Throughout the spring it is a common sight to see magpies gathering materials for their nests, and one would imagine that this annual ritual has continued in Ireland since long before the coming of Christ. However, there is plenty of evidence that indicates that the magpie is a relatively recent arrival to our island. It was a well-known belief amongst our ancestors that the magpie was introduced to Ireland by a storm that brought a flock of these birds to Wexford from England. There may well be some truth in this belief – as the renowned Belfast born ornithologist Edward Allworthy Armstrong noted the following details in his childhood memoir Birds of the Grey Wind; ‘All our Irish magpies are believed to be descended from a flock of about a dozen birds from England which were blown out of their course by an easterly gale and arrived exhausted on the coast of Wexford about the year 1676. An English settler there, one Robert Leigh, writing in 1684, says that ‘about eight years ago there landed in these parts . . . a parcel of magpies which now breed’.’ Further on Armstrong continues by explaining that within fifty years, or by the 1720s, ‘a statute’, the first of its kind in Ireland, ‘was enacted offering a reward for their [magpies] destruction.’ This statute was, of course unsuccessful as evidenced by the widespread distribution of magpies throughout Ireland today. However if we even go back to less than a century ago, and even in the memory of people who are still living, the distribution of this bird species is remembered as far more regional than it is today.
In the Irish language the magpie is referred to by several different names, many of which provide evidence of the bird’s recent arrival to Ireland. Probably the most common Irish name for a magpie is ‘snag breac,’ which can be translated as pied or speckled tree-creeper. Prior to the arrival of the magpie this name was applied to the great spotted woodpecker which has recently returned to this island after an absence of many centuries; with its original decline coinciding with the arrival of the magpie. The second most common Irish language name for a magpie is Frangach, of course this word was originally used to identify a French person, and later was applied to the rats that made their way to Ireland bringing the Black Death, which spread from the east coast of Ireland, spreading west as the magpie would go on to do a few centuries later.
Despite the magpie’s relatively recent arrival there is a wealth of Irish folklore relating to these birds which continues to this day to be passed on from one generation to the next. The Irish have a strange mixture of respect and distain for these loud and distinctive birds who now reside in every part of the country. Probably the most widespread belief about magpies is that they steal shiny objects to put in their nests and to attract a mate. In recent decades observational experiments conducted by scientists have proven that magpies do not favour shiny objects over dull objects. However, the magpie’s reputation as a thief is still believed as fact by young and old who can recall the stories that have existed for centuries, and paint the magpie as a lover of shiny objects.
Another belief, which is far more difficult to disprove, is that bad luck will follow a person who fails to salute a magpie. To this day many people throughout Ireland will give a nod, raise their hat, or lift their hand to salute a magpie that they encounter. The situation in which one encounters a magpie as Lady Wilde, the mother of the famous writer Oscar Wilde, noted holds particular significance. She warned that if a magpie ‘comes clattering to your door it is a sign of death’ and that if the magpie comes to your door and faces you ‘is a sure death-sign, and nothing can avert the doom.’ However, Wilde goes on to explain that if two magpies come clattering at your door ‘prosperity will follow.’ This altering change in fortune depending on the number of magpies a person encounters should be familiar to any Irish person from the variants of an old rhyme which have survived in Ireland’s oral tradition to the present day:
‘One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret that is never told.’
The rhyme itself was first published in 1780, although like many others it is believed to be much older. Irish versions of the rhyme were published in the nineteenth century for instance a variant can be found in Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland:
‘One for Sorrow,
Two for Mirth,
Three for Marriage,
Four for a Birth.’
While in his 1909 book English as we Speak it in Ireland, Patrick Weston Joyce recorded this slightly different version in word if not in meaning that was given to him by a Wexford man named Patrick MacCall:
‘One for sorrow; two for a mirth; three for a wedding; four for a birth.’
Irish sources from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century provide some less remembered and possibly more regional folklore about magpies. As with many birds in Ireland the season of spring, as the nesting period, represents a particularly busy time for magpies, which is reflected in Irish folklore. For example, the 14 February,* is believed by some to be the date when magpies get married, while in an 1881 article from the Folklore Journal GH Kinahan noted that ‘It is considered unlucky to kill a magpie in the spring, as its comrade will kill every chicken. In the west of Ireland they protect the magpies, as they give warning when a fox is a-foot and about the homestead. I have often heard smothered curses from an old crone when I shot a magpie, especially in co. Mayo.’ Such respect for the common magpie may have been regional as growing up in Clonmany, County Donegal, Charles McGlinchey noted that himself and his friends ‘never thought it any harm to rob the nests of magpies or crows for they lifted eggs and young chickens.’
*This piece of Irish folklore though often associated with magpies in particular is also applied to birds more generally.
Sources
Armstrong, Edward Allworthy. Birds of the Grey Wind. Oxford, 1950.
Foster, Jeanne Cooper. Ulster Folklore. Belfast, 1951.
Joyce, Patrick Weston. English as We Speak it in Ireland. Dublin, 1910.
Kinahan, GH. ‘Notes on Irish Folklore’. The Folk-Lore Record 4 (1881), pp. 96-125.
Mac Coitir, Niall. Ireland’s Birds. Cork, 2015.
McGlinchey, Charles. The Last of the Name. Edited by Brian Friel. Belfast, 1986.
Warner Dick. ‘Magpie or snag breac: what’s in a name,’ Irish Examiner, 28 November 2011.
Wilde, Lady Jane, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland. London, 1888.
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