THE ROMANCE OF ORNITHOLOGY
The birds must know. Who wisely sings
Will sing as they.
The common air has generous wings:
Songs make their way.
What bird is that? The song is good,
And eager eyes
Go peering through the dusky wood
In glad surprise:
The birds must know.
Helen Hunt Jackson.
As everybody knows, ornithology means a discourse about birds--and
people have discoursed about birds ever since spoken or written
language gave us the means of exchanging thoughts.
In the Biblical history of the creation, birds occurred in the fifth
epoch of time, when the evolution of grass and herbs and trees and
seeds and fruits had made for them a paradise. With the grass and
trees and seeds and fruits had evolved a variable diet for the
feathered folk, and by instinct they have continued to follow after
their food, migrating on merry tours the wide world over. Lovers of
them from earliest dates have discoursed of their ways and means,
of their habits, their favorite resorts, their uses relative to
cultivation of lands, their faults in connection with civilization.
Students of nature have divided the birds into "classes" and
"species," as the human race itself is divided. As "order is heaven's
first law," ornithologists have taught us to distinguish it in the
study of birds; and so we have the "groups," always with reference to
individual habits and anatomical peculiarities.
In the Old World, ornithology as a science dates perhaps from
Aristotle, 384 years before Christ. True, he was a teacher of A, B,
C's on the subject, but he set students to "thinking," But there were
students before Aristotle; if not students of science, they were
students of religion. It is to religion in many forms that we owe
the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the subject
"superstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered
imagination. It suggests uncanny things, ghosts and goblins, and
other creatures that are supposed to wander around in the dark,
because they were never seen at midday or any other time. To the
educated person actual faith in ghosts and goblins has given place
to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in the flavor of
superstition, as one takes light desserts after a full meal. And so
we have the romance of superstition for the intelligent.
Stopping to consider that the word itself means a "standing still"
to "stare" at something, an attitude of reverence, so to speak,
we see how religion in ornithology preceded the romance of it.
Certain of the birds waited on the deities, or had access to their
presence, in consequence of which they were set apart and protected.
Sometimes they were prophets of the gods, foretelling future events
with accuracy. Their flights were noted by religious devotees, who,
unconsciously to themselves probably, and certainly unsuspected, by
their followers, were sure to be "out" at migration times. At such
times, should the birds choose a natural course past a city and be
seen only after they had left it behind them, the prophet knew, in
the depths of his religious being, that the gods had doomed that
city. It was only when the study of birds as an actual science
developed the fact that these denizens of the air depended more upon
climate and necessary diet than upon the will of gruesome gods that
the religion of ornithology gave place to romance. And romance is the
after-dinner course of real ornithology--romance lends a fanciful
touch to figures and data, and apologizes to the average student for
intermissions that seem dedicated to frolic.
In the universe of romance, North America has its full share.
Preceding the romance was, and still is (among the native tribes),
the religion of superstition. The deities foretell certain death of
persons among the Eskimos by the passing of a bluejay or the croak of
a raven.
Our own poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not an Eskimo, but he indulged in
the well-known superstitions about the bird when he permitted the
raven to perch above his door. Many of the Arctic tribes are known to
protect the ominous bird to this day. The Indians of Alaska revere
and even fear it, like a black spirit from the land of demons.
Song and story among American aborigines are replete with bird
superstition. So prominent was it that early historians made mention
of it to preserve it, and students of languages are putting it into
books, so that romance and legend may not pass away with our native
Indians.
The government itself is preserving the history of American
superstition among its precious archives. Reports of the Ethnological
Bureau are entertaining reading for vacation times. True, they are
"heavy volumes" in some cases, but there are supplements. Were these
reports placed in more school and other libraries, the inclination
to read more objectionable and not half so entertaining literature
would go quickly out, like a fire-proof match, without burning the
fingers.
To those who find a fascination in prehistoric legends the study
of bird representation on the ancient pottery of some of our
western Indians, and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, is
offered in some of these government reports. They are a very mine
of suggestion and information. Imagination, subtle guide to many a
self-entertaining mind, runs fast and faster on before while one
reads, and one wonders how it came to pass one never knew about
government reports before.
