Weathercock

“ In a few hours’ time, or in the course of the night, the storm will return, having ‘worked round:’ and indeed in that locality this is very often the case. It is to be observed that even a small copse will for a short distance in its rear quite divert the course of a breeze; so that a weathercock placed on the leeside is entirely untrustworthy: if the wind really blows from the south and over the copse, the weathercock will sometimes point in precisely the opposite direction, obeying the ‘undertow’ of the gale, as it were, drawing backwards. ”

“ Even the frogs in the marshes were silent, and humanity was ill-natured and despondent. While standing on the lee side of an old oak I chanced upon a glorious weathercock—one that would shame the despairing thoughts of any reasonable man. That prince of winter birds, a crested tit, sat long upon a leafless twig facing the cruel east wind, sat there and sang, clinging, as for dear life, to the swaying branch, T’sweet here! ”

“ The gentlemen of the press, probably, expected that the awful solemnity of the scene would have rendered any man, not entirely lost to every sense of feeling, completely motionless. The apathy of the weathercock that went on whirling about as if nothing had happened, is in the highest degree disgusting, and we can scarcely regret the fate of such an unfeeling animal. ”

“ I never felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The situation and appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must be terrific, yet many persons have voluntarily and daringly clambered to the top, even in a state of intoxication." ”

“ Jack picked himself up, and looked black as thunder. Alida shut her eyes, and kept them shut (she said it was from horror, but it may have been because Betty forgot to pull the opening string) , but Clare and Mr. Punchinello did nothing but smile, which was a proof of their exquisite breeding.
THE WEATHERCOCK.
The weathercock stands on the steeple,
And there the weathercock stands;
He flaps his wings and he claps his wings,
Because he has no hands;
He turns him round when the wind blows,
He turns again and again ”

“ The Weathercock called out that he could see the little red Ant on the life-preserver.
[Pg 59] MAN OVERBOARD
Wake up! Wake up! and sing your song
As we roll merrily along.
Above the meadow sings the lark,
So let us sing aboard the Ark.
"There goes the Weathercock," cooed the Dove, flying over to the porthole and looking out over the bright blue ocean.
"Tell him I'll get up in a minute," yawned Marjorie. ”

“ In all others he is a real Weathercock. He builds cottages, apparently with no object but pulling them down; and pulls them down, apparently with no object but that of building them up: he is a Tory one hour and a Whig the next, and takes in the Chronicle and Courier alternately; he seldom reads more than half a number of a periodical work, and never wears the same coat above a month. ”

“ High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver!
High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of. ”

“ The Weathercock swings to and fro on the Big Red Barn and wishes it were Spring.
116
Busy Beaver swims about under the ice in the Forest Pond, coming back to his little house, whose front door is deep down where the water never freezes. In the upper room he has stored away twigs and things to eat till Mr. Merry Sun melts the ice and tells the flowers to bloom again.
All the birds have gone south except a few. ”

“ It might be inferred from a passage in the address "to the Reader," that "A Woman is a Weathercock" [3] [5] was written some time before it was printed; and from the dedication of the same play, we learn that Field's "Amends for Ladies," if not then also finished, was fully contemplated by the author under that title. An allusion to the Gunpowder Treason of 1605 is made in the first act of "A Woman is a Weathercock;" ”

“ Weathercocks do not always show the real direction of a very gentle wind. The strange figures of them, usually the productions of capricious fancy, is one cause of their imperfection as vanes to indicate the wind. ”

“ Some people object to these things; for my part, I own I am delighted with them. They show a proper distrust of one’s own opinion, a decorous compliance with the unstable will of the world, an eager spirit of enterprise; in short, they prove that the Weathercocks have not an ounce of obstinacy in their composition.
Sir Wilfrid Weathercock, the present head of the family, is a cheerful and hale man, between forty and fifty years of age. He is about the middle stature, although, upon some occasions, by the affectation of a fashionable stoop, he appears somewhat dwarfish ”

“ To us, we say, this is delightful. But one seldom finds two tastes alike. Many pronounce the Weathercocks to be quite crazed; and many decide that “they are mighty good kind of people, but have very odd whimsies!” ”

“ The under-currents of air are so numerous and so conflicting—especially in towns where the houses are lofty—that it is quite possible for two weathercocks at different ends of the same street to show at the same moment the wind blowing from opposite directions. ”

“ Now, as each farmer judges the weather of the day by the direction of the wind, think of bringing the owners of these nine differing weathercocks together! Each puts implicit faith in his own vane, and we all know what subject is first broached when two or twenty men are gathered together. Something like this would be the classification of the unhappy nine: Two positive clear-weather folk, two hopefully ditto, and five that predicted rain before night. Put it in another way: Four men would think, if they did not call, five men fools ”

“ The weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the unfathomable waters. ”

“ Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one
Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,
Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft.
There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates
Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes
Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation.
Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pré
Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household. ”

“ We had fair weather and rain by turns; the sky, for the most part, being obscured, and sometimes by heavy dense clouds which broke in excessive hard showers.
At seven o'clock in the evening on the 18th, the calm was succeeded by a breeze at east, which the next day increasing and veering to and fixing at N.E., we stretched to N.W. with our tacks on board. We made no doubt that we had now got the N.E. trade-wind, as it was attended with fair weather, except now and then some light showers of rain; and as we advanced to the north the wind increased, and blew a fresh top-gallant gale. ”

