THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN
The willow wren is one of the commonest and undoubtedly the most
generally diffused of the British songsters. A summer visitor, one of
the earliest to arrive, usually appearing on the South Coast in the
last week in March; a little later he may be met with in very nearly
every wood, thicket, hedge, common, marsh, orchard, and large garden
throughout the kingdom--it is hard to say, writes Seebohm, where he is
not found. Wherever there are green perching-places, and small
caterpillars, flies and aphides to feed upon, there you will see and
hear the willow wren. He is a sweet and constant singer from the date
of his arrival until about the middle of June, when he becomes silent
for a season, resuming his song in July, and continuing it throughout
August and even into September. This late summer singing is, however,
fitful and weak and less joyous in character than in the spring. But
in spite of his abundance and universality, and the charm of his
little melody, he is not familiarly known to the people generally, as
they know the robin redbreast, pied wagtail, dunnock, redstart,
wheatear, and stonechat. The name we call him by is a very old one; it
was first used in English by Ray, in his translation of Willughby's
Ornithology, about three centuries ago; but it still remains a
book-name unknown to the rustic. Nor has this common little bird any
widely known vernacular name. If by chance you find a country-man who
knows the bird, and has a name for it, this will be one which is
applied indiscriminately to two, three, or four species. The willow
wren, in fact, is one of those little birds that are "seen rather than
distinguished," on account of its small size, modest colouring, and
its close resemblance to other species of warblers; also on account of
the quiet, gentle character of its song, which is little noticed in
the spring and summer concert of loud, familiar voices.
One day in London during the late summer I was amused and at the same
time a little disgusted at this general indifference to the delicate
beauty in a bird-sound which distinguishes the willow wren even among
such delicate singers as the warblers: it struck me as a kind of
aesthetic hardness of hearing. I heard the song in the flower walk, in
Kensington Gardens, on a Sunday morning, and sat down to listen to it;
and for half an hour the bird continued to repeat his song two or
three times a minute on the trees and bushes within half a dozen yards
of my seat. Just after I had sat down, a throstle, perched on the
topmost bough of a thorn that projected over the walk, began his song,
and continued it a long time, heedless of the people passing below.
Now, I noticed that in almost every case the person approaching lifted
his eyes to the bird above, apparently admiring the music, sometimes
even pausing for a moment in his walk; and that when two or three came
together they not only looked up, but made some remark about the
beauty of the song. But from first to last not one of all the
passers-by cast a look towards the tree where the willow wren was
singing; nor was there anything to show that the sound had any
attraction for them, although they must have heard it. The loudness of
the thrush prevented them from giving it any attention, and made it
practically inaudible. It was like a pimpernel blossoming by the side
of a poppy, or dahlia, or peony, where, even if seen, it would not be
noticed as a beautiful flower.
In the chapter on the wood wren, I endeavoured to trace to its source
the pleasurable feelings which the song of that bird produces in me and
in many others--a charm exceeding that of many more celebrated
vocalists. In that chapter the song of the willow wren was mentioned
incidentally. Now, these two--wood wren and willow wren--albeit nearly
related, are, in the character of their notes, as widely different as it
is possible for two songsters to be; and when we listen attentively to
both, we recognise that the feeling produced in us differs in each
case--that it has a different cause. In the case of the willow wren it
might be said off-hand that our pleasure is simply due to the fact that
it is a melodious sound, associated in our minds with summer scenes. As
much could be said of any other migrant's song--nightingale, tree-pipit,
blackcap, garden warbler, swallow, and a dozen more. But it does not
explain the individual and very special charm of this particular
bird--what I have ventured to call the secret of the willow wren. After
all, it is not a deeply hidden secret, and has indeed been half guessed
or hinted by various writers on bird melody; and as it also happens to
be the secret of other singers besides the willow wren, we may, I think,
find in it an explanation of the fact that the best singers do not
invariably please us so well as some that are considered inferior.
