And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper;[86]
also of an indiscreet officer who in his tipsy fits would “speak parrot, and squabble, swagger, swear and discourse fustian with his own shadow.”[87] Nor must we forget the drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap who had only two words of reply to any call, and of who the merry Prince remarked, with a sly hit at the fair sex: “That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman!”[88] The parrot was also known by the name of popinjay, a word sometimes applied to a foppish dandy. It is used in this sense by Hotspur with reference to
A certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new-reap’d
Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
* * * * * * *
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester’d with a popinjay,
Answer’d neglectingly I know not what.[89]
The same word was used of the stuffed bird or other mark set up to be shot at in a competition of marksmanship. This kind of sport in archery continues to be kept up in Scotland, or was only recently abandoned. It has been described by Scott in Old Mortality. I have myself attended the summer festival of the “Papingo” at Kilwinning where it is said to have been held ever since 1488. The stuffed bird is there suspended from the end of a pole fastened on the steeple at a height of 100 feet from the ground.