Chapter XII

). Some commentators go to this word to explain Hamlet's use of handsaw--

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw" (Hamlet, ii. 2).

When the author's father was a boy in Suffolk eighty years ago, the local name for the bird was pronounced exactly like answer. Grew is Fr. grue, crane, Lat. grus, gru-. Butter, Fr. butor, "a bittor" (Cotgrave), is a dialect name for the bittern, called a "butter-bump" by Tennyson's Northern Farmer (1. 31). Culver is Anglo-Sax. culfre, a pigeon--

"Columba, a culver, a dove"

(Cooper)--

hence the local Culverhouse. Dove often becomes Duff. Gaunt is sometimes a dialect form of gannet, used in Lincolnshire of the crested grebe. Popjoy may have been applied to the successful archer who became king of the popinjay for the year. The derivation of the word, Old Fr. papegai, whence Mid. Eng. papejay--

"The briddes synge, it is no nay, The sparhawk and the papejay, That joye it was to heere"

(B, 1956)--

is obscure, though various forms of it are found in most of the European languages. In English it was applied not only to the parrot, but also to the green woodpecker. The London Directory form is Pobgee.

With bird nicknames may be mentioned Callow, unfledged, cognate with Lat. calvus, bald. Its opposite also survives as Fleck and Flick--

"Flygge, as byrdis, maturus, volabilis."

(Prompt. Parv.)

Margaret Paston, writing (1460) of the revived hopes of Henry VI., says--

"Now he and alle his olde felawship put owt their fynnes, and arn ryght flygge and mery."

HAWK NAMES

We have naturally a set of names taken from the various species of falcons. To this class belongs Haggard, probably related to Anglo-Sax. haga, hedge, and used of a hawk which had acquired incurable habits of wildness by preying for itself. But Haggard is also a personal name (