But while the dear unpractised word
      Still lingered on his tongue,
    He saw a silvery breasted bird
      Fly o’er the festive throng.

    Swift as the lightning’s flashes fleet,
      And lose their brilliant light,
    Sir James sank back upon his seat
      Pale and entranced with fright.

With some difficulty he managed to conceal the cause of his embarrassment, but on the following day the priest had scarcely begun the marriage service,

    When Margaret with terrific screams
      Made all with horror start. 
    Good heavens! her blood in torrents streams,
      A dagger in her heart.

The deed had been done by a discarded lover, who, by the aid of a clever disguise, had managed to station himself just behind her:—­

    “Now marry me, proud maid,” he cried,
      “Thy blood with mine shall wed”;
    He dashed the dagger in his side,
      And at her feet fell dead.

And this pathetic ballad concludes by telling us how

    Poor Margaret, too, grows cold with death,
      And round her hovering flies
    The phantom bird for her last breath,
      To bear it to the skies.

Equally strange is the omen with which the ancient baronet’s family of Clifton, of Clifton Hall, in Nottinghamshire, is forewarned when death is about to visit one of its members.  It appears that in this case the omen takes the shape of a sturgeon, which is seen forcing itself up the river Trent, on whose bank the mansion of the Clifton family is situated.  And, it may be remembered, how in the park of Chartley, near Lichfield, there has long been preserved the breed of the indigenous Staffordshire cow, of white sand colour, with black ears, muzzle, and tips at the hoofs.  In the year of the battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was born; and the downfall of the great house of Ferrers happening at the same period, gave rise to the tradition, which to this day has been current in the neighbourhood, that the birth of a parti-coloured calf from the wild breed in Chartley Park is a sure omen of death within the same year to a member of the family.

By a noticeable coincidence, a calf of this description has been born whenever a death has happened in the family of late years.  The decease of the Earl and his Countess, of his son Lord Tamworth, of his daughter Mrs. William Joliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the eighth Earl and his daughter Lady Frances Shirley, were each preceded by the ominous birth of a calf.  In the spring of the year 1835, an animal perfectly black, was calved by one of this mysterious tribe in the park of Chartley, and it was soon followed by the death of the Countess.[41] The park of Chartley, where this weird announcement of one of the family’s death has oftentimes caused so much alarm, is a wild romantic spot, and was in days of old attached to the Royal Forest of Needwood