The song of the willow wren has been called singular and unique among
our birds; and Mr Warde Fowler, who has best described it, says that
it forms an almost perfect cadence, and adds, "by which I mean that it
descends gradually, not, of course, on the notes of our musical scale,
by which no birds in their natural state would deign to be fettered,
but through fractions of one or perhaps two of our tones, and without
returning upward at the end." Now, this arrangement of its notes,
although very rare and beautiful, does not give the little song its
highest aesthetic value. The secret of the charm, I imagine, is
traceable to the fact that there is distinctly something human-like in
the quality of the voice, its timbre. Many years ago an observer of
wild birds and listener to their songs came to this country, and
walking one day in a London suburb he heard a small bird singing among
the trees. The trees were in an enclosure and he could not see the
bird, but there would, he thought, be no difficulty in ascertaining
the species, since it would only be necessary to describe its peculiar
little song to his friends and they would tell him. Accordingly, on
his return to the house he proceeded to describe the song and ask the
name of the singer. No one could tell him, and much to his surprise,
his account of the melody was received with smiles of amusement and
incredulity. He described it as a song that was like a wonderfully
bright and delicate human voice talking or laughingly saying something
rather than singing. It was not until some time afterwards that the
bird-lover in a strange land discovered that his little talker and
laugher among the leaves was the willow wren. In vain he had turned to
the ornithological works; the song he had heard, or at all events the
song as he had heard it, was not described therein; and yet to this
day he cannot hear it differently--cannot dissociate the sound from
the idea of a fairy-like child with an exquisitely pure, bright,
spiritual voice laughingly speaking in some green place.
And yet Gilbert White over a century ago had noted the human quality
in the willow wren's voice when he described it as an "easy, joyous,
laughing note." It is still better to be able to quote Mr Warde
Fowler, when writing in A Year with the Birds, on the futile attempts
which are often made to represent birds' songs by means of our
notation, since birds are guided in their songs by no regular
succession of intervals. Speaking of the willow wren in this
connection, he adds: "Strange as it may seem, the songs of birds may
perhaps be more justly compared with the human voice when speaking,
than with a musical instrument, or with the human voice when singing."
The truth of this observation must strike any person who will pay
close attention to the singing of birds; but there are two criticisms
to be made on it. One is that the resemblance of a bird's song to a
human voice when speaking is confined to some or to a few species; the
second is that it is a mistake to think, as Mr Fowler appears to do,
that the resemblance is wholly or mainly due to the fact that the
bird's voice is free when singing--that, like the human voice in
talking, it is not tied to tones and semitones. For instance, we note
this peculiarity in the willow wren, but not in, say, the wren and
chaffinch, although the songs of these two are just as free, just as
independent of regular intervals as our voices when speaking and
laughing. The resemblance in a bird's song to human speech is entirely
due to the human-like quality in the voice; for we find that other
songsters--notably the swallow--have a charm similar to that of the
willow wren, although the notes of the former bird are differently
arranged, and do not form anything like a cadence. Again, take the
case of the blackbird. We are accustomed to describe the blackbird's
voice as flute-like, and the flute is one of the instruments which
most nearly resemble the human voice. Now, on account of the leisurely
manner in which the blackbird gives out his notes, the resemblance to
human speech is not so pronounced as in the case of the willow wren or
swallow; but when two or three or half a dozen blackbirds are heard
singing close together, as we sometimes hear them in woods and
orchards where they are abundant, the effect is singularly beautiful,
and gives the idea of a conversation being carried on by a set of
human beings of arboreal habits (not monkeys) with glorified voices.
Listening to these blackbird concerts, I have sometimes wondered
whether or not they produced the same effect on others' ears as on
mine, as of people talking to one another in high-pitched and
beautiful tones. Oddly enough, it was only while writing this chapter
that I by chance found an affirmative answer to my question. Glancing
through Leslie's Riverside Letters, which I had not previously seen, I
came upon the following remarks, quoted from Sir George Grove, in a
letter to the author, on the blackbird's singing: "He selects a spot
where he is within hearing of a comrade, and then he begins quite at
leisure (not all in a hurry like the thrush) a regular conversation.
