"THOUGH NARROW BE THAT OLD MAN'S CARES, AND NEAR"
Reading edition
Composed 1807.—Published 1807
——"gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."
[Written at Coleorton. This old man's name was Mitchell. He was, in all his ways and conversation, a great curiosity, both individually and as a representative of past times. His chief employment was keeping watch at night by pacing round the house, at that time building, to keep off depredators. He has often told me gravely of having seen the Seven Whistlers, and the Hounds as here described. Among the groves of Coleorton, where I became familiar with the habits and notions of old Mitchell, there was also a labourer of whom, I regret, I had no personal knowledge; for, more than forty years after, when he was become an old man, I learned that while I was composing verses, which I usually did aloud, he took much pleasure, unknown to me, in following my steps that he might catch the words I uttered; and, what is not a little remarkable, several lines caught in this way kept their place in his memory. My volumes have lately been given to him by my informant, and surely he must have been gratified to meet in print his old acquaintances.—I. F.]
In 1815 this sonnet was one of the "Poems belonging to the Period of Old Age"; in 1820 it was transferred to the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."—Ed.
Though narrow be that old Man's cares, and near, The poor old Man is greater than he seems: For he hath waking empire, wide as dreams; An ample sovereignty of eye and ear. Rich are his walks with supernatural cheer; 5 The region of his inner spirit teems With vital sounds and monitory gleams Of high astonishment and pleasing fear. He the seven birds hath seen, that never part, Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds, 10 And counted them: and oftentimes will start— For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's Hounds[A] Doomed, with their impious Lord, the flying Hart To chase for ever, on aërial grounds!
To bring all the poems referring to Coleorton together, so far as possible, this and the next sonnet are transferred from their places in the chronological list, and placed beside the Coleorton "Inscriptions."
I am indebted to Mr. William Kelly of Leicester for the following note on the Leicestershire superstition of the Seven Whistlers.
"There is an old superstition, which it is not easy to get to the bottom of, concerning a certain cry or sound heard in the night, supposed to be produced by the Seven Whistlers. What or who those whistlers are is an unsolved problem. In some districts they are popularly believed to be witches, in others ghosts, in others devils, while in the Midland Counties they are supposed to be birds, either plovers or martins—some say swifts. In Leicestershire it is deemed a bad omen to hear the Seven Whistlers, and our old writers supply many passages illustrative of the popular credulity. Spenser, in his Faërie Queene, book II. canto xii. stanza 36, speaks of
The whistler shrill, that whoso hears doth die.
Sir Walter Scott, in The Lady of the Lake, names the bird with which his character associated the cry—
And in the plover's shrilly strain The signal whistlers heard again.
"When the colliers of Leicestershire are flush of money, we are told, and indulge in a drinking bout, they sometimes hear the warning voice of the Seven Whistlers, get sobered and frightened, and will not descend the pit again till next day. Wordsworth speaks of a countryman who
... the seven birds hath seen, that never part, Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds, And counted them.
"A few years ago, during a thunderstorm which passed over Leicestershire, and while vivid lightning was darting through the sky, immense flocks of birds were seen flying about, uttering doleful, affrighted cries as they passed, and keeping up for a long time a continual whistling like that made by some kinds of sea-birds. The number must have been immense, for the local newspapers mentioned the same phenomenon in different parts of the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Leicester, and Lincoln. A gentleman, conversing with a countryman on the following day, asked him what kind of birds he supposed them to have been. The man answered, 'They are what we call the Seven Whistlers,' and added that 'whenever they are heard it is considered a sign of some great calamity, and that the last time he had heard them was on the night before the deplorable explosion of fire damp at the Hartley Colliery.'"
In Notes and Queries there are several allusions to this local superstition. In the Fifth Series (vol. ii. p. 264), Oct. 3, 1874, the editor gives a summary of several notes on the subject in vol. viii. of the Fourth Series (pp. 68, 134, 196, and 268), with additional information. He says "record was made of their having been heard in Leicestershire; and that the develin or martin, the swift, and the plover were probably of the whistling fraternity that frightened men. At p. 134 it was shown that Wordsworth had spoken of one who
... the seven birds hath seen, that never part, Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds, And counted them.
