Those Choughs
By STRIX fin "A Spectator's Notebook" of October 30th Strix undertook to send a brace of pheasants "to the reader who produces the most convincing explanation of what bird or birds Shakespeare had in his mind's eye" when he mentioned " russet-pated choughs" in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act III, Scene 2). Entries for this contest closed last Monday.
"REALLY do not see why you should be puzzled over the I russet-pated choughs," wrote Professor M. F. M. Meikle- john rather severely; and in general it seemed that the more learned a competitor, the blinder he or she was to the difficulties implicit in the obvious solution, which is to identify these particular choughs with jackdaws. Perhaps I had better explain what I think these difficulties are.
What Puck is describing is the panic—not momentary but prolonged—into which Snug, Quince, Flute, Snout and Star- veling were thrown by Bottom's appearance with an ass's head on his shoulders. What Puck says is : "When they him spy, As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort. Rising and cawing at the gun's report, Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky."
Now it is, I suppose, possible to argue that Shakespeare had two unrelated pictures in his mind's eye and that the gun Which scared the choughs was not that with which the wild- fowler was stalking the geese. The problem then more or less disappears. "Russet," as many readers pointed out, could and generally did mean " grey " in Shakespeare's time. Jackdaws have grey heads, or anyhow napes. "Many in sort" can mean that there were rooks and perhaps starlings mixed up with the jackdaws On the two-picture basis it only remains to postulate a gun being fired near a congregation of jackdaws. Nobody suggested that an Elizabethan sportsman would waste one of his precious charges by firing it at these inedible birds, and Mr. G. J. Mapplebeck started a promising hare by won- dering whether Shakespeare might not have "attended a demonstration of coastal artillery," which must, he thinks, have been tested fairly regularly in those days. Supporters of the two-picture thesis would considerably strengthen their case if they could how that a noonday gun evicted corvidae i from their haunts n (say) the Tower of London.
I myself have always been a one-picture, one-gun man. I believe that the choughs were scared by the fowler and are therefore birds liable to be found on or near the feeding- grounds on which geese can be stalked—that is to say, on the foreshore, on the stubbles or on grassland. Now there is no reason why, especially on the stubbles, jackdaws, or jackdaws- and-rooks, should not be in company with wild geese; but they are certainly not normal companions or neighbours for geese, while other birds—" many in sort "—are. Whereas perturba- tion among members of the crow family is a most unusual sequel to somebody having a shot at a goose, I think any wild-fowler will agree that it would be difficult to describe in words more vivid and accurate than Puck's what does, almost always, happen along the foreshore on these occasions among the ducks, gulls and waders which are the birds you expect to find consorting with geese. Though it has, in the cries of oyster-catchers, redshanks and dunlin, shrill under-tones, the • general hubbub, in which the geese themselves play a leading part, is well conveyed by "cawing," which is not a very apt description of a jackdaw's rather yelping note. "Madly sweep the sky" is exactly what parties of widgeon and teal do when they are alarmed, and some of the waders perform, though at a lower level, similar evolutions. The words draw a brilliant and evocative picture of the swift, unpredictable formation- flying of shore-birds (" many in sort ") as they swoop and wheel to and fro across the fowler's field of vision, but are a far- fetched and infelicitous way of describing how a flock of slow- flying jackdaws, after scattering in all directions, bumbles jerkily off to the shelter of the nearest trees or cliffs.
One point which hardly anybody mentioned was the dramatic value of the choughs—why Shakespeare dragged them in at all. He wanted to convey the sudden impact—and the after- effects—of alarm and consternation on five simple and rather ludicrous men. When (says Puck) these oafs saw Bottom transmogrified, "As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye- then he recollects himself. Wild geese are cunning, rather dignified birds; to the dreeping fowler they represent a valuable prize and a worthy adversary; and they are, within their sub- species, almost completely uniform in appearance. Beyond a capacity for being alarmed, they have nothing in common with the rude and disparate mechanicals; and Puck adjusts the audience's perspective by switching their attention from the impressive, purposeful birds in the foreground to the foolish, motley, aimless, unvalued rabble in the background of the same picture. Geese take fright, but they don't, like the shore- birds, get in a flap and behave for quite a long time thereafter in an inconsequent, irresolute, hither-and-thither way. "As you were," in effect says Puck, bringing the audience back to the level of the people whose reactions he is trying to describe; "they weren't like geese. They were exactly like all that riff-raff along the shore who get in such a dither when some- bbdy lets off a gun."
This reading makes sense (to me, at any rate) in terms both of ornithology and of "theatre." But what about etymology? Can " russet-pated choughs" be interpreted in terms of all or some of the ducks, waders and gulls who get up when the fowler fires his gun—and without resort to such far-fetched expedients as switching russet back to its modern colour and making it fit pochard and black-headed gulls (two readers pointed out that the heads of the latter are really brown)? I think it can.