'And how are you? Isn't this a fine day? Let us have a nice talk,'
etc., etc. He is answered in the same strain, and then replies, and so
on. Nothing more thoughtful, more refined, more feeling, can be
conceived." In another passage he writes: "I love them (the robins),
but they fill a much smaller part than the blackbird does in my heart.
To hear the blackbird talking to his mate a field off, with
deliberate, refined conversation, the very acme of grace and courtesy,
is perfectly splendid."
There are two more common British songsters that produce much the same
effect as the willow wren and blackbird; these are the swallow and
pied wagtail. They are not in the first rank as melodists, and I can
find no explanation of the fact that they please me better than the
great singers other than their more human-like tones, which to my
hearing have something of an exceedingly beautiful contralto sound.
The swallow's song is familiar to every one, but that of the wagtail
is not well known. The bird has two distinct songs: one, heard
oftenest in early spring, consists of a low rambling warble, with some
resemblance to the whinchat's song; it is the second song, heard
occasionally until late June, frequently uttered on the wing--a
torrent of loud, rapidly uttered, and somewhat swallow-like
notes--that comes nearest in tone to the human voice, and has the
greatest charm.
After these, we find other songsters with one or two notes, or a
phrase, human-like in quality, in their songs. Of these I will only
mention the blackcap, linnet, and tree-pipit. The most beautiful of
the blackcap's notes, which come nearest to the blackbird, have this
human sound; and certainly the most beautiful part of the linnet's
song is the opening phrase, composed of notes that are both
swallow-like and human-like.
It may appear strange to some readers that I put the tree-pipit, with
his thin, shrill, canary-like pipe, in this list; but his notes are
not all of this character; he is moreover a most variable singer; and
it happens that in some individuals the concluding notes of the song
have more of that peculiar human quality than any other British
songster. No doubt it was a bird in which these human-like,
languishing notes at the close of the song were very full and
beautiful that inspired Burns to write his "Address to a Wood-lark."
The tree pipit is often called by that name in Scotland, where the
true wood-lark is not found.
O stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay,
Nor quit for me the trembling spray,
A hopeless lover courts thy lay,
Thy soothing, fond complaining.
Again, again that tender part,
That I may catch thy melting art;
For surely that would touch her heart
Who kills me wi' disdaining.
Say, was thy little mate unkind,
And heard thee as the passing wind?
O nocht but love and sorrow joined
Sic notes o' wae could waken!
Thou tells o' never-ceasing care,
O' speechless grief and dark despair;
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair,
Or my poor heart is broken!
Much more could be said about these and other species in the passerine
order that have some resemblance, distinct or faint, to the human
voice in their singing notes--an echo, as it were, of our own common
emotions, in most cases simply glad or joyous, but sometimes, as in
the case of the tree-pipit, of another character. And even those
species that are furthest removed from us in the character of the
sounds they emit have some notes that suggest a highly brightened
human voice. Witness the throstle and nightingale. The last approaches
to the human voice in that rich, musical throb, repeated many times
with passion, which is the invariable prelude to his song; and again,
in that "one low piping note, more sweet than all," four times
repeated in a wonderfully beautiful crescendo. Who that ever listened
to Carlotta Patti does not remember sounds like these from her lips?
It was commonly said of her that her voice was bird-like; certainly it
was clarified and brightened beyond other voices--in some of her notes
almost beyond recognition as a human voice. It was a voice that had a
great deal of the quality of gladness in it, but less depth of human
passion than other great singers. Still, it was a human voice; and,
just as Carlotta Patti (outshining the best of her sister-singers even
as the diamond outsparkles all other gems) rose to the birds in her
miraculous flights, so do some of the birds come down to and resemble
us in their songs.
