"Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? Judicious punishment! 'Twas this flesh begot Those pelican daughters."[296]
It is a common notion that the fable here alluded to is a classical one, but this is an error. Shakespeare, says Mr. Harting, "was content to accept the story as he found it, and to apply it metaphorically as the occasion required." Mr. Houghton, in an interesting letter to "Land and Water"[297] on this subject, remarks that the Egyptians believed in a bird feeding its young with its blood, and this bird is none other than the vulture. He goes on to say that the fable of the pelican doubtless originated in the Patristic annotations on the Scriptures. The ecclesiastical Fathers transferred the Egyptian story from the vulture to the pelican, but magnified the story a hundredfold, for the blood of the parent was not only supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also able to reanimate the dead offspring. Augustine, commenting on Psalm cii. 6--"I am like a pelican of the wilderness"--remarks: "These birds [male pelicans] are said to kill their offspring by blows of their beaks, and then to bewail their death for the space of three days. At length, however, it is said that the mother inflicts a severe wound on herself, pouring the flowing blood over the dead young ones, which instantly brings them to life." To the same effect write Eustathius, Isidorus, Epiphanius, and a host of other writers.[298]
[297] Mr. Harting, in his "Ornithology of Shakespeare," quotes an interesting correspondence from "Land and Water" (1869), on the subject.
[298] See Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. ii. pp. 1-4.
According to another idea[299] pelicans are hatched dead, but the cock pelican then wounds his breast, and lets one drop of blood fall upon each, and this quickens them.
[299] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 366, 367.
_Pheasant._ This bird is only once alluded to, in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4), where the Clown jokingly says to the Shepherd, "Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant; say, you have none."
_Phoenix._ Many allusions are made to this fabulous bird, which is said to rise again from its own ashes. Thus, in "Henry VIII." (v. 4), Cranmer tells how