“Halcyon days” is used proverbially, but the Kingfisher
had another very useful trait. If a dead Kingfisher were hung up by a cord, it would point its beak to the quarter whence the wind blew. Shakespeare mentions this property in King Lear (ii. 1):—
“Turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters.”
And Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta (i. 1):—
“But now, how stands the wind?
Into what corner peers my halcyon bill?”
The Pelican.
The fable of the Pelican “in her piety, vulning herself,” as it is heraldically described—is so well known, as hardly to be worth mentioning, even to contradict it. In the first place, the heraldic bird is as unlike the real one, as it is possible to be; but the legend seems to have had its origin in Egypt, where the vulture was credited with this extraordinary behaviour, and this bird is decidedly more in accordance with the heraldic ideal. Du Bartas, singing of “Charitable birds,” praises equally the Stork and the Pelican:—