On the same page, the swift is said to be the true whistler (but, as noted at page 196, the swifts never make nightly rounds), and the superstition is said to be common in our Midland Counties. At page 268, Mr. Pearson put on record that in Lancashire the plovers, whistling as they fly, are accounted heralds of ill, though sometimes of trivial accident, and that they are there called 'Wandering Jews,' and are said to be, or to carry with them, the ever-restless souls of those Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion. At page 336, the whistlers are chronicled as having been the harbingers of the great Hartley Colliery explosion. A correspondent, Viator, added, that on the Bosphorus there are flocks of birds, the size of a thrush, which fly up and down the channel, and are never seen to rest on land or water. The men who rowed Viator's caique told him that they were the souls of the damned, condemned to perpetual motion. The Seven Whistlers have not furnished chroniclers with later circumstances of their tuneful and awful progresses till a week or two ago.... The whistlers are also heard and feared in Portugal. See The New Quarterly for July 1874, for a record of some travelling experience in that country."
Another extract from Notes and Queries is to the following effect:—
"'Your Excellency laughs at ghosts. But there is no lie about the Seven Whistlers. Many a man besides me has heard them.'
"'Who are the Seven Whistlers? and have you seen them yourself?'
"'Not seen, thank Heaven; but I have heard them plenty of times. Some say they are the ghosts of children unbaptized, who are to know no rest till the judgment day. Once last winter I was going with donkeys and a mule to Caia. Just at the moment I stopped by the river bank to tighten the mule's girth, I heard the accursed whistlers coming down the wind along the river. I buried my head under the mule, and never moved till the danger was over; but they passed very near, for I heard the flap and rustle of their wings.'
"'What was the danger?'
"'If a man once sees them, heaven only knows what will not happen to him—death and damnation at the very least.'
"'I have seen them many times. I shot, or tried to shoot them!'
"'Holy Mother of God! you English are an awful people! You shot the Seven Whistlers?'
"'Yes; we call them marecos (teal or widgeon) in our country, and shoot them whenever we can. They are better to eat than wild ducks.'"