The Ethnological Bureau is the poet's corner of our government--the
romance of our dull facts and figures. Without its unsleeping eye
forever scanning the sky of unwritten literature for gems, how would
some of us know about the history of the human race as preserved by
the Iroquois Indians? And that birds had a wing, if not a hand, in
the peopling of America at least?
Of course America was "all the world" to these Indians, and naturally
enough their priests and poets combined to give some adequate genesis
for the people.
It is said that a story, once started on its rounds in civilized
society, gathers facts and things as it goes, until at last--and
not before very long--its own original parent "wouldn't recognize
it." Not so the legends that have come to us through savage tongues.
Simple to start with, they maintain their original type without a
trace of addition. What students gather for us of folk-lore is as
correct as though the first text had been copyrighted by its author.
Note this simplicity in all barbaric legends, the discourse coming
straight to the facts and leaving off when it is done.
This one legend referred to of the origin of the human race makes so
good a preface to the closing rhyme of our text, that we are tempted
to give it for that special purpose. According to this story of
the Iroquois Indians, it is to birds that woman owes her history.
Unconsciously to these natives of America, they identified woman
with birds and birds' wings for all time. Unconsciously, perhaps, to
herself, woman has also identified her sex with birds and bird wings,
though in a different relation to that of the Iroquois. The legend
will need no further introduction to the girl or woman of America who
may become interested in "Birds of Song and Story."
There was once a time when all the earth was hidden under great
waters. No island or continent gave foothold. No tree, torn from its
moorings, afforded rest to tired foot or wing; for finny and winged
people were all the inhabitants in being. Birds soared unceasingly
in the air, and fish disported their beautiful armor-plate in the
water. In the consciousness of bird and fish there was need of
higher intelligences than themselves. They watched and waited for
some hint, some glimpse, of other and superior beings. One day the
birds, congregating in the sky, discoursing on this very matter,
beheld a lovely woman dropping out of the far blue. Hurriedly they
talked of possible means of saving her from drowning, for they had a
subtle sense that this falling object, with arms outstretched like
wings, was the being they hoped for. One of their number, a prophet,
suggested the means. As the lovely being dropped toward the great
sea the birds came together and lapped wings over wings in a thick
feathered island. Upon the soft deck of this throbbing life-boat
the beautiful being descended and lay panting. Slowly and lovingly
her soft hand caressed the wings of her benefactors. She lifted the
variously tinted plumage of the breasts on which she reclined, and
kissed the down of them.
That was long, long ago! We will conclude our text with the ending
of the poem preceding the first chapter in our book, repeating four
lines of the same, and dedicating this same "ending" to the Birds.
While the church-bell rings its discourse
They are sitting on the spires;
Psalm and anthem, song and carol,
Quaver as from mystic lyres.
Wing and throat are in a tremor,
While they pay their Sunday dues,
And escorted by the ushers.
They are sitting in the pews.
Oh, the travesty of worship!
Perched above each reverent face.
Sit these feathered sacrifices.
Closely pinioned to their place.
Chant a dirge for woman's pity,
Choir, before the text is read!
Sing a requiem for compassion,
Woman's tenderness is dead.
On her head are funeral emblems;
She has made herself a bier
For the martyred birds who, shroudless,
Coffinless, are waiting here.
Eyes dilate and forms distorted.
Praying as in dumb distress,
Poising, crouching, reeling, swooning.
Supplicating wretchedness.
Twisted into shapes so ghastly,
Frightful, grim, disconsolate;
Writhing in a moveless torture.
Passion inarticulate.
Call it "love of what is lovely,"
"Choice of best in nature's grace,"
Back of all the giddy tangle
Lurks the tradesman's wily face,
E.G.
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Index
[Transcriber Note: Although two unique copies of this volume are
stored at The Internet Archive and both of them list an Index at Page
151, neither one of them has an Index and both end at Page 150.]
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Transcriber Note
In order to prevent images from splitting paragraphs, text was
reformatted. Minor typos may have been corrected.