by Tim Birkhead
Returning to the mainland they travelled south, reaching St David’s in Pembrokeshire on 5 June where, in the magnificent cathedral, they found ‘diverse ancient monuments’, reporting that ‘the Welch have a proverb, that it is as good to go to St. David’s twice, as to Rome once’.21 Leaving St David’s that afternoon, they rode eastwards along the coast towards Haverfordwest, passing Ramsey Island, named for the ransoms – wild garlic – that grows there, and ‘saw at a distance, Scalme Isle [Skomer Island], but we went not thither’. It is a pity that they did not visit Skomer for it is (and has been for a long time) the most significant of the Welsh seabird islands, and where, following my Bardsey initiation, I have visited – to study seabirds – each year since 1972. As far back as the 1380s there is mention of 6s 8d received for the ‘farm [harvest] of birds’, which must refer to seabirds, such as the Manx shearwater that today has a breeding population there of over 200,000 pairs, and to the auks, guillemots, razorbills and puffins, which may have been similarly numerous in the 1600s.22
From Haverfordwest they rode south to Pembroke, visiting the exquisite tiny chapel at ‘St. Gobin’s [St Govan’s] … ‘sacred to that saint’ – built over the cave in which he lived and tucked away halfway down the cliff. Below it is ‘a well, famous for the cure of all diseases’. St Gofan (his Welsh name) died in the sixth century and the chapel was built in the fourteenth. Intriguingly perhaps, neither Ray nor Willughby mention a series of spectacular sea stacks lying less than half a mile west of the chapel, famous today at least, and known as Elegug Stacks for the huge numbers of elegugs (guillemots) that breed there.
Seabird colonies provide some of the greatest of all wildlife spectacles. Smelly and noisy, the birds are abundant, conspicuous and can often be observed at close range. Since the sites where seabirds breed are traditional – the birds returning year after year – they are usually well known historically and not least because the adults, chicks and eggs were a source of food for local people. It is hardly surprising then that Willughby and Ray made a point of visiting several seabird colonies in their travels, and later included a specific section in the Ornithology entitled ‘Of some remarkable Isles, Cliffs, and Rocks about England, where Sea-fowl do yearly build and breed in great numbers’.23
Their list comprises thirteen sites, although ‘England’ is a bit of a misnomer for they include the Bass Rock in Scotland, and Priestholm (Puffin Island), Bardsey Island, the Tenby cliffs and the islands of Caldey and St Margaret’s, all in Wales.
In the previous year, during the late summer of 1661, John Ray and Philip Skippon – Willughby was not with them on that trip – had visited Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Ray’s account in the Ornithology includes a long quote from William Harvey, physician to Charles I and discoverer of the circulation of the blood, who visited Bass Rock in 1633 during a trip to Scotland with the king for his coronation in Edinburgh. Harvey visited Bass Rock because he was fascinated by reproduction and felt that birds’ eggs held the secrets to fertilisation. They did, but Harvey wasn’t able to figure it out.24 However, he found the mass of gannets on the Bass remarkable, as Ray and Skippon must have done. Evocatively, Harvey wrote ‘such a number of birds there is flying over ones head, that like clouds they cover the skie, and take away the sight of the sun: making such a noise and din with their cries that people talking together nearhand can scarce hear one another’.25 Somewhat less lyrically, Ray wrote ‘We saw on the rocks innumerable of the soland goose [gannets]’26 and that ‘the young ones are esteemed a choice dish in Scotland, and sold very dear (1s. 8d. plucked). We eat [ate] of them at Dunbar … the young one smells and tastes strong of … fish’ – unimpressed, I sense. Ray listed the seabirds that bred on the Bass, and despite the fact that at the date of their visit – 19 August – most of the auks would have finished breeding and left, they saw ‘the scout’s [guillemots] eggs, which are very large and speckled’. I suspect that the guillemot eggs shown to Ray and Skippon would have been taken earlier in the season by their guide: Ray’s description is an understatement for not only are guillemot eggs large and speckled, they are remarkable for their bright hues and extraordinary pointed shape, features that Willughby and Ray later mentioned in the Ornithology.