Russet, as well as meaning grey, also meant (vide the OED) "rustic, homely, simple" and was used in this sense by Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost (" russet yeas and honest kersie noes "); and I suggest that " russet-pated " here has no reference to colour and means simple-minded or chuckle- headed.
That still leaves us with the choughs; and it is not quite fair (though it is not irrelevant) to force the issue by dragging up the battering-ram of the OED and noting that Chuff (in seventeenth century sometimes spelt chough by confusion with, or play on, the name of the bird)" meant a rustic, boor, clown, churl.' No doubt Shakespeare intended his audience to take it partly in that sense; but he had birds in his mind's eye as well as a pun on the end of his pen. What were the .birds ? I am almost certain that Shakespeare here used " choughs " loosely (and partly for the sake of the pun) to denote with friendly contempt the variegated congregation of shorebirds whose reaction to the gun's report is not (like that of geese or jackdaws) to clear off as quickly and unobtrusively as possible but does correspond to the "distracted fear" which Puck describes as gripping the men of whose plight he is trying to give the audience an impression. • I admit that this reading of " choughs " has no secure textual foundations; and I do not expect it to be accepted by—or even perhaps to make any sense at all to—scholars or amateurs of Shakespeare who cannot from personal experience appre- hend the inspired fidelity with which every word in the passage (except choughs) conveys a picture familiar to all wild-fowlers. But if " russet-pated " means " simple-minded " Shakespeare It can hardly have applied it to any of the crow family; and if it means "grey-headed" the jackdaw-fanciers are left with the thankless task of either turning one vivid picture into two blurred ones by postulating a second gun, or else visualising an omithologically abnormal situation. Whichever they do they must thereafter explain that, when he wrote "many in sort," Shakespeare didn't mean what he said and wasn't really trying.
Of the sixty-odd readers who attempted the problem very few betrayed the slightest understanding of its nature. With cries of "Where is the difficulty? " and I know the answer" tile scholars, from behind a barricade of reference books, bombarded me with evidence that " russet" was liable to mean " grey " and choughs were liable to be jackdaws. (" I hope readers will be told how many dozen correct explanations, as above, you receive! "wrote Mr. J. D. U. Ward.) I said, when I set the problem, that it had exercised my mind for many years; and I suppose that these come-come-my-little-man com- petitors took me to be (if it is possible) an even bigger oaf than "A Spectator's Notebook" would suggest. But among the jackdaw-fanciers I must commend Professor A. P. Rossiter for his comprehensive erudition; Mr. G. D. Field for bringing in Milton's russet lawns and fallows grey "; and the Master of Marlborough College who, though he ended up as a Monedulan, started out with the hope of convincing himself and me that the birds were "a mixed flock of waders."
Deviationists included supporters of the blue jay, the red grouse, the pheasant and the fieldfare. Proponents of the Cornish chough included Master Andrew Longmore, aged nine years, who was easily the least prolix of the .contestants Mr. Richard Tweed, a Lower Boy at Eton : the Bishop of Dunwich and his curate, operating as a syndicate': and Colonel Geoffrey Pegs, whom I deduce to be a saboteur in Baconian pay, since he drew attention to Dr. Johnson's comment on Titania's line (" and light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes "), which was : "I know not how Shakespeare, who commonly derived his knowledge of Nature from his own observation, happened to place the glow-worm's light in his eyes, which is only in his tail."
Lt.-Col. P. R. Butler, (" it has always seemed to me that he mixed them up with *wild ducks ") qualifies for an honour- able mention; he directed my attention to the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion, which includes a passage describing exactly the sort of scene that (I maintain) Puck was describing. An illegible doctor from Cambridge (almost certainly, on internal evidence, called Attwood) distinguished himself by having a hunch that " russet-pated " is "analogous to addle- pated and means simple or rustic-minded." And finally I must thank Mr. Frank Morley, the picking of whose erudite but invincibly frivolous brain has let loose a whole gaggle of etymological chimaeras. So much for the choughs, many in sort. What about the brace of pheasants, which I offered for "the most convincing explanation "? Few competitors showed signs of comprehend- ing, and none overcame, what seem to me the fundamental difficulties of this passage; and if any object that these particular difficulties exist only in my own mind, I would point out that these particular pheasants exist (or existed) only in my own woods. They have been -sent to Mrs. Lucy Pratt of the Rectory, Peter Tavy, Tavistock, because, although she plumps to my mind for the wrong bird, I like her approach to the problem. She writes: "Dear Sir,—When I fetch the cows in, except in summer when it is up, the sun is not risen. Last month the sky behind the moor was greying and the stars were 'burnt out." Look where the morn in russet mantle clad.'
"No one, in England anyway, sees the first day spring russet as a fox or a S. Devon cow. It's grey, silver, dove coloured. So I think Shakespeare was thinking of the grey pated daws and members of their family.
"I he** not read any nature books or books on Shakespeare since school days; what I•have written is only what one can see.
"I hope this letter is not prolix. I'm afraid I do not know what prolix means.—Yours sincerely, Lucy Pratt."
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