It is this tribe of whose chief, the famous Wash-ing-guhsah-ba, or Blackbird, such savage and romantic stories are told.
The Blackbird assembled his warriors, led them against the Pawnee town, attacked it with irresistible fury, slaughtered a great number of its inhabitants, and burnt it to the ground.
Poor little
Blackbird! If he had only kept his words to himself!
"No, he is far handsomer than old
Blackbird ever was."
With this casting down of his gauntlet, Tim Linkinwater struck the desk such a blow with his clenched fist, that the old
blackbird tumbled off his perch with the start it gave him, and actually uttered a feeble croak, in the extremity of his astonishment.
I ran in cargoes of kinky-heads from Malaita, which is in the Solomons, till I had twelve hundred of the
blackbirds putting in cane.
But it was great fun, rushing along the hedgerows, and discharging stone after stone at
blackbirds and chaffinches, though no result in the shape of slaughtered birds was obtained; and Arthur soon entered into it, and rushed to head back the birds, and shouted, and threw, and tumbled into ditches, and over and through hedges, as wild as the Madman himself.
I haven't seen a prettier picture for some time than she made of herself this morning, up to the elbows in suds, singing like a
blackbird whilst she scrubbed on the back stoop."
Suddenly some one passed below, whistling like an operatic
blackbird, and a voice called out, "All serene!
I have observed a flock of
blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top--the tops of several trees-- and all in full song.
McGREGOR hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scare-crow to frighten the
blackbirds.
The cows jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the
blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures.
The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the
blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.
It was now the latter week of May, and the crows and
blackbirds had already discovered the little, green, rolledup leaf of the Indian corn just peeping out of the soil.
It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of
blackbirds as they darted from one clump of greenery to the other.