“ If the wind is light and weather clear, they seem to pass inland at once to favorite and suitable covers. Should frost come—which drives the worms down, and also prevents the birds from probing—cock move south and west. Therefore, it is in our southwest counties, Wales and West Ireland, where, owing to the Gulf stream frost and cold are seldom severe, that the best woodcock shooting is to be had, after the seasonal migration is over. ”

“ At the same time I had every thing got up from between decks, the decks well cleaned and well aired with fires; a thing that ought never to be long neglected in wet moist weather. The fair weather, which had continued all this day, was succeeded in the night by a storm from north-west, which blew in hard squalls, attended with rain, and obliged us to strike top-gallant and lower yards, and to carry out another hawser to the shore. The bad weather continued the whole day and the succeeding night, after which it fell calm with fair weather. ”

“ Scouts will find that weather-signs among the high mountains are very different from those of the low or the flatter country. The easiest sign of storm is the night-caps. For when in the morning the mountains still have their night-caps on, and the clouds rest like shattered fog in the draws and hollows, the day will surely have rain, by noon. But among the Rockies there usually is a thunder-storm in the middle of every day during the summer.
No one wind for all localities brings rain. The weather is interfered with by the peaks and the valleys. ”

“ The wind rose almost to a tornado, though there was no snow or rain, just a bitter cold searching wind. It smote the mountains. We could see the sky-rocketing volley of snow on their sides, and noted too that towards their tops there was no disturbance, indicating a semi-icy condition of the snow there, perhaps better, perhaps worse for going. And now in the turning of a hand the crowding ice packs were back. As far as we could see their humps and fields spread everlastingly, and the chorus of groans, wheezes, and queer hushing sounds that they all sent up was astonishing. ”

“ These signs are to be observed chiefly in fair weather; for in the wet season fogs do hang over the land all the day, and it may be neither land-wind nor sea-breeze stirring. If in the afternoon, also, in fair weather, we see a tornado over the land, it commonly sends us forth a fresh land-wind. These land-winds are very cold, and though the sea-breezes are always much stronger, yet these are colder by far. The sea-breezes, indeed, are very comfortable and refreshing; for the hottest time in all the day, is about nine, ten, or eleven o’clock in the morning, in the interval between both breezes ”

“ Scarcely anything can be imagined in nature more picturesque and dramatic than this Chinook wind. The thermometer may be down nearly to zero, a foot of snow may rest like a pall on the earth, or a deadly fog may wrap the earth, when suddenly, as if by the breath of inspiration, the fog parts, the peaks of the mountains may be seen half stripped of snow, and then, roaring and whistling, the warm south wind comes like an army. ”

“ The difference in manner proves that the woodcocks are very rarely feeding when flushed by the beaters. In Ireland and the west of Scotland the warm heather-clad hills hold the woodcock more than the coverts do, until the birds are driven by snow or hail to the woods. Rain and mist will afterwards drive the ’cock out of the coverts and back to the hills, but it is thought that at Ashford fewer go back to the heather on each occasion, so that the longer shooting is delayed in January the more birds there are in those coverts. ”

“ When swallows fly low it foretells rain.
The cuckoo comes in May. In June he changes his tune. In July he goes away. In August away he must, for a cuckoo in September nobody can remember.
It is said woodlarks are never found in Northamptonshire.
Larks rising very high and singing for a long time is a sign of fine weather.
[Pg 24] Kites flying aloft betokens fine weather.
Peacock's feathers, even now, are considered to bring bad luck into a house.
When you see a heron flying the first time in the year put the tips of your right thumb and the finger nearest the thumb together and form a ring. ”

“ The clear weather, and the wind veering to N.W., tempted me to steer south; which course we continued till seven in the morning of the 20th, when the wind changing to N.E. and the sky becoming clouded, we hauled up S.E. In the afternoon the wind increased to a strong gale, attended with a thick fog, snow, sleet, and rain, which constitutes the very worst of weather. Our rigging, at this time, was so loaded with ice, that we had enough to do to get our topsails down, to double the reef. ”

“ Second, the topography of the pack is such that every wind carries before it huge drifts of snow which it deposits in open leads, where it is either melted or converted into ice at once. During the blackness of the night, and during the endless gray snow-days since, we have constantly longed for a fair old-time snow-storm: a storm bringing sufficient snow to blanket the ship and keep us warm inside: a gentle, quiet fall of large, soft flakes to soften the hard outlines of the pack, and without the ever accompanying thunder of winds and whizzing, cutting, maddening ice-crystals. ”

“ On February twenty-eighth we were forced to take to the ice that the ship might better ride out a howling storm.
I can imagine nothing more despairing than a storm on the edge of the pack. At best it is a cold, dull, and gloomy region, with a high humidity and constant drizzly fogs. Clear weather is here an exception. Storm with rain, sleet, and snow, is the normal weather condition throughout the entire year. During the day of the twenty-eighth we are unable to get a glimpse of the sun, and are in consequence in doubt as to our actual position. ”

“ Alight on hedge or bush, where late concealed
Their nests now hang apparent to the view.”
Grahame.
To November we ought to give the woodcock, the aristocrat among our winter visitors. To see one in a winter’s walk makes the walk memorable; we speak for ever so long afterwards of “the day we saw that woodcock.” An old book says: “Of woodcocks especially, it is remarkable that upon a change of the wind to the east, about Allhallows-tide, they will seem to have come all in a night; for though the former day none are to be found, yet the next morning they will be in every bush.” ”