The second seabird site in their list is the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. Ray and Skippon saw ‘Farn Island [sic] at a great distance’ during their 1661 journey, but didn’t visit it. However, Ray did so during a later ‘simpling trip’ in July 1671 with the plant collector Thomas Willisel.27 Ray lists the birds breeding on the Farne Islands: ‘guillimets [guillemots], scouts or razor-bills, coulternebs [puffins], scarfs [shags], Cuthbert duck [eider], annet [kittiwake], mire crow [black-headed gull], pick-mire [tern], sea-piots [oystercatchers], kir-bird [=? possibly a tern; kir-mew = common tern, kir being onomatopoeic, mew = gull], a sort of Columbus, less than a magpie, black and white, stands straight upright’, and ‘Gorges a fowl bigger and redder than a partridge’; this sounds like red grouse, and indeed a ‘Gor’ or ‘Gor-maw’ was the name for a red grouse, but the Farne Islands appear to be an improbable place to encounter this species.28
Once again, it seems clear that this list is at least partly second-hand and wholly confused. The ‘sort of Columbus’ is double counted here as the puffinet, which in the Ornithology Ray says ‘argues to be puffins, but the description here given us of them (for we saw not the bird) agrees rather to be the Bass-turtle’. As if this wasn’t difficult enough, the same species in the Ornithology is referred to as ‘the sea-turtle’ or ‘Greenland dove’. In the text Ray writes: ‘I guess this bird to be the same as with the puffinet of the Farn [sic] Islands … and … I persuade myself also, that it is the same with the turtle-dove of the Bass Island.’ He adds: ‘Why they call it a Dove or Turtle I cannot certainly tell. It is indeed about the bigness of a turtle [dove], and lays (they say) two eggs at once like them, and possibly there may be some agreement in their voice or note.’29 From the description this is the black guillemot – not now known to breed on the Farne Islands – but one of only a few seabirds to lay two eggs (as doves do).
One seabird location mentioned in the Ornithology is the somewhat cryptically named ‘Pile of Foudres’. ‘Pile’ refers to a castle, an informal term still in use today; and ‘Foudres’ is either an old spelling or misspelling of Fouldrey, meaning fowl (or bird) island, about four miles from Dalton on the Lancashire coast. This is known today as Walney Island, a low-lying, windswept island on which large numbers of herring and lesser black-backed gulls now breed.Although Willughby and Ray were in the vicinity of Walney during their 1660 journey, they may not have seen it for themselves. Instead they seem to have passed some fifteen miles to the north of Ravenglass, from where they took a boat to the Calf of Man.
Seabird colonies listed by Willughby and Ray in the Ornithology.
1.Bardsey Island
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
2.Bass Rock, Scotland
visited by Ray 1661
3.Caldey Island, Wales
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
4.Calf of Man
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
5.Farne Islands
seen by Ray from the mainland in 1661 and visited by him 1671
6.Fouldrey, Lancs. (aka Walney)
Willughby and Ray came close in 1662 but did not visit
7.Godreve Island
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
8.Herm, Guernsey
not visited by Willughby or Ray
9.Lundy Island
not visited by Willughby or Ray
10.Priestholm, Wales
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
11.Scarborough
visited by Ray 1661
12.Scilly Isles
not visited by Willughby or Ray
13.Tenby, Wales
visited by Willughby and Ray 1662
Note: I have used modern spellings of the place names. Also mentioned in the Ornithology are Rams
ey Island and Skomer Island, Wales, but with no reference to seabirds; many others, including the colonies on the Flamborough headland, Yorkshire, are omitted.
Their list of British seabird colonies must have been included in the Ornithology, I presume, for ‘completeness’ despite its incompleteness (many colonies in Scotland are not mentioned), even though they had visited so few of the sites themselves.
Willughby and Ray’s travels in England and Wales, 1662.
