And all true lovers know that sweetest is the love which has been hard to get, and has passed through its sour and bitter stages and is plucked when ripest.
PRINCESS OLWEN IS CHANGED INTO A BRAMBLE.
We saw a Cornish chough during our tramp; but it is getting scarce now, and tens of thousands of people may come and go without ever seeing one. When the bird "with vermeil-tinted legs and bright red beak" has quite vanished from its old haunts, it will probably be held in the highest esteem, like it once was when it lived in the odour of sanctity. The chough was at one time a sacred bird in Cornwall, just as the long-legged ibis on the banks of the Nile, and, according to the story, had secret relations with Old Nick, just as its cousin, the raven, had in Wales. An odour of sulphur may have been the consequence; but as even birds may reform, the chough cut its old acquaintance, and was selected as the future habitation for the spirit of King Arthur. When a Cornishman sees a chough he raises his hat, if he has one, or pulls his forelock if he hasn't, which means the same thing, namely, that the chough is of sainted lineage, and worthy of the very highest respect. It is not so easy to see a chough now outside of a "collection."
The chough is of very aristocratic appearance, and, in consequence, all poor and ragamuffin and envious relations of the crow tribe are doing their best to get rid of him by any means. No doubt dynamite would be used if the crow socialists knew how to handle it. It was an unfortunate day for the chough when Shakespeare advertised it as the "russet-pated chough," and that might not have been so very bad, only it set some people saying that Shakespeare did not know what he was talking about, which provoked others to reply, and so the newspapers debated whether Shakespeare should be criticized. Then all Cornwall was ransacked for choughs, to see whether he was "russet-pated." If "pate" means "head," then he isn't, but if "pate" means "foot," then he is "russet-patted," or footed. Those who held that the poet knew what he was writing about, scored one; but the discussion cost the chough dear, so many people finding it necessary to shoot every chough they saw. Every year King Arthur visits his own tomb in the form of a chough, and some people hope that one chough will be allowed to live in the land just so long as the old King likes to revisit his own grave and attend to its weeding. It would be a pity for an old tradition to die out for want of a bird to carry it on.