On the same page, the swift is said to be the true whistler (but, as noted at page 196, the swifts never make nightly rounds), and the superstition is said to be common in our Midland Counties. At page 268, Mr. Pearson put on record that in Lancashire the plovers, whistling as they fly, are accounted heralds of ill, though sometimes of trivial accident, and that they are there called 'Wandering Jews,' and are said to be, or to carry with them, the ever-restless souls of those Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion. At page 336, the whistlers are chronicled as having been the harbingers of the great Hartley Colliery explosion. A correspondent, Viator, added, that on the Bosphorus there are flocks of birds, the size of a thrush, which fly up and down the channel, and are never seen to rest on land or water. The men who rowed Viator's caique told him that they were the souls of the damned, condemned to perpetual motion. The Seven Whistlers have not furnished chroniclers with later circumstances of their tuneful and awful progresses till a week or two ago.... The whistlers are also heard and feared in Portugal. See The New Quarterly for July 1874, for a record of some travelling experience in that country."
Another extract from Notes and Queries is to the following effect:—
"'Your Excellency laughs at ghosts. But there is no lie about the Seven Whistlers. Many a man besides me has heard them.'
"'Who are the Seven Whistlers? and have you seen them yourself?'
"'Not seen, thank Heaven; but I have heard them plenty of times. Some say they are the ghosts of children unbaptized, who are to know no rest till the judgment day. Once last winter I was going with donkeys and a mule to Caia. Just at the moment I stopped by the river bank to tighten the mule's girth, I heard the accursed whistlers coming down the wind along the river. I buried my head under the mule, and never moved till the danger was over; but they passed very near, for I heard the flap and rustle of their wings.'
"'What was the danger?'
"'If a man once sees them, heaven only knows what will not happen to him—death and damnation at the very least.'
"'I have seen them many times. I shot, or tried to shoot them!'
"'Holy Mother of God! you English are an awful people! You shot the Seven Whistlers?'
"'Yes; we call them marecos (teal or widgeon) in our country, and shoot them whenever we can. They are better to eat than wild ducks.'"
Gabriel's Hounds.—"At Wednesbury in Staffordshire, the colliers going to their pits early in the morning hear the noise of a pack of hounds in the air, to which they give the name of Gabriel's Hounds, though the more sober and judicious take them only to be wild geese making this noise in their flight." Kennet MS., Lansd. 1033. (See Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, vol. i. p. 388.) The peculiar cry or cackle, both of the Brent Goose and of the Bean or Harvest Goose (Anser Segetum), has often been likened to that of a pack of hounds in full cry—especially when the birds are on the wing during night. For some account of the superstition of "Gabriel's Hounds," see Notes and Queries, First Series, vol. v. pp. 534 and 596; and vol. xii. p. 470; Second Series, vol. i. p. 80; and Fourth Series, vol. vii. p. 299. In the last note these hounds are said to be popularly believed to be "the souls of unbaptized children wandering in the air till the day of judgment." They are also explained as "a thing in the air, that is said in these parts (Sheffield) to foretell calamity, sounding like a great pack of beagles in full cry." This quotation is from Charles Reade's Put yourself in his place, which contains many scraps of local folk-lore. The following is from the Statistical History of Kirkmichael, by the Rev. John Grant. "In the autumnal season, when the moon shines from a serene sky, often is the wayfaring traveller arrested by the music of the hills. Often struck with a more sober scene, he beholds the visionary hunters engaged in the chase, and pursuing the deer of the clouds, while the hollow rocks in long sounding echoes reverberate their cries." "There are several now living who assert that they have seen and heard this aërial hunting." See the Statistical History of Scotland, edited by Sir J. Sinclair, vol. xii. pp. 461, 462. Compare note to An Evening Walk, vol. i. p. 19.—Ed.
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