If I am right in thinking that it is the human note in the voices of
some passerine birds that gives a peculiar and very great charm to
their songs, so that an inferior singer shall please us more than one
that ranks high, according to the accepted standard, it remains to ask
why it should be so. Why, I mean, should the mere likeness to a human
tone in a little singing-bird impart so great a pleasure to the mind,
when the undoubtedly human-like voices of many non-passerine species
do not as a rule affect us in the same way? As a matter of fact, we
find in the multitude of species that resemble us in their voices a
few, outside of the order of singers, that do give us a pleasure
similar to that imparted by the willow wren, swallow, and tree-pipit.
Thus, among British birds we have the wood-pigeon, and the stock-dove;
the green woodpecker, with his laugh-like cry; the cuckoo, a universal
favourite on account of his double fluty call; and (to those who are
not inclined to be superstitious) the wood-owl, a most musical
night-singer; and the curlew, with, in a less degree, various other
shore birds. But in a majority of the larger birds of all orders the
effect produced is different, and often the reverse of pleasant. Or if
such sounds delight us, the feeling differs in character from that
produced by the melodious singer, and is mainly due to that wildness
with which we are in sympathy expressed by such sounds. Human-like
voices are found among the auks, loons, and grebes; eagles and
falcons; cuckoos, pigeons, goatsuckers, owls, crows, rails, ducks,
waders, and gallinaceous birds. The cries and shrieks of some among
these, particularly when heard in the dark hours, in deep woods and
marshes and other solitary places, profoundly impress and even startle
the mind, and have given rise all the world over to numberless
superstitious beliefs. Such sounds are supposed to proceed from
devils, or from demons inhabiting woods and waters and all desert
places; from night-wandering witches; spirits sent to prophesy death
or disaster; ghosts of dead men and women wandering by night about the
world in search of a way out of it; and sometimes human beings who,
burdened with dreadful crimes or irremediable griefs, have been
changed into birds. The three British species best known on account of
their supernatural character have very remarkable voices with a human
sound in them: the raven with his angry, barking cry, and deep, solemn
croak; the booming bittern; and the white or church owl, with his
funereal screech.
It is, I think, plain that the various sensations excited in us by the
cries, moans, screams, and the more or less musical notes of different
species, are due to the human emotions which they express or seem to
express. If the voice simulates that of a maniac, or of a being
tortured in body or mind, or overcome with grief, or maddened with
terror, the blood-curdling and other sensations proper to the occasion
will be experienced; only, if we are familiar with the sound or know
its cause, the sensation will be weak. Similarly, if in some deep,
silent wood we are suddenly startled by a loud human whistle or
shouted "Hi!" although we may know that a bird, somewhere in that
waste of foliage around us, uttered the shout, we yet cannot help
experiencing the feelings--a combination of curiosity, amusement, and
irritation--which we should have if some friend or some human being
had hailed us while purposely keeping out of sight. Finally, if the
bird-sounds resemble refined, bright, and highly musical human voices,
the voices, let us say, of young girls in conversation, expressive of
various beautiful qualities--sympathy, tenderness, innocent mirth, and
overflowing gladness of heart--the effect will be in the highest
degree delightful.
Herbert Spencer, in his account of the origin of our love of music in
his Psychology, writes: "While the tones of anger and authority are
harsh and coarse, the tones of sympathy and refinement are relatively
gentle and of agreeable timbre. That is to say, the timbre is
associated in experience with the receipt of gratification, has
acquired a pleasure-giving quality, and consequently the tones which
in music have an allied timbre become pleasure-giving and are called
beautiful. Not that this is the sole cause of their pleasure-giving
quality.... Still, in recalling the tones of instruments which
approach the tones of the human voice, and observing that they seem
beautiful in proportion to their approach, we see that this secondary
aesthetic element is important."
As with instruments, so it is with bird voices; in proportion as they
approach the tones of the human voice, expressive of sympathy,
refinement, and other beautiful qualities, they will seem
beautiful--in some cases even more beautiful than those which, however
high they may rank in other ways, are yet without this secondary
aesthetic element.