If ye harry their nests
Ye’ll never thrive again.
Let me digress here for a moment. “Laverock” is Scottish for lark, meaning the skylark. De Gubernatis,[[54]] who discourses learnedly on the mythical connotations of the name in India and ancient Greece, finds that the significance of this bird in popular tales is due to its crest, which he shows to be an indication that it was among the birds of the sun. “The crested lark,” he says, “is the same as the crested sun, the sun with its rays,” and he continues: “In the legend of St. Christopher I see an equivoque between the word Christos and the word cresta, crest, and either way I see the sun personified.”
Whatever these speculations may be worth the old stories attribute to the lark that funereal charity which belongs to several birds, among them the European robin; and this brings us back to the main track and to the pretty story of the Babes in the Woods. Away back in bad old times a Norfolk gentleman left legacies to two infant children, which were to pass to their uncle if the babies died. After a year this uncle hired ruffians to take the children into a forest and kill them, but instead the men left them there to starve. For a time they ate blackberries, but soon became exhausted, lay down, and went to sleep, and expired.
Their little corpse the robin-redbreast found,
And strew’d with pious bill the leaves around.[[8]]
More modern poets have made many allusions to this touching tale, which Shakespeare knew, for in Cymbeline he makes Arviragus say over Imogen—
Thou shalt not lack
The flowers that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell.... The ruddock would