her pan,
Weaving gold laces as fast as she can.

The names of Lady-bird, Lady-cow, no doubt originated from the general
reverence for this insect and its dedication to the Virgin Mary. In
Scandinavia this little beetle is called "Our Lady's Key-maid," in
Sweden "The Virgin Mary's Golden Hen." Similar reverence is paid in
Germany, France, England, and Scotland. In Norfolk it is called Bishop
Barnabee, and the young girls have the following rhyme, which they
continue to recite to it placed on the palm of the hand, till it takes
wing and flies away.

"Bishop, Bishop Barnabee,
Tell me when my wedding be;
If if be to-morrow day,
Take your wings and fly away!
Fly to the East, fly to the West,
Fly to him that I love best."

The word barnabee or burnabee, or, as Southey writes it, burnie-bee,
no doubt has reference to the burnished or polished wing cases of the
insect.

Let us now look out for the coots and water-hens, which love to dabble
amongst the weeds of these pools, and to hide amongst the hedges and
bulrushes that so thickly skirt them. See how rapidly the swifts or
"Jack-squealers," as the country folks call them, are gliding by; you
remember when we were noticing the swallows and martins that we
thought of the swifts. Look at the beautiful scythe-like form of the
wings; the tail, you see, is slightly forked; but the bird has the
power of bringing the feathers together, so that sometimes you cannot
see its cleft form. I generally notice swifts in the neighbourhood
about the 5th of May; this year Mr. John Shaw tells me he saw some in
Shrewsbury as early as the 23rd of April. Although they come to us the
last of the swallow family, they leave us the soonest. By the middle
of August most of the swifts will have left us.

This bird has remarkably short legs; and I remember more than once
taking one off the ground when I was a boy at school, for unless it is
raised a little above the level of the ground, it finds it very
difficult to mount upwards by reason of its extremely short legs and
long wings. If we had a swift in our hands, I could point out how it
differed from the rest of the swallow family in the structure of its
feet; in the other members the four toes are arranged three before and
one behind; in the swift all the four toes are directed forwards.
There is another kind of swift, the "white-bellied swift," which has,
on a few occasions, been noticed in this country. It is rathe