"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... age to a year, and many a ploy we had together; there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of the exploit. "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the time, and caught sight of us against the sky. 'It's your rascal and mine, Laird,' we ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Gipsy are pleasantly illustrated by the fact that the collection of "animated books," which no Rommany gentleman's library should be without, generally includes a jackdaw. When the foot of the Gorgio is heard near the tent, a loud "wa-awk" from the wary bird (sounding very much like an alarm) at once proclaims the fact; and on approaching, the stranger finds the entire party ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... birds is, I think, due in the first place to the extraordinary abundance of the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small birds' nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of bush-beating to which men and boys are given in these parts, and which the Cornish authorities refuse ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... was a jackdaw Who hopped up and down In the principal street Of a neighboring town. j ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... to bed, therefore, where she lay only more feverish—conjecturing, and painting frightful pictures, till she heard the crow of the early village cock, and the caw of the jackdaw wheeling close to the eaves as he took wing in the gray of the morning to show her that the business of a new day had commenced; and yet Barney ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "I'm a jackdaw, Nelsy," he said, trying to smile. "Do you remember how I used to carry on up there? I had a rotten time in Mt. Alban, but it was the best time I ever had. I wish to the good Lord I could do something besides banking. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees which the Red Indian haunts, now by those which grow on Himalayan slopes. The interest lies in the fact that ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... special one of his latest escapades that he had been summoned to the office—the breaking of the window in the Long Hall by the stone he had flung at the rook, or the climbing of the South Tower for the jackdaw's nest. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... would be jealous, indeed, and there would be a fight in the palace, which would be nothing at all new, but this is much more serious, a very serious matter, and none can tell how it will end. As Kauc, the crow, was saying to Cloctaw, the jackdaw, this morning——" ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... "handy man," bold, enterprising, resourceful, and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him—grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and prosper wherever ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... and munched his cookies, with his head on one side and the air of a thievish jackdaw; and proceeded, after his wont, to extract such pith as ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Isabella, gathering fruit; J is for John, who is playing the flute. K 's for Kate, who is nursing her dolly; L is for Lawrence, feeding Poor Polly. M is for Maja, learning to draw; N is for Nicholas, with a jackdaw. O 's for Octavius, riding a goat; P 's for Penelope, sailing a boat. Q is for Quintus, armed with a lance; R is for Rachel, learning to dance. S 's for Sarah, talking to the cook; T is for Thomas, reading a book. U ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... ponies, with which he was already as friendly as if he had known them all his life. All animals seemed to take to him, for he had pets without end. The two nanny-goats and the little hind followed him like dogs; the squirrel was always in his pocket or on his shoulder; and a jackdaw and a magpie, both of them pinioned, fluttered after him wherever he went, chattering and scolding as though the place belonged to them. Then the children mounted their ponies and off they started, the idiot leading the way on his own ragged pony, which he ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... and my dear husband again away for some months. As soon as I could really say, "Spring is here," we were to leave London for our country home; and Joe was constantly talking to Mrs. Wilson about his various pets, left behind in the gardener's care. There was an old jackdaw, an especial favorite of his, a miserable owl, too, who had met with an accident, resulting in the loss of an eye; a more evil-looking object than "Cyclops," as my husband christened him, I never saw. Sometimes on a dark night this one eye would gleam luridly from ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... the further side of the room And flecked the canvas with daubs of mud; He wiped it down with a housemaid's broom, And gummed in the middle a jackdaw's plume And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... course the Jackdaw descends into the plains of the North-west Punjaub, is very numerous near the foot of the hills, and has been found in cis-Indus as far east as Umballa, and south at Ferozpoor, Jhelum, and Kalabagh. In Trans-Indus it extends unto the Dehra Ghazi ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Woodpecker, The Wren and the Eagle, The Blackbird and Swallow, The Jackdaw and Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white and Lark, The Tom-tit and Linnet, ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... with a nest in a small cavity in the stone at the back of a narrow ledge about seventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some distance I could see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while the cock stood outside on the ledge keeping guard. I watched this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep