"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 penny ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... 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, and he kept it all loosely tumbled together in a big chest, which he ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... There was an old jackdaw that certainly did; for he hopped and hopped along after the master with the saddest expression I ever saw bird wear. But the master took no notice. On and on he wandered, seemingly unconscious of the ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... 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 ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... showers of blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs 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 ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... see you dead rather than alive, so that he might safely take your eyes by way of an appetizer, and forthwith proceed to lift away your softer pieces preparatory to strolling under your ribs like a jackdaw in a cage much too small. He sits there placid, unwinsome, and patient; waiting for you to die. But he has his little vanities. He is tremendously proud of his wings—and they certainly are wings to astonish. On a warm day he likes to open them for coolness, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... had been changed very little. Euphemia's solitary rose had gone, and instead there were several bowls of beaten silver scattered about, each filled with great chrysanthemums from London. Sir Isaac's jackdaw acquisitiveness had also overcrowded the corner beyond the fireplace with a very fine and genuine Queen Anne cabinet; there were a novel by Elizabeth Robins and two or three feminist and socialist works lying on the table which would certainly not have been ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... have—well, I'll leave that alone, and spare my blushes. But that's not what I was saying. Whom do you think Ahab Crowe married? You can have ten guesses each, and you would never come right, for it can't be a common name. It was Miss Jackdaw. Crowe: Jackdaw. I never heard anything like that, and if you ask the Colonel about it, he'll confirm every word I've said. Boucher, Weston, why that's quite commonplace in comparison, and I'm sure that's an event enough ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... 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 upon as ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... concealed in an underground cellar belonging to the Castle of Penyard, where they were kept by supernatural force. A farmer, however, made up his mind to get them out, and employed for the purpose twenty steers to draw down the iron door of the vault. On the door being slightly opened, a jackdaw was seen sitting on one of the casks, but the door immediately closed with a bang—a voice being ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hard and fast lines of species had been obliterated and made as meaningless 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 their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... I do believe, makes the matter worse 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 ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' has done that. He is always on ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... cried Denys impatiently, "will you believe what a jackdaw in a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ho!" said Harry. "He'd look like an old cock jackdaw when he's moulting. Ha! ha! ha! what an ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the 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
... retrench the Superfluities of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free- hearted and Generous, and where is the Injury of taking from another, what he hath not the ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... weak in natural history, or have you forgotten that the jackdaw is a most respectable family bird? An example to ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... look around me I found that the hall was indeed simply full of animals. It seemed to me that almost every kind of creature from the countryside must be there: a pigeon, a white rat, an owl, a badger, a jackdaw—there was even a small pig, just in from the rainy garden, carefully wiping his feet on the mat while the light from the candle glistened on his wet ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... 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 ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... house-swallows are a standing proof of a change of habit since chimneys and houses were built, and in America this change has taken place within about three hundred years. Thread and worsted are now used in many nests instead of wool and horsehair, and the jackdaw shows an affection for the church steeple which can hardly be explained by instinct. In the more thickly populated parts of the United States, the Baltimore oriole uses all sorts of pieces of string, skeins ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... hoods will be in vogue," Quoth a Jackdaw: "Glossy gray, Setting close, yet setting easy, Nothing fly-away; Suited to our ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... unusual rapidity, just as a flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the uncomprehending, troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had disappeared from the dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had begun to sparkle. The body grew stronger and filled out; the lips grew red. But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... season of 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 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... truth. "These sentiments concerning Athanasius I do not think are affirmed with any detriment to the Church; for the Church does not suffer a loss on this account; who being the pillar {185} and ground of the truth, very far shrinks from seeking, like AEsop's Jackdaw, helps and ornaments which are not her own: the bare truth shines more beautiful in her own naked simplicity." Were this principle acted upon uniformly in our discussions on religious points of faith ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... none 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
... account of any 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
... considerable—for one blessing of original composition is, 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 ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... 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 is a native of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... 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
... 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 heard the minister say, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... 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 in all probability asleep. Sometimes ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... hope-I-see-you-better face, and carries 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