Continuing eastwards they arrived at Tenby where, during the first week of June 1662, they were excited to discover a wonderful diversity of fish in the harbour. Ray lists no fewer than thirty-two species, including conger eel, sprat, thornback ray and belone (garfish). The fact that these are so meticulously listed suggests that Tenby was something of a piscatorial treasure trove; a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast the different species in the flesh – providing crucial information that Willughby would later use in his History of Fishes.30
Across a narrow channel from Tenby lies Caldey Island, with its three chapels, and ‘in a little island [St Margaret’s], between that and the main land, great plenty of fowl, the same as breed in Prestholm. In one part of the island the puits and gulls and sea-swallows’ nests lie so thick that a man can scarce walk but he must needs set his foot upon them’. Ray points out that ‘The sea-swallows they there call spurs, and the razor-bills are called Elegugs … This name elegug some attribute to the puffin, and some to the guillem [guillemot]; indeed they know not what they mean by this name.’31
After delighting in the seabirds of Caldey and St Margaret’s Island, Willughby, Skippon and Ray mounted their horses and continued eastwards. At Laugharne, seven miles south of Carmarthen, they forded the river Cywy and in bright sunshine headed for the town of Kidwelly (Cydweli). Riding three abreast along the beach they reflected on the fact that the guillemots, razorbills and puffins were so obviously distinct, yet to the men of St Margaret’s, who referred to them all as ‘elegugs’, they obviously seemed the same. I imagine it must have been after a conversation such as this that Willughby and Ray decided that natural history needed an overhaul. Different species known by the same name, the same species known by multiple names – what a mess! The new science, with its emphasis on objective description, quantification and the avoidance of ambiguity, provided a way forward. Seeing things for themselves, whether a shearwater chick on the Calf of Man, the multitude of fishes at Tenby, or the moonwort at Sutton Coldfield, was what gave them the clarity of vision to create a new natural history. It was a decision that brought their objectives into sharp focus, and one that would shape both their lives and their legacies.32
Local names of some birds used or mentioned in the Ornithology, whose modern common and scientific names are given in Appendix 4.
Ars-foot
Bald buzzard
Bastard Plover
Black-cap
Bohemian Chatterer
Cock of the Mountain or Wood
Common Grosbeak
Copped Douker
Coulterneb
Daker-hen
Didapper
Dun-diver
Fern-owl
Flusher
Gid
Glead
Gorcock
Green Plover
Greenland Dove
More-buzzard
Ox-eye
Pool Snipe
Puffin of the Isle of Man
Puttock
Pyrag
Rock Ouzel
Skout
Small water hen
Solitary sparrow
Water Ouzel
Witwall
Woodspite
As Willughby, Skippon and Ray arrived at Aberavon, near present-day Port Talbot in South Wales, on Thursday 12 June 1662, two significant events occurred. The first involved an encounter with an unusual bird said to breed nearby, and ‘supposed to be the Hamantopus’, whose description fits a black-winged stilt. They must have seen both a live bird and a specimen, for their description is very detailed: ‘the first five or six feathers of the wing above of a dark or fuscous colour, near black, underneath more light or donnish … the legs long and red … these she stretches backwards in flying, which makes amends for the tail; it makes a piping noise.’33 Its later generic name Himantopus comes from the Greek meaning ‘strap-legged’ or ‘long-legged’. Curiously, when Willughby and Ray came to write their account of this species in the Ornithology, they either forgot that they had seen it or were unable to match it with what two well-known sixteenth-century naturalists, Conrad Gessner or Ulisse Aldrovandi, had written about it, saying: ‘To say the truth, it hath not been our hap as yet to see this bird.’
The second event involved Willughby interviewing a local person as part of the language project proposed by John Wilkins. Realising that they would soon cross back over into England, this was Willughby’s last opportunity to gather some Welsh words. Not any old Welsh words, but words as spoken by a Welsh speaker. Wilkins had suggested to Willughby that he compare the words used to identify or signify particular things in different languages and to this end Francis prepared a list – a prompt list – of English words from which he then obtained their equivalent from a Welsh speaker. Not speaking Welsh himself, of course, Willughby wrote the Welsh equivalents in a phonetic manner. Whether Wilkins had suggested this approach, rather than letting the Welsh interviewee write his own ‘words’, we don’t know, but by writing them himself, Willughby created an objective and consistent way of collecting the relevant information.
