occupy most, if not the whole of my time. But would that be too much to
give if it made me tranquil in my own mind? For it must be noted that I
have done all this, mentally and on paper, for my own satisfaction
rather than that of the canaries. Birds are not worth much--_to us_. Are
not five sparrows sold for three farthings? I have even shot many birds
and have felt no compunction. True, they perished before their time, but
they did not languish, and being dead there was an end of them; but the
caged canaries continuing with us, cannot be dismissed from the mind
with the same convenient ease. After all, I begin to think that my
imaginary reforms, if carried out, would not quite content me. The
"compunctious visitings" would continue still. I look out of the window
and see a sparrow on a neighbouring tree, loudly chirruping. And as I
listen, trying to find comfort by thinking of the perils which do
environ him, his careless unconventional sparrow-music resolves itself
into articulate speech, interspersed with occasional bursts of derisive
laughter. He knows, this fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking
about and have written. "How would you like it," I hear him saying, "O
wise man that knows so much about the ways of birds, if you were shut up
in a big cage--in Windsor Castle, let us say--with scores of menials to
wait on you and anticipate your every want? That is, I must explain,
every want compatible with--ahem!--the captive condition. Would you be
happy in your confinement, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up and
down the floors on a bicycle and gazing at pictures and filigree caskets
and big malachite vases and eating dinners of many, many courses? Or
would you begin to wish that you might be allowed to live on sixpence a
day--_and earn it_; and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a
handful of half-rotten apples and sleeps in a hay-stack, but is free to
come and go, and range the world at will? You have been playing at
nature; but Nature mocks you, for your captives thank you not. They
would rather go to her without an intermediary, and take a scantier
measure of food from her hand, but flavoured as she only can flavour it.
Widen your cage, naturalist; replace the little twinkling lustres with
sun and moon and milky way; plant forests on the floor, and let there be
hills and valleys, rivers and wide spaces; and let the blue pillars of
heaven be the wires of your cage, with free entrance to wind and rain;
then your little captives will be happy, even happy as I am, in spite of
all the perils which do environ me--guns and cats and snares, with wet
and fog and hard frosts to come."
And, seeing my error, I should open the cage and let them fly away. Even
to death, I should let them fly, for there would be a taste of liberty
first, and life without that sweet savour, whether of aerial bird or
earth-bound man, is not worth living.
CHANTICLEER
During the month of September I spent several days at a house standing
on high ground in one of the pleasantest suburbs of London, commanding a
fine view at the back of the breezy, wooded, and not very far-off Surrey
hills; and all round, from every window, front and back, such a mass of
greenery met the eye, almost concealing the neighbouring houses, that I
could easily imagine myself far out in the country. In the garden the
omnipresent sparrow, and that always pleasant companion the starling,
associated with the thrush, blackbird, green linnet, chaffinch,
redstart, wren, and two species of tits; and, better than all these, not
fewer than half a dozen robins warbled their autumn notes from early
morning until late in the evening. Domestic bird-life was also
represented by fifteen fowls, and the wise laxity existing in the
establishment made these also free of the grounds; for of eyesores and
painful skeletons in London cupboards, one of the worst, to my mind, is
that unwholesome coop at the back where a dozen unhappy birds are
usually to be found immured for life. These, more fortunate, had ample
room to run about in, and countless broad shady leaves from which to
pick the green caterpillar, and red tortoise-shaped lady-bird, and
parti-coloured fly, and soft warm soil in which to bathe in their own
gallinaceous fashion, and to lie with outstretched wings luxuriating by
the hour in the genial sunshine. And having seen their free wholesome
life, I did not regard the new-laid egg on the breakfast-table with a
feeling of repugnance, but ate it with a relish.
I have said that the fowls numbered fifteen; five were old birds, and
ten were chickens, closely alike in size, colour and general appearance.
