THE BIRDS. 143

Tio tio tio tio tio tio tio tio;
From garden and glade,
Where a shelter is made

By the ivy’s deep shade;
From mountain and hill,

Ye on berries that feed;
From marsh and from mead
Well watered and flat
Where the trumpet sounds shrill
Of your quarry, the gnat.
You, who on the swell

Of the wide-rolling sea

With the kingfisher dwell,
Come, obedient to me.
Torotorotorotorotix,
Kikkabau, kikkabau,
Torotorotorotorolililix.”

Before long a vast crowd of birds had assembled.
The king told them the business on which he had
called them together—two ambassadors from man-
kind had come to.make a proposal of great impor-
tance to the bird-nation. This announcement was
not received with any favour. Their king, the birds
declared, had betrayed them, and broken their laws.
He had introduced into their country two creatures
_of a race. which from its birth. was hostile to the bird-
nation. For this he would have to answer at some
future time; the first thing to be done was to put the
intruders to death. Accordingly the birds proceeded
to put themselves in battle array, the strangers mean-
while arming themselves with the first things that