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Cornugaya Directory 04
Page 08
How alert and vigilant the birds are, even when absorbed in building
their nests! In an open space in the woods, I see a pair of
cedar-birds collecting moss from the top of a dead tree. Following the
direction in which they fly, I soon discover the nest placed in the
fork of a small soft-maple, which stands amid a thick growth of
wild-cherry trees and young beeches. Carefully concealing myself
beneath it, without any fear that the workmen will hit me with a chip
or let fall a tool, I await the return of the busy pair. Presently I
hear the well-known note, and the female sweeps down and settles
unsuspectingly into the half-finished structure. Hardly have her wings
rested, before her eye has penetrated my screen, and with a hurried
movement of alarm, she darts away. In a moment, the male, with a tuft
of wool in his beak (for there is a sheep pasture near), joins her,
and the two reconnoitre the premises from the surrounding bushes. With
their beaks still loaded, they move around with a frightened look, and
refuse to approach the nest till I have moved off and lain down behind
a log. Then one of them ventures to alight upon the nest, but, still
suspecting all is not right, quickly darts away again. Then they both
together come, and after much peeping and spying about, and apparently
much anxious consultation, cautiously proceed to work. In less than
half an hour, it would seem that wool enough has been brought to
supply the whole family, real and prospective, with socks, if needles
and fingers could be found fine enough to knit it up. In less than a
week, the female has begun to deposit her eggs,--four of them in as
many days,--white tinged with purple, with black spots on the larger
end. After two weeks of incubation, the young are out.
The internal evidence of the wooden figures themselves--nothing
analogous to which, it should be remembered, can be found in the
chapel of 1687--points to a much earlier date. I have met with no
school of sculpture belonging to the early part of the eighteenth
century to which they can be plausibly assigned; and the supposition
that they are the work of some unknown local genius who was not led
up to and left no successors may be dismissed, for the work is too
scholarly to have come from any one but a trained sculptor. I refer
of course to those figures which the artist must be supposed to have
executed with his own hand, as, for example, the central figure of
the Crucifixion group and those of the Magdalene and St. John. The
greater number of the figures were probably, as was suggested to me
by Mr. Ranshaw, of Lowth, executed by a local woodcarver from models
in clay and wax furnished by the artist himself. Those who examine
the play of line in the hair, mantle, and sleeve of the Magdalene in
the Crucifixion group, and contrast it with the greater part of the
remaining draperies, will find little hesitation in concluding that
this was the case, and will ere long readily distinguish the two
hands from which the figures have mainly come. I say "mainly,"
because there is at least one other sculptor who may well have
belonged to the year 1709, but who fortunately has left us little.
Examples of his work may perhaps be seen in the nearest villain with
a big hat in the Flagellation chapel, and in two cherubs in the
Assumption of the Virgin.
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