down on them a dozen or more times at long intervals. Sometimes after swooping down he would alight on the ledge a yard or two away, and the male dove would then turn and face him, and if he then began sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet him with his wings with the greatest ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the platform. The train arrived, and out of it, looking much more like her old self than she had on the previous day, emerged Mrs. Parsons with the most extraordinary collection of bundles, he counted nine of them, to say nothing of a jackdaw in a cage. She embraced him with enthusiasm, dropping the heaviest of the parcels, which seemed to contain bricks, upon his toe, and in a flood of language told him of the peculiar awfulness of the row between his father and herself which had ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of sugar out of the window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such pensioners, alike in a community of misfortune. "And, yes, Berns, you're right, we flirted a little—only a little: wasn't it natural? It was only for fun, because we were both young and it was such heavenly weather—it was the Easter before war broke out. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... had earned enough to make quite a fortune in his eyes; ten whole guineas lay glittering in the old night cap where he kept his savings, and the tailor thought he might now set up for a gentleman. So he bought cloth, made himself, in secret, a fine cloak, coat, and breeches, and in these jackdaw adornments paraded about the streets a whole morning, trying to appear an idle fine gentleman. At last he strutted into the best inn, ordered a grand dinner and a bottle of wine, and feasted ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... have a black dog and a jackdaw; and though the bird shows a preference for human companionship, when he cannot obtain that he hops off to the dog's kennel, on the top of which he sits, talking to his four-footed friend in his own fashion; and the dog seems well-pleased to receive his visits. I fully ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... They hide away their treasures without using them, as the magpie or the jackdaw does with ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... ho!" said Harry. "He'd look like an old cock jackdaw when he's moulting. Ha! ha! ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... tree, or to suck their paws through the long nights of winter?—The panther would teach them savage cruelty and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them to fly from the pursuit of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of the more savage creatures, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of my life. In his time Christie had been "reader's" boy at Ballantyne's, in Edinburgh, and in that capacity he had laid hands with a jackdaw assiduity on every scrap of literary interest which he could secure. He had proof sheets corrected by the hands of every notable man of his time. He had been engaged for at least fifty years in making his collection, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... A CERTAIN Jackdaw was so proud and ambitious that, not contented to live within his own sphere, he picked up the feathers which fell from the Peacocks, stuck them among his own, and very confidently introduced himself ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... birds evinced the most perfect friendliness and confidence in us, and we became greatly attached to them. They and the fowls seemed excellent travellers, and after a long day's march would come up smiling, like the jackdaw of Rheims, "not a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... suggested, his cottage would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a Christmas ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of an umbrella. Broken earthenware not unfrequently visible in the banks, in some places at the depth of 3-4 feet. Unsettled weather, with gusts of strong wind from the S. and SSE. Thermometer 78 degrees 82'. The usual Calcutta birds continue, jackdaw-like crow, Falco pondicherainus, two common mainas, Ardea indica, and the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... can estimate? Who will accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth, would be not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... JACKDAW once ran up to a Glowworm and was about to seize him. "Wait a moment, good friend," said the Worm, "and you shall hear ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... JACKDAW (Corvus monedula).—A very amusing, though very wicked pet. There used to be throngs of them in the tower of the old church at Hursley, and their droll voices might be heard conversing in the evening. Mr. Chamberlayne had one which, after being freed, always came down to greet him when he walked ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is "un peu fort"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... little Britain, commonly called Great Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal and cover Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North Pole to the farthest East! I am mighty sorry for it, and hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress himself in the plumes of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the genus Eulabes, often talk as well as parrots. The common introduced European starling often says a few words quite clearly. I once knew a long-tailed glossy starling (Lamprotornis caudatus) which shared an aviary with an accomplished albino jackdaw. The starling had acquired much of the jackdaw's repertoire, and the 'conversations' carried on between the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... devote himself to the task of stripping the borrowed feathers from this fine jackdaw. After inaugurating his