's red breast by supposing this
bird to have tried to pluck a thorn from the crown encircling the brow
of the crucified CHRIST, in order to alleviate His sufferings. No doubt
it is on account of these legends that it is considered a crime, which
will be punished with great misfortune, to kill a robin. In some places
the same prohibition extends to the _wren_, which is popularly believed
to be the wife of the robin. In other parts, however, the wren is (or
at least was) cruelly hunted on certain days. In the Isle of Man the
wren-hunt took place on Christmas Eve and St Stephen's Day, and is
accounted for by a legend concerning an evil fairy who lured many men to
destruction, but had to assume the form of a wren to escape punishment
at the hands of an ingenious knight-errant.

For several centuries there was prevalent over the whole of civilised
Europe a most extraordinary superstition concerning the small Arctic
bird resembling, but not so large as, the common wild goose, known as
the _barnacle_ or _bernicle goose_. MAX MUELLER(1) has suggested that
this word was really derived from _Hibernicula_, the name thus referring
to Ireland, where the birds were caught; but common opinion associated
the barnacle goose with the shell-fish known as the barnacle (which
is found on timber exposed to the sea), supposing that the former was
generated out of the latter. Thus in one old medical writer we find:
"There are founde in the north parts of Scotland, and the Ilands
adjacent, called Orchades (Orkney Islands), certain trees, whereon
doe growe certaine shell fishes, of a white colour tending to russet;
wherein are conteined little liuing creatures: which shells in time of
maturitie doe open, and out of them grow those little living things;
which falling into the water, doe become foules, whom we call
Barnakles... but the other that do fall vpon the land, perish and come
to nothing: this much by the writings of others, and also from the
mouths of the people of those parts...."(1b)

(1) See F. MAX MUELLER'S _Lectures on the Science of Language_ (1885),
where a very full account of the tradition concerning the origin of the
barnacle goose will be found.

(1b) JOHN GERARDE: _The Herball; or, Generall Historie of Plantes_
(1597). 1391.

The writer, however, who was a well-known surgeon and botanist of
his day, adds that he had personally examined certain shell-fish from
Lancashire, and on opening the shells had observed within bi