Days," 1863, vol. i. p. 157.

[184] In "King Lear" (iv. 6), where Edgar says:

"Yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight."

the word "cock" is an abbreviation for cock-boat.

_Cormorant._ The proverbial voracity of this bird[185] gave rise to a
man of large appetite being likened to it, a sense in which Shakespeare
employs the word, as in "Coriolanus" (i. 1): "the cormorant belly;" in
"Love's Labour's Lost" (i. 1): "cormorant devouring Time;" and in
"Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 2): "this cormorant war." "Although," says
Mr. Harting,[186] "Shakespeare mentions the cormorant in several of his
plays, he has nowhere alluded to the sport of using these birds, when
trained, for fishing; a fact which is singular, since he often speaks of
the then popular pastime of hawking, and he did not die until some years
after James I. had made fishing with cormorants a fashionable
amusement."

[185] For superstitions associated with this bird, see Brand's
"Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 218.

[186] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 260.

_Crow._ This has from the earliest times been reckoned a bird of bad
omen; and in "Julius Caesar" (v. 1), Cassius, on the eve of battle,
predicted a defeat, because, to use his own words:

"crows and kites
Fly o'er our heads and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost."

Allusions to the same superstition occur in "Troilus and Cressida" (i.
2); "King John" (v. 2), etc. Vergil ("Bucolic," i. 18) mentions the
croaking of the crow as a bad omen:

"Saepe sinistra cava praedixit ab ilice cornix."

And Butler, in his "Hudibras" (part ii. canto 3), remarks:

"Is it not ominous in all countries,
When crows and ravens croak upon trees."

Even children, nowadays, regard with no friendly feelings this bird of
ill-omen;[187] and in the north of England there is a rhyme to the
following effect:

"Crow, crow, get out of my sight,
Or else I'll eat thy liver and lights."

[187] See "Folk-Lore Record," 1879, vol. i. p. 52; Henderson's
"Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, pp. 25, 126, 277.

Among other allusions made by Shakespeare to the crow may be noticed the
crow-keeper--a person employed to drive away crows from th