It was Sylvia Plath who typed the poems of "Hawk in the Rain" for Ted
Hughes. The British Library now possesses the verses in Hughes's handwriting,
which can best be described as "Yorkshire" (cfr. Grice, "Is he a good poet?"
"He has beautiful handwriting.").
For the record, the word 'hawk' is first attested c. 1300, "hauk". Earlier
form, bisyllabic, "havek" (c. 1200). NOT A BORROWING, but straight from
Old English "hafoc" (West Saxon), "heafuc" (Mercian), "heafoc" (Hughes would
have learned the Deiran form -- Deira: Yorkshire, Anglian, but yet different
from Mercian). "Heafoc" is ultimately from Proto-Germanic "habukaz", and
has cognates in Old Norse "haukr", Old Saxon "habuc", Middle Dutch "havik",
Old High German "habuh", and German "habicht". Skeat suggests it's from a
root meaning "to seize," Indo-European "kap-", to grasp" (with cognates in
Russian "kobec", a kind of falcon, and cfr. Latinate "capable").
How many of the hawks are actually called 'hawks'. This reminds me of
Lawrence (that's D. H. Lawrence) in Italy: "What's this?" (he asked his Italian
companion), "A flower." (The Italians tend to flout Griceian maxims).
Ornithologists of British origin who could care less what Linnaeus says
("The Oxford Dictionary of British common names for birds") note that hawks,
such as Ted Hughes, OM, describes, include the bird-eating hawk such as the
sparrowhawk (which, as it names ENTAILS, but does not implicate, eats
sparrows), with broad, rounded wings and long, slender tails. But hawks also
include the buzzards, mostly larger, longer-winged, substantial birds, which
use broad wings for soaring. So "A buzzard is a hawk" is my favourite
equivalent today of Quine's oxymoron, "A bachelor is an unmarried male"
(analytic a priori), "Two dogmas of empiricism").
The "goshawk," as it names implicates, is a large hawk, almost reaching
buzzard size.
When seen close to it, the gosshawk (which is a hawk, as its name entails
but not implicates) has a fierce expression with bright red eyes and a
distinctive white eyebrow. Its broad wings enable it to hunt at high speed.
On the other hand (in falconry, both hands are used), a sparrowhawks is a
small hawk. The sparrowhawk (as it names entails) is adapted for hunting
birds (in contradiction to its name, not just sparrows) in confined spaces
like dense woodland, so gardens are ideal hunting grounds for them.
It's odd that the British tend to overuse prefixes: "I saw a goshawk."
"Aren't you sure it weren't a sparrowhawk". But admittedly, "Sparrowhawk
roosting" and "A goshawk in the rain" should not appeal Hughes who, like Sir
Winston Churchill, liked monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon lexemes (which 'hawk'
originally wasn't).
Cheers,
Speranza
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