Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism by Beryl Rowland (review)

most cases copies word-far-word his predecessor's definitions; there are no indications anywhere that the poem still presents lexicographical difficulties (see, for example, worn, limwi£Stm, and indraf). Seen individually , these are venial sins, but in bulk they do not inspire confidence. The appendix, entitled 'Christ and Satan and Classical Rhetoric: is taken with few changes from Finnegan's thesis. The author begins with Bede's analysis of the various schemes and tropes, and attempts to find representatives of each in the Old English poem. The examples are sometimes oddly chosen. For paronomasia ('the figure in which the words used closely resemble each other in sound but differ in meaning'), he finds only four - woruIdlwuldor; jJegnasl jJeoden; ealralealdor; l;ehtellajxm none of which strikes me as either particularly close or artful. Yet the poem is full of brilliant wordplay overlooked by Finnegan: see, for example, lines 323- 4 where the poet's concluding vision ofSatan and his followers /i£Stegebunden 'bound fast, firmly' in hell plays on the different meanings of adverb and adjective: j>;et Wi£S fi£Stlic prea! 'that was a firm troop' (i.e., both fixed to the spot and loyal) and 'that was a perpetual punishment.' There is sophisticated rhetoric in Christ and Satan, but Finnegan's mechanical imposition of categories misses much of it. Finnegan's edition has virtues: cheap and easily obtainable, it incorporates (if sometimes with incomplete understanding) scholarly contributions up to 1974. Philologists will still have to return to Clubb's dated masterpiece for much of what they want to know, and literary scholars may find this latest edition of Old English poetry less deserving of a celebration than a wake. (ROBERTA FRANK) Beryl Rowland. Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism University of Tennessee Press. xvii, 213, illus. $15.00 Planned as a companion volume to the author's Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism, this new work by a well-known Chaucerian should stand on one's bookshelf next to T.H. White's The Book of Beasts. But there it sticks out irritatingly because of its shape, much wider than high; for the publisher, not without encouragement from the author, wished the book to be 'one of those rare works which can appeal simultaneously to a learned and a popular audience' (Robert Kellogg on the dust jacket). The very subject, of course, lends itself to such broad appeal, and in some of the best sections of the book Beryl Rowland certainly succeeds in providing interesting information entertainingly . Especially when discussing medieval materials, notable in this book for their large variety, she provides much valuable and thoughtful information. She has also made good use 01 such basic general sources as Alfred Newton's Dictionary of Birds, Edward Armstrong's superb The 404 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 Folklore of Birds, and, for me surprisingly, Oliver Goldsmith's Animated Nature of '774. The bibliography is large and varied, though the detailed references at the end of chapters are, for the scholar, imprecise and sometimes incomplete (I could not discover the source from which she is quoting Jacob Cats, the emblemist). At first the book looks like an adapted bestiary. The over sixty illustrations come from a variety of medieval manuscripts, bestiaries and others. About sixty birds are treated in alphabetically arranged sections. Further, while most of them are real birds (families rather than species), several are purely mythical, like the Caladrius and Phoenix, and even Hydra, Siren, and Bat (a creature of the air) appear. Still, the Albatross and Thrush occur in no bestiary. Only about a third of the text involves medieval literature and lore. The rest introduces all sorts of matter, from ancient to quite modern, birds in rites, folklore, and poetry. Indeed the range is so wide that a lack of focus results, and even some unfortunate rambling. Defects in the author's learning appear as she is writing about subjects or poets far removed from her own scholarly field, and sometimes she does not resist being popular at the expense of learning. With three pages on the average available per bird (of course the sections vary in length) it must...