The verb sonat also seems to imply
a bird that is somewhat loquacious.*
(* Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes
Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas:
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum
Stagna sonat ...)
We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise the
springs to a pitch beyond any thing since 1764; which was a
remarkable year for floods and high waters. The land-springs,
which we call lavants, break out much on the downs of Sussex,
Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country people say when the
lavants rise corn will always be dear; meaning that when the earth
is so glutted with water as to send forth springs on the downs and
uplands, that the corn-vales must be drowned; and so it has proved
for these ten or eleven years past. For land-springs have never
obtained more since the memory of man than during that period;
nor has there been known a greater scarcity of all sorts of grain,
considering the great improvements of modern husbandry.
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