They were not the true offspring of the hen that reared them, but
hatched from eggs bought from a local poultry-breeder. As they advanced
in age to their teens, or the period in chicken-life corresponding to
that in which, in the human species, boy and girl begin to diverge,
their tails grew long, and they developed very fine red combs; but the
lady of the house, who had been promised good layers when she bought the
eggs clung tenaciously to the belief that long arching tails and stately
crests were ornaments common to both sexes in this particular breed. By
and by they commenced to crow, first one, then two, then all, and stood
confessed cockerels. Incidents like this, which are of frequent
occurrence, serve to keep alive the exceedingly ancient notion that the
sex of the future chick can be foretold from the shape of the egg. As I
had no personal interest in the question of the future egg-supply of the
establishment, I was not sorry to see the chickens develop into cocks;
what did interest me were their first attempts at crowing--those grating
sounds which the young bird does not seem to emit, but to wrench out
with painful effort, as a plant is wrenched out of the soil, and not
without bringing away portions of the lungs clinging to its roots. The
bird appears to know what is coming, like an amateur dentist about to
extract one of his own double-pronged teeth, and setting his feet
firmly on the ground, and throwing himself well back before an imaginary
looking-glass, and with arched-neck, wide-open beak, and rolling eyes,
courageously performs the horrible operation. One cannot help thinking
that a cockerel brought up without any companions of his own sex and age
would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten
of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning their
harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning,
these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which
may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something
beyond a mere increase in our food-supply in their selecting and
refining processes.
To continue my narration. I woke in the morning at my usual time,
between three and four o'clock, which is not my getting-up time, for, as
a rule, after half an hour or so I sleep again. The waking is not
voluntary as far as I know; for although it may seem a contradiction in
terms to speak of coming at will out of a state of unconsciousness, we
do, in cases innumerable, wake voluntarily, or at the desired time, not
perhaps being altogether unconscious when sleeping. If, however, this
early waking were voluntary, I should probably say that it was for the
pleasure of listening to the crowing of the cocks at that silent hour
when the night, so near its end, is darkest, and the mysterious tide of
life, prescient of coming dawn, has already turned, and is sending the
red current more and more swiftly through the sleeper's veins. I have
spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent
grassy plain, the first whiteness in the eastern sky, and the fluting
call of the tinamou, and the perfume of the wild evening primrose, have
seemed to me like a resurrection in which I had a part; and something of
this feeling is always associated in my mind with the first far-heard
notes of Chanticleer.
It was very dark and quiet when I woke; my window was open, with only a
lace curtain before it to separate me from the open air. Presently the
profound silence was broken. From a distance of fifty or sixty yards
away on the left hand came the crow of a cock, soon answered by another
further away on the same side, and then, further away still, by a third.
Other voices took up the challenge on the right, some near, some far,
until it seemed that there was scarcely a house in the neighbourhood at
which Chanticleer was not a dweller. There was no other sound. Not for
another hour would the sparrows burst out in a chorus of chirruping
notes, lengthened or shortened at will, variously inflected, and with a
ringing musical sound in some of them, which makes one wonder why this
bird, so high in the scale of nature, has never acquired a set song for
itself. For there is music in him, and when confined with a singing
finch he will sometimes learn its song. Then the robins, then the tits,
then the starlings, gurgling, jarring, clicking, whistling, chattering.
Then the pigeons cooing soothingly on the roof and window-ledges, taking
flight from time to time with sudden, sharp flap, flap, followed by a
long, silken sound made by the wings in gliding. At four the cocks had
it all to themselves; and, without counting the cockerels (not yet out
of school), I could distinctly hear a dozen birds; that is to say, they
were near enough for me to listen to their music critically. The variety
of sounds they emitted was very great, and, if cocks were selected for
their vocal qualities, would have shown an astonishing difference in the
musical tastes of their owners. A dozen dogs of as many different
breeds, ranging from the boar-hound to the toy terrier, would not have
shown greater dissimilarity in their forms than did these cocks in their
voices. For the fowl, like the dog, has become an extremely variable
creature in the domestic state, in voice no less than in size, form,
colour, and other particulars. At one end of the scale there was the
raucous bronchial strain produced by the unwieldy Cochin. What a bird is
that! Nature, in obedience to man's behests, and smiling with secret
satire over her work, has made it ponderous and ungraceful as any clumsy
mammalian, wombat, ardvaark, manatee, or hippopotamus. The burnished red
hackles, worn like a light mantle over the black doublet of the breast,
the metallic dark green sickle-plumes arching over the tail, all the
beautiful lines and rich colouring, have been absorbed into flesh and
fat for gross feeders; and with these have gone its liveliness and
vigour, its clarion voice and hostile spirit and brilliant courage; it
is Gallus bankiva degenerate, with dulled brains and blunted spurs, and
its hoarse crow is a barbarous chant.
