However , it was a very fit song for her to sing , because she was a lady herself . Tom came up to her very humbly , and made his bow ; and the first thing she said was - `` Have you wings ? Can you fly ? '' `` Oh dear , no , ma'am ; I should not think of such thing , '' said cunning little Tom . `` Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you , my dear . It is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings . They must all have wings , forsooth , now , every new upstart sort of bird , and fly . What can they want with flying , and raising themselves above their proper station in life ? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought of having wings , and did very well without ; and now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good old fashion . Why , the very marrocks and dovekies have got wings , the vulgar creatures , and poor little ones enough they are ; and my own cousins too , the razor-bills , who are gentlefolk born , and ought to know better than to ape their inferiors . '' And so she was running on , while Tom tried to get in a word edgeways ; and at last he did , when the old lady got out of breath , and began fanning herself again ; and then he asked if she knew the way to Shiny Wall . `` Shiny Wall ? Who should know better than I ? We all came from Shiny Wall , thousands of years ago , when it was decently cold , and the climate was fit for gentlefolk ; but now , what with the heat , and what with these vulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything , so that gentlepeople 's hunting is all spoilt , and one really can not get one 's living , or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown against by some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of one a thousand years ago -- what was I saying ? Why , we have quite gone down in the world , my dear , and have nothing left but our honour . And I am the last of my family . A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rock when we were young , to be out of the way of low people . Once we were a great nation , and spread over all the Northern Isles . But men shot us so , and knocked us on the head , and took our eggs -- why , if you will believe it , they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship , and drive us along the plank by hundreds , till we tumbled down into the ship 's waist in heaps ; and then , I suppose , they ate us , the nasty fellows ! Well -- but -- what was I saying ?
At last , there were none XXXXX us left , except on the old Gairfowlskerry , just off the Iceland coast , up which no man could climb .
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