The Battle of the Starlings, Cork, 1621

The Battle of the Starlings was an event which took place in Cork city, Ireland, beginning on the 7th of October 1621 and culminating in great aerial battles on the 12th and 14th.

Our knowledge of this event comes from it being mentioned in texts published at the time and through secondary sources which mention these texts. The first text is a pamphlet which was published in 1622 for 'N.B.'. These pamphlets were used at the time to distribute news, akin to a newsletter rather than a newspaper. These were often illustrated and we are fortunate to have a pictorial representation of the event. 

What was noteworthy about this event was that, while Starling murmurations are a common occurrence, on this occasion what appears to have transpired is a fight between two groups of these birds, contrary to their nature according to the author of the pamphlet. The other noteworthy aspect is that a great fire tore through the city just months later (in May 1622) so the Battle of the Starlings came to be seen as a portent for the fire. It should be noted that this was not simply a retrospective view of the event. The manuscript concludes with the words:

it doth prognosticate either Gods mercy to draw vs to repentance, or his justice to punish our sinnes and wickednesse, if we doe not make haste to repent in due time

The following is a reproduction of the pamphlet published in 1622 describing the strange events that took place in Cork, culminating in a great aerial battle over the city on the 14th of October 1621

I've also uploaded this in book-like form, for your reading pleasure, to Issuu:

https://issuu.com/then_hd/docs/the_wonderfvll_battell_of_starelings

In Song

The other source we are fortunate to have is a ballad, printed in 1621. This ballad is an 'English Broadside Ballad' printed in a black letter typeface, which was a very common medium at the time for song publishing. Again, this is a contemporary way of disseminating news, through song in this case. This ballad comes to us through the Samuel Pepys collection. Pepys, who lived from 1633 to 1703, was an English diarist and naval administrator, but most famous for his diary which documented his daily life for a decade. Wikipedia reports that Pepys was a lifelong bibliophile and carefully nurtured his large collection of books, manuscripts, and prints. At his death, there were more than 3,000 volumes, including the diary, all carefully catalogued and indexed; they form one of the most important surviving 17th-century private libraries. Crucially, in his library was a collection of 1,800 printed ballads, among them our second source!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys

This collection is housed at the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge and the broadside ballads have been carefully scanned and documented by a dedicated team at University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of English. Ref:

http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20269/album 

The ballad weighs in at 18 verses and is to be set to the tune of 'Shores Wife' or 'Bonny Nell'. For those with musical knowledge, these melodies can be found in the works of W. Chappelle.

For those without (like myself), the UCSB team has kindly provided a version sung by Revell Carr 

In Image

I've included below the engravings illustrating the pamphlet and ballad manuscripts.