... 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 ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... 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 down by a water-spout, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... was a jackdaw Who hopped up and down In the principal street Of a neighboring town. ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the most terrible moments of man's life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross—that he will remember. He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the screen (there ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 opinion that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... monstrous jackdaw that watched Julian intently, and here and there, between the branches, appeared great, fiery sparks as if the sky were raining all its stars upon the forest. But the sparks were the eyes of wild-cats, owls, squirrels, ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... thee 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
... so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But why wasn't I there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowledge? To think of that poor bird's genius and love of scarlet ribbons, shut up in a cage! What it ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... literally nothing left but the clothes in which he stood. 'He could not rest,' he said, 'till he had pulled out all his borrowed peacock's feathers. When they were gone he should be able to see, at last, whether he was jackdaw or eagle.' And wonder not, reader, at this same strength of will. The very genius, which too often makes its possessor self-indulgent in common matters, from the intense capability of enjoyment which it brings, may also, when once his whole being is stirred into motion ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Morning service, afternoon service, good looks, sermon to the servants, supper, they all run into one another like dissolving views. For the first time in my life, my sleep is broken. I fall asleep in a fever of irresolution. I awake in one. I walk about in one. I feed the jackdaw in one. I box Bobby's ears in one. My appetite (oh, portent!) flags. In intense excitement, who can eat yards of bread-and-butter, pounds of oatmeal-porridge, as has ever been my bucolic habit? Shall I marry Sir Roger, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... draughts. At the lansquenet. At bob and mow. At the cuckoo. At primus secundus. At puff, or let him speak that At mark-knife. hath it. At the keys. At take nothing and throw out. At span-counter. At the marriage. At even or odd. At the frolic or jackdaw. At cross or pile. At the opinion. At ball and huckle-bones. At who doth the one, doth the At ivory balls. other. At the billiards. At the sequences. At bob and hit. At the ivory bundles. At the owl. At the tarots. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... now—only an ordinary affair—very likely the queen 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
... time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own 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 ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher things. His only concern was the impossibility ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... help you, knight,' 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 whither so many great men have already passed, and to ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... quiet if one could endure the unspeakable indignity of forcing oneself to offer them. She would feel such an offer no indignity and would probably regard it as a tremendous joke. But she could no more be trusted than a female monkey or jackdaw. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and the jackdaw. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... meet with one of his acquaintance at a certain coffee-house, the discourse turned upon the characters of mankind, when, among other oddities, his friend brought upon the carpet a certain old gentlewoman of such a rapacious disposition, that, like a jackdaw, she never beheld any metalline substance, without an inclination, and even an effort to secrete it for her own use and contemplation. Nor was this infirmity originally produced from indigence, inasmuch as her circumstances ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Sea,-this 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
... shooting an arrow; H is for Harry, wheeling a barrow. I 's for 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 's for Urban, rolling on the green; V 's named Victoria, after ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... do not borrow money, nor do ants, although nature has given them no hands, or reason, or profession. But men have intellect in excess, and so ingenious are they that they keep near them horses, and dogs, and partridges, and jackdaws. Why then do you despair, who are as impressible as a jackdaw, have as much voice as a partridge, and are as noble as a dog, of getting some person to befriend you, by looking after him, winning his affections, guarding him, fighting his battles? Do you not see how many opportunities there are both on ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... minute insects; the wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and occasionally a lark; a bare blank wall to all appearance, and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet there must have been something there for all these eager bills—eggs or pupae. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and made off with some large dark object in his beak—some beetle or shell probably, I could not distinguish which, and should most likely have passed the spot ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the Kirghiz post-drivers. But in the spring and autumn its arid surface is clothed, as if by enchantment, with verdure and prairie flowers. Both flowers and birds are gorgeously colored. One variety, about half the size of the jackdaw which infests the houses of Tashkend and Samarkand, has a bright blue body and red wings; another, resembling our field-lark in size and habits, combines a pink breast with black head and wings. But ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... me 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 close around ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... interest, on account of the large number of carnivorous birds of various species by which it is still haunted. Besides the common brown eagle, three kinds of vulture, several species of falcons, hawks, and owls, the raven family appears to be fully represented, with the exception of the jackdaw, which possibly finds itself too weak and too slow of flight to live in the midst of such strong and ferocious air-robbers as those which have established themselves in these grand solitudes. Among smaller birds of different habits, the red partridge and the water-ousel are frequently seen. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... 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 somber, 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 of some ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... chimney, and made a flapping with their wings 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... to glance at the distant windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the jackdaw. The family had, as it ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies |
