Another superstition connected with this bird occurs in "King Lear" (ii. 2), where the Earl of Kent says:
"turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters;"
the prevalent idea being that a dead kingfisher, suspended from a cord, would always turn its beak in that direction from whence the wind blew. Marlowe, in his "Jew of Malta" (i. 1), says:
"But now how stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill?"
Occasionally one may still see this bird hung up in cottages, a remnant, no doubt, of this old superstition.[255]
[255] Sir Thomas Browne's "Vulgar Errors," bk. iii. chap. 10.
_Kite._ This bird was considered by the ancients to be unlucky. In "Julius Cæsar" (v. 1) Cassius says:
"ravens, crows, and kites, Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us."
"I chose an eagle, And did avoid a puttock,"
puttock, here, being a synonym sometimes applied to the kite.[256] Formerly the kite became a term of reproach from its ignoble habits. Thus, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13), Antony exclaims, "you kite!" and King Lear (i. 4) says to Goneril, "Detested kite! thou liest." Its intractable disposition is alluded to in "Taming of the Shrew," by Petruchio (iv. 1). A curious peculiarity of this bird is noticed in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), where Autolycus says: "My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen"--meaning that his practice was to steal sheets; leaving the smaller linen to be carried away by the kites, who will occasionally carry it off to line their nests.[257] Mr. Dyce[258] quotes the following remarks of Mr. Peck on this passage: "Autolycus here gives us to understand that he is a thief of the first class. This he explains by an allusion to an odd vulgar notion. The common people, many of them, think that if any one can find a kite's nest when she hath young, before they are fledged, and sew up their back doors, so as they cannot mute, the mother-kite, in compassion to their distress, will steal lesser linen, as caps, cravats, ruffles, or any other such small matters as she can best fly with, from off the hedges where they are hanged to dry after washing, and carry them to her nest, and there leave them, if possible to move the pity of the first comer, to cut the thread and ease them of their misery."