sprang from the fact that the natives who bartered the skins of the birds with the merchants cut off the legs before bringing them, naturally thinking that they were of no value, and that it was for the richness of the plumage alone that the skins were esteemed. The lovers of the marvellous in the West built upon this weak foundation a most poetic superstructure, and believed that the bird was indeed the denizen of paradise, fed upon the dew of heaven, incapable of contact with earth, building no nest, but hatching its eggs in a cavity upon its own back; ever soaring in the sunlight far above earth, and independent of all mundane association.
Tavernier supplies another explanation, equally prosaic, of their footless condition--one in fact, that entirely removes the poor birds from all poetic association, and reduces them to the "drunk and incapable" state that some other bipeds are prone to indulge in. He tells us in his book that the birds of paradise come in flocks during the nutmeg season to the plantations, and that the odour so intoxicates them that they fall helplessly to the earth, and that the ants eat off their feet while they are thus incapacitated. Moore, in his "Lalla Rookh," thus refers, it will be remembered, to this Tavernier tale in writing of--