Far from being a random selection of words, the prompt list was derived from an earlier work on linguistics by the Scot George Dalgarno, a colleague of John Wilkins, and from Wilkins himself. The list started, inevitably perhaps, biblically (God, angel, heaven), moving on to celestial things (sun, moon, stars), the body (hair, skin, nail, eye), and then to animals and plants (bird, beak, wing, feather, fish, leaf, seed). By using the same prompt list of these carefully selected English or Latin words wherever they were, and by writing down the speakers’ responses in a phonetic, and hence neutral, manner, Willughby and Wilkins were able to make objective comparisons between different geographical regions, and subsequently different countries. It was exactly like studying birds: examining their plumage and anatomy to identify their characteristic marks in order to classify them.
Prior to this, those interested in words or dialects had simply made collections of anecdotes, assuming that regional variation in the use of words was the result of linguistic ignorance or laziness, and that any variation occurred at random. The approach of Wilkins and Willughby was fundamentally different. First, because they assumed that variation existed systematically across regions, and second, because their method was rigorous and objective. Although Willughby’s work on words was never published, linguists subsequently recognised it as a major advance in the study of language.34
After crossing the border back into England, Willughby, Skippon and Ray headed towards Gloucester to see its magnificent cathedral, arriving on the evening of 14 June 1662. I imagine them riding up the city’s main street as it is getting dark, finding an inn, stabling their horses, getting something to eat and tumbling into bed. After breakfast the following morning they walked across to the cathedral’s statue-laden entrance. One of the few such buildings to be spared by Henry VIII (possibly for personal reasons), the cathedral is an architectural masterpiece. Inside, they admired the twelve tiny chapels, the nave’s bulky columns, and the ornately carved choir with its curious misericords. Walking through the presbytery they stand together to gaze in amazement at the vast vaulted ceiling and the enormous multi-coloured stained-glass window. Their clergyman guide directs them towards a small spiral stone staircase from which, thirty feet up, they emerge onto the north ambulatory. Close by, but almost hidden, is the entrance to a small and awkwardly angular passage connecting the north ambulatory with the south, running behind the great window. Known as the ‘whispering gallery’, this is the o
bject of their visit. Intrigued, Willughby asks their host to demonstrate. And so, positioned at either end and separated by some eighteen metres of tomb-like tunnel, his host whispers while Willughby waits. And sure enough, in the cathedral’s silence, the whispered words ricochet along the passage walls, maintaining their clarity and accruing an extraordinary amplification. In his commonplace book Willughby wrote: ‘Ye voice is hard [heard] as plane [plain] or planer [plainer] in any part of ye vault as at ye ends.’
What was the secret of this curiously kinked corridor? Intrigued and confident that the new science could provide a logical explanation, Willughby set to work enthusiastically measuring the gallery’s dimensions, scribbling numbers and ideas in notes that are hard to interpret:
Ye first [side] E[ast] side is 7/8 allmost,
ye second 1 ½, ye third 5, ye fourth /
to ye first Windore 1 1/4 , thence to ye /
Doore 3 ¼, ye doore 7/8, to ye furthest /
windore 2 ½, to ye Angle ½, /
ye fifth 5 ½, ye sixth 3.
(it is Broad at Both Ends a little /
less then a yard.) Ye Breadth /
quite thorough is something lesse /
then a yard. /
Ye Height measuring from ye middle /
Angles is 2 & an Inch ye W[est] side, but /
ye E[ast] wants a little, ye roofe shelving /
downwards. /
there are 8 windores ye n[orth] side of ye /
Doore & 6 by S[outh] side.
[uncertain cancellation] at ye Ends it is a little /
Higher & ye roofe not so shelving.35
When I visited the gallery, I examined the scratches on the passageway walls, wondering whether any were Willughby’s, made as he marked out the dimensions. Probably not, but I liked the idea, and I searched in vain for his initials amid the dense graffiti of names and dates.