Seven Whistlers
SS113
Although the piece functions effectively as an exercise in playing couplets, the title and the performance note refer to the common UK superstition surrounding the song of the curlew as a portent of imminent doom.
[Fishermen] deprecate the cry of the "Seven Whistlers"... and consider it a death-warning.
​
"I heard 'em one dark night last winter... They come over our heads all of a sudden singing 'ewe, ewe,' and the men in the boat wanted to go back. It came on to rain and blow soon afterwards, and was an awful night, Sir; and sure enough before morning a boat was upset, and seven poor fellows drowned. I know what makes the noise, Sir; it's them long-billed curlews, but I never likes to hear them."
​
William Henderson
Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Boarders (1879)
While fear of this particular omen was common amongst fisherfolk around the UK, a similar superstition peculiar to Seaton Snook also existed around the cry of Jacob Cox's Horse.