work by quoting the Horatian sneer, "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?" he at once plunges in medias res, and not mincing his language, says:—"This impudent vagabond ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... up and down the apartment. But the commodore, who is very choleric, and does not like to be jeered, fell into a main high passion, and stormed like a perfect hurricane, swearing that he knew a devil from a jackdaw as well as e'er a man in the three kingdoms. He owned, indeed, that the birds were found, but denied that they were the occasion of the uproar. For my own part, master, I believe much may be said on both sides of the question; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an' Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not been robbed of her vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief Short's rimidies alone, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... side, while this picture I draw: In chattering a magpie, in pride a jackdaw; A temper the devil himself could not bridle; Impertinent mixture of busy and idle; As rude as a bear, no mule half so crabbed; She swills like a sow, and she breeds like a rabbit; A housewife in bed, at table a slattern; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... said. "If they had come down on us yelling for our scalps, we would have had a merry meeting. But they're either gone to bring their friends or they're trying to take us in the back. I'll guard the front, and you keep your eyes on the hinder parts, though a jackdaw could scarcely win ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of them, what strange stories you have picked up about our country, and this river? We have plied here, men and boys, for years; and to be sure we cannot say that we never saw a swan: there are some here and there towards the fens, which make a low dull noise: but as for any harmony, a rook or a jackdaw, in comparison of them, may be looked ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... vice which I shall mention is Pride. There is not in the universe a more ridiculous nor a more contemptible animal than a proud clergyman; a turkey-cock or a jackdaw are objects of veneration when compared with him. I don't mean, by Pride, that noble dignity of mind to which goodness can only administer an adequate object, which delights in the testimony of its own conscience, and could ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... was so busy with herself, that, although close to him, she never sees he—always remembering that the night was dark. So Poll turned her eyes up, for all the world like a dying jackdaw." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... stupid Peruonto, hanging down his head as if he was going to gaol. Away he went, walking as if he were a jackdaw, or treading on eggs, counting his steps, at the pace of a snail's gallop, and making all sorts of zigzags and excursions on his way to the wood, to come there after the fashion of a raven. And when he reached ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... cloistered walk seems to be the length of the nave of the cathedral. There is a square of four such sides; and of places for meditation, grave, yet not too sombre, it seemed to me one of the best. While we stayed there, a jackdaw was walking to and fro across the grassy enclosure, and haunting around the good Bishop's grave. He was clad in black, and looked like a feathered ecclesiastic; but I know not whether it were Bishop Dennison's ghost, or that ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical labour of writing,—but the intellectual saving would be tremendous. I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing every one who knows the delinquent. Let him get the credit which ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... with some plausibility: Either the book is some other good man's work, and you a jackdaw strutting in borrowed, plumes; or, if it is really yours, you are a second Salaethus; the Crotoniate legislator made most severe laws against adultery, was much looked up to on the strength of it, and was shortly after taken in adultery with his brother's wife. You are an exact reproduction ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... were eating out of the bowl with a wooden spoon, a tame jackdaw who had been sitting on an old stool by the fireside, hopped over and perched himself ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw among birds. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... plain to the reader that the birds here described are Rooks (corvus frugilegus). I have allowed myself to speak of them by their generic or family name of Crow, this being a common country practice. The genus corvus, or Crow, includes the Raven, the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow, the Jackdaw, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... round-faced, large-eyed, fat-legged baby, as unlike to the bronzed, whiskered, strapping seaman who went by the name of "Fighting Bill" as a jackdaw is to a marlinespike—when Bill was a baby, his father used to say he was just cut out for a sailor; and he was right, for the urchin was overflowing with vigour and muscular energy. He was utterly reckless, and very earnest—we might almost ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... but it seems likely that the magpie's habit of collecting miscellaneous trifles caused its name to be given to a dish of uncertain constituents. It is a curious coincidence that the obsolete chuet or chewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw.[30] It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince Hal applies the name to Falstaff (1 Henry IV., v. 1). It comes from Fr. chouette, screech-owl, which formerly meant also "a chough, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... was. And I loved her naught, nor did it ever come into my mind that I should love her, though I loved a white goat of ours and deemed it dear and lovely; and afterwards other things also that came to me from time to time, as a squirrel that I saved from a weasel, and a jackdaw that fell from a tall ash-tree nigh our house before he had learned how to fly, and a house-mouse that would run up and down my hand and arm, and other such-like things; and shortly I may say that the wild things, even to the conies and fawns loved me, and had but little ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Hector Ernescliffe discovered a jackdaw's nest in the chimney, whereupon the whole train rushed off to investigate, leaving the two doctors and Ethel standing together in the empty parlour, Dr. May pressing, Dr. Spencer raising desultory objections; but so evidently against his own wishes, that Ethel said, "Now, indeed, you must not ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... is said, to create a sovereign over the birds, and made proclamation that, on a certain day, they should all present themselves before him, when he would himself choose the most beautiful among them to be king. The Jackdaw, knowing his own ugliness, searched through the woods and fields, and collected the feathers which had fallen from the wings of his companions, and stuck them in all parts of his body. When the appointed day arrived, and the birds had ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... about it, perhaps 'tis better for you not to see it, lest you should come off as ill by seeing the Muses, as Actaeon did by seeing Diana: For you'd perhaps be in Danger of being turn'd either into a Hedgehog, or a wild Boar, a Swine, a Camel, a Frog, or a Jackdaw. But however, if you can't see, I'll make you hear 'em, if you don't make a Noise; they are just a-coming this Way. Let's meet 'em. Hail, most ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... hair look more bristly and worse cut than ever, and the Bishop's voice ripe and unctuous grew more and more mellow as his father's became harsher and more assertive. Mark found himself thinking of some lines in The Jackdaw of Rheims about a cake of soap worthy of washing the hands of the Pope. The Pope would have hands like the Bishop's, and Mark who had heard a great deal about the Pope looked at the Bishop of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that ease and self-possession which can only be acquired by long habitual intercourse with well-bred persons, this surely is the wisest course that could be adopted, and a hundred degrees above that fidgety, jackdaw-like assumption of nonchalance with which the ill-bred amongst ourselves seek to cover ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... royal chambers, O thou Prince of all the kings of the earth!" and "Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master," or Charles Wesley's Hymns, or, most loved of all, Cowper, from the rapt "Come thou, and, added to thy many crowns," or "O that those lips had language!" to the Jackdaw, and his incomparable Letters; or Gray's Poems, Burns's "Tam O'Shanter," or Sir Walter's "Eve of St. John,"[18] and "The ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... course, of a jackdaw or a magpie—these birds' thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I conjectured, therefore, that it must be ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of? "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... a preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. He becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered on his task. We admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... goes out, when in a word she believes she is alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of this change, you will not fail to have observed the expression she wore behind your back) you may read her soul as if ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... his tail to keep the flies off," and that lack may have saddened him. He may have thought that a cow can snort and be dignified at the one moment, and that timidity is comely in a sheep. He would have scolded the jackdaw, and tried to out-whistle the throstle, and wondered why his pipe got tired when the blackbird's didn't. There would be flies to be watched, slender atoms in yellow gauze that flew, and filmy specks that flittered, and sturdy, thick-ribbed brutes ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw about ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was 'a little beauty'. Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the houses by a descending water-spout; perhaps a dragon-gurgoyle had spat it disdainfully down. How had the thimble got on the roof? That was the question, not how it got down into the gutter. Had a cunning jackdaw, as in the 'Gazza di Ladra' carried it off, or had a child tumbled it out of an attic window on to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... it a cosy appearance; the cats make one think that fiends are pouring out of hell, through a hole in the roadway. Peep o' day is the stillest time of all. The cats seat themselves on walls. Sparrows chirp sleepily. Some rooks and a hoary-headed jackdaw come down from the trees nearby, quarter the roadway for garbage, and fly away croaking. Busy starlings follow. If the weather is hard and fish offal scarce on the beach, the gulls will pay us a supercilious visit. About six o'clock the children ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long melancholy caw that seems to make the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... lessons were already well advanced, as I could hear by the hum of voices as I approached. Even Peter, the jackdaw, in his wicker cage at the open doorway, joined in the clatter of tongues. His quick eye noticed me hurrying to the school, and he sidled awkwardly along his perch, put out his long black beak through the bars of his cage, and flapped ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... your little ducky, dovey, doggieboy, your swallow, your little jackdaw, your little tootsie wootsie sparrowkin: (opening his mouth) make a reptile of me and let me have a double tongue in my mouth; throw a chain of arms around me; clasp me ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... his hands as if he had just taken his fingers from a poultice; while your lawyer is recognised at once by his perking, conceited, cross-examination phiz, the exact counterpart to the expression of an over-indulged jackdaw. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... sailing the admiral inspected the ship. On this occasion "Sailor," our widowed cat, was decked out in all the gay and gaudy trappings of a field officer on parade, and, what is more to the point, he was seemingly quite aware that he was looking smart. I suppose "Sailor" can never have read the "Jackdaw of Rheims," but he certainly looked the words of that conceited bird as he strutted proudly along before the admiral; and I feel assured that, though the commander-in-chief may not have thought much about the matter, there was no doubt in pussy's mind ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... behaviour, no word could be better than goistering, and we prefer goister to gauster. Its likeness to boisterous will assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book goistering is explained as guffawing. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... which I seldom varied from, came Cowper's Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; its solemn measure and gloomy character, as well as the incident it was founded upon, making it well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his address to the Jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest); "Ille et nefasto'' from Horace, and Goethe's Erl Knig. After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... art right, for when Caesar reads to us a new book from the Troyad, thou, instead of crying out like a jackdaw, wouldst have to give an ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a suit of steel-gray, and the pair are quite conspicuous among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... were so placed that it was only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many years; there was no soot in the passage. There was a jackdaw's nest high up. I could see the old jackdaw looking down at me. Up above her head was a little square of sky. I did not doubt that when I got to the top I should be able to scramble out of that square on to the leads, then ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... regions that are better, In the court-yards that are wider, In compartments that are larger, Living with a loving husband, Living with a stronger hero. Shoe of birch-bark was my suitor, Shoe of Laplanders, my husband; Had the body of a raven, Voice and visage like the jackdaw, Mouth and claws were from the black-wolf, The remainder from the wild-bear. Had I known that mine affianced Was a fount of pain and evil, To the hill-side I had wandered, Been a pine-tree on the highway, Been a linden on the border, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... watch; for he's dead. He was found in his bed that very morning when he was going to sign away all the estate from his nephew. So that it's lucky for that 'ere covy that the old boy slipt when he did. People were sent off in all directions to find him; for it seems the old jackdaw and the young jackdaw wasn't on good terms, and nobody ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "I had a jackdaw myself," said one of the men. "I got it from a woman that came to the door with a basket for fourpence. My mother stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its tongue with a threepenny ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... themselves are nearly as large as a jackdaw. The female is green in colour, the centre of the breast feathers yellowish; the unmoulted plumage of the male is similar: the eyes of both are ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... marries AEgeus, when Theseus returns home, and narrowly escapes being poisoned by her magic potions. Minos interrupts the joy of AEgeus on the return of his son, and wages war against him; having collected troops from all parts, even from Paros, where Arne has been changed into a jackdaw. Minos endeavours to gain the alliance of AEacus, who, however, refuses it, and sends the Myrmidons, (who have been changed into ants from men after a severe pestilence), under the command of Cephalus to assist AEgeus. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that he was about to obtain a triumph with the ideas of another man, he never thought of it. It is generally in perfect good faith that the jackdaw struts in ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... have got rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong; yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw. Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it pretty surely in that solitary place at ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Kae, a jackdaw. Kail, kale, the colewort; cabbage; Scots' broth. Kail-blade, the leaf of the colewort. Kail-gullie, a cabbage knife. Kail-runt, the stem of the colewort. Kail-whittle, a cabbage knife. Kail-yard, a kitchen garden. Kain, kane, rents in kind. Kame, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... made of pine-branches, plastered with mud and thatched with rye-straw; a hole in the top let the smoke out, and a hole in the side let in father, mother, pigs, chickens, and children, beside a tame jackdaw, that slept on an old stool by the fireplace, and ate with Otto's nine children out of ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... betuxt us. And there's many a thing that no man can go talkin' about to any but only the Lord himself. Still you can't help us poor folks seeing when there's summat amiss, and we can't help havin' our own thoughts any more than the sailor's jackdaw that couldn't speak. And sometimes we may be nearer the mark than you would suppose, for God has made us all of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... matters all the time our poor John was fighting with beasts at Ephesus. But I am vexed with him too; and if only he had waited patiently before taking such a serious step in order to hear my arguments—— But no matter. A jackdaw isn't to be called a religious bird because it keeps a-cawing on the steeple, and John Storm won't make himself into a monk by shutting himself up in ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... I will be silent," said the Varangian, moved somewhat beyond his mood. "If you trust my word, so; if you think I am a jackdaw that must be speaking, whether in or out of place and purpose, I am contented to go back again, and therein we can end ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... guelder rose was pictured with it in the water. On the opposite bank stood the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... they wanted Nick to sing; but again Carew interposed. "Nay," said he; "he hath just eaten his fill, so he cannot sing. Moreover, he is no jackdaw to screech in such a cage as this. He shall not sing ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... his eyes stretched an immense waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect forest of last year's burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark, deserted factory, with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was flying round the chimney. This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning to be veiled in ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... persuasion" made its appearance in due course of time; and the joyful mother, accompanied by her brother, set off walking to Buda, with the small boy and the ring for credentials. When resting by the way in a forest the child began playing with the ring, and a jackdaw, who in all ancient story has a weakness for this sort of ornament, pounced upon the shining jewel and carried it off to a tree. The brother with commendable quickness took up his bow and shot the bird; thus the ring was recovered, and the story ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... be in vogue," Quoth a Jackdaw: "Glossy gray, Setting close, yet setting easy, Nothing fly-away; Suited to our misty mornings, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, 'carry no letter in this affair—if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King——?' Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw's: 'That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates' Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... There is nothing in it, only an old nest of a jackdaw,—a bundle of bare twigs. Trying to deceive me you are ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... him as nimbly as a tomtit or a jackdaw, and presently gave him another little taste ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... and I won't be a sneak if I am a fool. I'll go and tell Professor Baumgarten all about it and ask his advice. I'd rather face a loaded cannon; but it must be done. Then I'll sell out, pay my debts, and go back where I belong. Better be an honest pauper than a jackdaw among peacocks'; and Nat smiled in the midst of his trouble, as he looked about him at the little elegancies of his room, remembering what ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... whistle softly, and then picked up a little cushion-like patch of velvety green moss and pitched it down towards a jackdaw that was sitting on a projecting stone just below a hole, watching him intently, first with one eye and then with the other, as if puzzled to know what he was doing so near to his private residence, where his wife was sitting upon a late batch of eggs, an accident connected with rats ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... you is which! Lilias, Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, Clifford!" she declared, shaking hands with each. "I'm very rich to have five new cousins all at once! To-morrow you must show me everything, the rabbits and the dogs, and the tame jackdaw! Oh yes! I've been hearing about them and about you! Cousin Clare told me just what you would be like. I kept asking ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... other spirits. Within my knowledge there have been cases when, before a death in the house, ravens, jackdaws, canaries, magpies, and even parrots, have shown unmistakable signs of uneasiness and distress. The raven has croaked in a high-pitched, abnormal key; the jackdaw and canary have become silent and dejected, from time to time shivering; the magpie even has feigned death; the parrot has shrieked incessantly. Owls, too, are sure predictors of death, and may be heard hooting ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... faces crowding the windows; but the movement was not seen, as none of the circumstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. "Now to recommence," he said; "and we shall not notice a jackdaw again." His eye went sideways watchfully at Wilfrid. "You like zat piece ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... such things were to be found as monks keeping dogs, or even birds, in the cloister, Peckham denounces these breaches of decorum as grave offences, which were not to be passed over and not to be allowed. What! a black monk stalking along with a bull-pup at his heels, and a jackdaw, worse than the Jackdaw of Rheims, using bad words in the garth, and showing an evil example to the chorister boys, with his ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp |
