Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.[157]
The Jackdaw and Magpie
The JACKDAW appears occasionally in the dramas as obviously a familiar bird, but no outstanding characters are assigned to it, except that it was common and looked upon as somewhat stupid. Reference has already been made to the comparison of the lower orders of society to “crows and daws.” When, in the Temple Garden, the Earl of Warwick was asked to decide a legal point between the supporters of the White Rose and those of the Red Rose, he replied, that if the question had been one of hawks, sword-blades, horses or merry-eyed girls,
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement;
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.[158]
The MAGPIE or Maggot-pie has already been alluded to. Macbeth associates it with choughs and rocks as a prophet or discoverer of evil. It is named by King Henry VI. among the boding portents that attended the birth of his murderer Gloucester:
Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempest shook down trees;
The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top,