. Dialect names for the woodpecker
survive in Speight, Speke, and Spick, Pick (Chapter III). The same
bird was also called woodwall--

"In many places were nyghtyngales,
Alpes, fynches, and wodewales"

(Romaunt of the Rose, 567)--

hence, in some cases, the name Woodall. The Alpe, or bullfinch,
mentioned in the above lines, also survives as a surname. Dunnock and
Pinnock are dialect names for the sparrow. It was called in
Anglo-Norman muisson, whence Musson. Starling is a dim. of Mid. Eng.
stare, which has itself given the surname Starr

"The stare, that the counseyl can be-wrye." (Parliament of Fowls,
348.)

Heron is the French form of the bird-name which was in English Herne--

"I come from haunts of coot and hern." (Tennyson, The Brook, 1. 1.)

The Old French dim. heronceau also passed into English--

"I wol nat tellen of hir strange sewes (courses),
Ne of hir swannes, ne of hire heronsewes."

(F, 67.)

As a surname it has been assimilated to the local, and partly
identical, Hearnshaw (Chapter XII). Some commentators go to this word
to explain Hamlet's use of handsaw--

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw" (Hamlet, ii. 2).

When the author's father was a boy in Suffolk eighty years ago, the
local name for the bird was pronounced exactly like answer. Grew is
Fr. grue, crane, Lat. grus, gru-. Butter, Fr. butor, "a bittor"
(Cotgrave), is a dialect name for the bittern, called a "butter-bump"
by Tennyson's Northern Farmer (1. 31). Culver is Anglo-Sax. culfre,
a pigeon--

"Columba, a culver, a dove"

(Cooper)--

hence the local Culverhouse. Dove often becomes Duff. Gaunt is
sometimes a dialect form of gannet, used in Lincolnshire of the
crested grebe. Popjoy may have been applied to the successful archer
who became king of the popinjay for the year. The derivation of the
word, Old Fr. papegai, whence Mid. Eng. papejay--

"The briddes synge, it is no nay,
The sparhawk and the papejay,
That joye it was to heere"

(B, 1956)--

is obscure, though various forms of it are found in most of the
European languages. In English it was applied not only to the parrot,
but also to the green woodpecker. The London Directory form is
Pobgee.

With bird nicknames may be mentioned Callow, unfledged, cognate with
Lat. calvus, bald. Its opposite also survives as Fleck and Flick--

"Flygge, as byrdis, maturus, volabilis."

(Prompt. Par