om of, concerning a certain cry or sound heard in the night,
supposed to be produced by the Seven Whistlers. What or who those
whistlers are is an unsolved problem. In some districts they are
popularly believed to be witches, in others ghosts, in others
devils, while in the Midland Counties they are supposed to be
birds, either plovers or martins--some say swifts. In
Leicestershire it is deemed a bad omen to hear the Seven
Whistlers, and our old writers supply many passages illustrative
of the popular credulity. Spenser, in his _Faerie Queene_, book
II. canto xii. stanza 36, speaks of

The whistler shrill, that whoso hears doth die.

Sir Walter Scott, in _The Lady of the Lake_, names the bird with
which his character associated the cry--

And in the plover's shrilly strain
The signal whistlers heard again.

"When the colliers of Leicestershire are flush of money, we are
told, and indulge in a drinking bout, they sometimes hear the
warning voice of the Seven Whistlers, get sobered and frightened,
and will not descend the pit again till next day. Wordsworth
speaks of a countryman who

... the seven birds hath seen, that never part,
Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds,
And counted them.

"A few years ago, during a thunderstorm which passed over
Leicestershire, and while vivid lightning was darting through the
sky, immense flocks of birds were seen flying about, uttering
doleful, affrighted cries as they passed, and keeping up for a
long time a continual whistling like that made by some kinds of
sea-birds. The number must have been immense, for the local
newspapers mentioned the same phenomenon in different parts of the
neighbouring counties of Northampton, Leicester, and Lincoln. A
gentleman, conversing with a countryman on the following day,
asked him what kind of birds he supposed them to have been. The
man answered, 'They are what we call the Seven Whistlers,' and
added that 'whenever they are heard it is considered a sign of
some great calamity, and that the last time he had heard them was
on the night before the deplorable explosion of fire damp at the
Hartley Colliery.'"

In _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to this local
superstition. In the Fifth Series (vol. ii. p. 264), Oct. 3, 1874, the
editor gives a summary of several notes on the subject in vol. viii. of
the Fourth Ser