Bird Music--The Skylark's Song--Imitation of, by a French
Poet--Alasdair Macdonald--Scott.
Conscious at last that pouting and inordinate weeping became him not,
and that, being constantly on the "rampage," like Mrs. Joe Gargery,
was hardly consistent with his place in the calendar, April [1869]
betimes resolved to "tak a thocht and mend," and now, like Richard,
is himself again--all sunshine and smiles. The rain-gauge, to be sure,
with stern impartiality, will still show an occasional "inch," or parts
of an inch, if you are very particular in your inquiries, when examined
of a morning, but its readings now at least are in no way appalling,
for they represent the warm and genial rainfall of April showers,
that, after all, are as necessary on the west coast at this moment,
and as refreshing to the soil, as the orthodox cup of mulled port of
an evening was believed to be to the weary traveller in the good old
days of stage-coaches and post-chaises. The country, at all events,
is looking very beautiful just now, everything so green and glad,
so fresh and fair, and full of promise of a yet gladder, and gayer,
and brighter day at hand, when the swallow, twittering, shall dart,
a glossy meteor, in the sunlight, and the cuckoo shall challenge
the truant schoolboy to repeat its well-known notes, correctly if
he can. Now is the time to hear our native song-birds at their best,
warbling their sweetest strains, and to decide, once for all, if it be
possible, which you like best; the loud, clear, silvery tinkle of the
seed-shelling finch's rich and rapid song; the liquid and mellifluous
warblings of the soft-billed tribes; or the soul-entrancing, round,
rich, flute-like piping of the throstle, song-thrush, and merle. How
it may fare with the reader who tries to decide the point we cannot
say. For our own part, no decision that we could ever arrive at could
keep its legs for two days together. No sooner did we decide that the
skylark and its congeners had the best of it, than the goldfinch, with
a score of lively cousins to aid and abet, challenged the verdict, and
forced us to acknowledge his exquisite mastery in song--an admission
made, however, only to be retracted again almost as soon as made,
for in our walk on the evening of that self-same day did we not stand,
and for the life of us couldn't help standing--breathless, and hushed,
and still--to listen to the merle and song-thrush from the neighbouring
copse pouring forth the indescribable riches of their God-taught
vespers as the sun went down; and did we not, then and there, vow,
in utter forgetfulness of finch and skylark, that no music of earth
could for a moment compare, in execution and compass, in distinctness,
and cheeriness, and purity of note, with these matchless twilight
strains? The truth is that no music is equal to bird-music--wild-bird
music, that is--in its season, and amid all its natural surroundings;
and the probability is that we shall give the preference at any
time to the melody of one bird over that of another, not on any
well-defined principles of choice or selection in the matter, but
simply in accordance with our own prevailing mood and temperament
of the moment. Such, at least, has been our own experience; but the
reader has every opportunity at this season of studying the question
for himself and deciding. Except that of the nightingale, perhaps the
music of no bird has attracted so much attention by its beauty and
suggestiveness as the merry trill of the skylark's ascending song. The
poets of every country in which it is to be found have vied with each
other in their praises of the only bird that sings as he soars, and
soars as he sings, scaling on quivering pinions the aerial terraces
of heaven, until he can scarcely be discerned, a music-showering
speck against the background of the blue profound! The other day
we fell in with some curious verses by the French poet Du Bartas,
in which he strives, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to imitate
the merry trill and rhythm of the skylark's song:--
"La gentille aloüette, avec son tire-lire,
Tire-lire, à lire, et tire-liran tire;
Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu,
Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu!"
The last line, if rapidly repeated with the proper beat and
intonation, will be found a really very successful imitation of
the concluding notes of the lark's well-known song. Many of our
readers will remember that the North Uist bard, Ian Mac Codrum,
in his Smeorach Chlann-Domhnuill, manages very happily to imitate
the smeorach or song-thrush's notes in the burden or chorus; while
Alexander Macdonald--Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair--very naturally falls,
like the French poet, into an imitation of the wild-bird music of the
woods and groves in a stanza that may be quoted not inappropriately
at this season:--
"Cha bhi crèutair fo chupan nan spèur
'N sin nach tiunndaidh ri'n speuràd 's ri'n dreach,
'S gun toir Phoebus le buadhan a bhlàis
Anam-fas daibh a's caileachdan ceart,
Ni iad ais-eiridh choitcheann on uaigh
Far na mhiotaich am fuachd iad a steach,
'S their iad--guileag-doro-hidola-hann
Dh-fhalbh an geamhra's tha'n samhradh air teachd!"
The lines of Du Bartas have little meaning in themselves, and
are untranslatable, being simply an attempt on the poet's part,
in some odd moment of hilarity and abandon, to embody the notes of
the skylark's song in something like articulate verse. The general
sense of Macdonald's lines describing the irrepressible inclination
of all living creatures to be jubilant and joyous at the return of
spring, cannot better be rendered than in the first part of Scott's
introductory stanza to the second canto of the Lady of the Lake, only
that the return of spring in the one case, instead of the return of
morn in the other, prompts to the outburst of gladness and song:--
"At morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing,
'Tis morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay,
All Nature's children feel the matin spring
Of life reviving, with reviving day;
And while yon little bark glides down the bay,
Wafting the stranger on his way again,
Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel grey,
And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain,
Mixed with the sounding harp, O white-hair'd Allan-bane!"