They
would forage the country for miles, and remain absent all day,
excepting now and then a scout would come home, as if to see that all
was well. Toward night the whole host might be seen, like a dark cloud
in the distance, winging their way homeward. They came, as it were,
with whoop and halloo, wheeling high in the air above the Abbey, making
various evolutions before they alighted, and then keeping up an
incessant cawing in the tree tops, until they gradually fell asleep.
It is remarked at the Abbey, that the rooks, though they sally forth on
forays throughout the week, yet keep about the venerable edifice on
Sundays, as if they had inherited a reverence for the day, from their
ancient confreres, the monks. Indeed, a believer in the metempsychosis
might easily imagine these Gothic-looking birds to be the embodied
souls of the ancient friars still hovering about their sanctified
abode.
I dislike to disturb any point of popular and poetic faith, and was
loath, therefore, to question the authenticity of this mysterious
reverence for the Sabbath on the part of the Newstead rooks; but
certainly in the course of my sojourn in the Rook Cell, I detected them
in a flagrant outbreak and foray on a bright Sunday morning.
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