Among other allusions made by Shakespeare to the crow may be noticed the crow-keeper—a person employed to drive away crows from the fields. At present,[188] in all the midland counties, a boy set to drive away the birds is said to keep birds; hence, a stuffed figure, now called a scarecrow, was also called a crow-keeper, as in “King Lear” (iv. 6): “That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper.”
One of Tusser’s directions for September is:
“No sooner a-sowing, but out by-and-by,
With mother or boy that alarum can cry:
And let them be armed with a sling or a bow,
To scare away pigeon, the rook, or the crow.”
In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4) a scarecrow seems meant:
“Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.”
Among further references to this practice is that in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 4), where Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was publicly exhibited in the market-place:
“Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so.”[189]
And once more, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 1):
“We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.”
The phrase “to pluck a crow” is to complain good-naturedly, but reproachfully, and to threaten retaliation.[190] It occurs in “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1): “We’ll pluck a crow together.” Sometimes the word pull is substituted for pluck, as in Butler’s “Hudibras” (part ii. canto 2):