Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would,
With charitable bill,--O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!--bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none
To winter-ground thy corse"--

the "ruddock"[319] being one of the old names for the redbreast, which
is nowadays found in some localities. John Webster, also, refers to the
same idea in "The White Devil" (1857, ed. Dyce, p. 45):

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men."

[318] "English Folk-Lore," pp. 62-64; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.,"
1849, vol. iii. p. 191; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 424;
Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 380.

[319] Cf. Spenser's "Epithalamium," v. 8:

"The thrush replies, the mavis descant plays,
The ouzell shrills, the ruddock warbles soft."

Drayton, too, in "The Owl," has the following lines:

"Cov'ring with moss the dead's unclosed eye,
The little redbreast teaching charitie."

_Rook._ As an ominous bird this is mentioned in "Macbeth" (iii. 4).
Formerly the nobles of England prided themselves in having a
rookery[320] in the neighborhood of their castles, because rooks were
regarded as "fowls of good omen." On this account no one was permitted
to kill them, under severe penalties. When rooks desert a rookery[321]
it is said to foretell the downfall of the family on whose property it
is. A Northumbrian saying informs us that the rooks left the rookery of
Chipchase before the family of Reed left that place. There is also a
notion that when rooks haunt a town or village "mortality is supposed to
await its inhabitants, and if they feed in the street it shows that a
storm is at hand."[322]

[320] _Standard_, January 26, 1877.

[321] "English Folk-Lore," p. 76.

[322] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, p. 122.

The expression "bully-rook," in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 3), in
Shakespeare's time, says Mr. Harting,[323] had the same meaning as
"jolly dog" nowadays; but subsequently it became a term of reproach,
meaning a cheating sharper. It has been suggested that the term derives
its origin from the _rook_ in the game of chess; but Douce[324]
considers it very improbable that this noble game, "never the amuseme