ies (pp. 68, 134, 196, and 268), with additional
information. He says "record was made of their having been heard in
Leicestershire; and that the develin or martin, the swift, and the
plover were probably of the whistling fraternity that frightened men. At
p. 134 it was shown that Wordsworth had spoken of one who

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

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