And far away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and
impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic,
that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird,
the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, which should be the
longest, was the shortest, "short and sharp like the shrill swallow's
cry," or perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an enraged little
cur; not a _reveille_ and silvern morning song in one, as a crow should
be, but a challenge and a defiance, wounding the sense like a spur, and
suggesting the bustle and fury of the cockpit.
If this style of crowing was known to Milton, it is perhaps accountable
for the one bad couplet in the "Allegro":
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
Someone has said that every line in that incomparable poem brings at
least one distinct picture vividly before the mind's eye. The picture
the first line of the couplet I have quoted suggests to ray mind is not
of crowing Chanticleer at all, but of a stalwart, bare-armed,
blowsy-faced woman, vigorously beating on a tin pan with a stick; but
for what purpose--whether to call down a passing swarm of bees, or to
summon the chickens to be fed--I never know. It is only my mental
picture of a "lively din." As to the second line, all attempts to see
the thing described only bring before me clouds and shadows, confusedly
rushing about in an impossible way; a chaos utterly unlike the serenity
and imperceptible growth of morning, and not a picture at all.
By and by I found myself paying special attention to one cock, about a
hundred yards away, or a little more perhaps, for by contrast all the
other songs within hearing seemed strangely inferior. Its voice was
singularly clear and pure, the last note greatly prolonged and with a
slightly falling inflection, yet not collapsing at the finish as such
long notes frequently do, ending with a little internal sound or croak,
as if the singer had exhausted his breath; but it was perfect in its
way, a finished performance, artistic, and, by comparison, brilliant.
After once hearing this bird I paid little attention to the others, but
after each resounding call I counted the seconds until its repetition.
It was this bird's note, on this morning, and not the others, which
seemed to bring round me that atmosphere of dreams and fancies I exist
in at early cockcrow--dreams and memories, sweet or sorrowful, of old
scenes and faces, and many eloquent passages in verse and prose, written
by men in other and better days, who lived more with nature than we do
now. Such a note as this was, perhaps, in Thoreau's mind when he
regretted that there were no cocks to cheer him in the solitude of
Walden. "I thought," he says, "that it might be worth while keeping a
cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once
wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and
if they could be naturalized without being domesticated it would soon
become the most famous sound in our woods. . . . To walk in a winter
morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and
hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles
over the surrounding country--think of it! It would put nations on the
alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier on
each successive morning of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy,
wealthy, and wise?"
Soon I fell into thinking of one in some ways greater than Thoreau, so
unlike the skyey-minded New England prophet and solitary, so much more
genial and tolerant, more mundane and lovable; and yet like Thoreau in
his nearness to nature. Not only a lover of generous wines--"That mark
upon his lip is wine"--and books "clothed in black and red," all natural
sights and sounds also "filled his herte with pleasure and solass," and
the early crowing of the cock was a part of the minstrelsy he loved.
Perhaps when lying awake during the dark quiet hours, and listening to
just such a note as this, he conceived and composed that wonderful tale
of the "Nun's Priest," in which the whole character of Chanticleer, his
glory and his foibles, together with the homely virtues of Dame
Partlett, are so admirably set forth.
And longer ago it was perhaps such a note as this, heard in imagination
by the cock-loving Athenians, which all at once made them feel so
unutterably weary of endless fighting with the Lacedaemonians, and
inspired their hearts with such a passionate desire for the long
untasted sweets of security and repose. Is it one of my morning fancies
merely--for fact and fancy mingle strangely at this still, mysterious
hour, and are scarcely distinguishable--or is it related in history that
this strange thing happened when all the people of the violet-crowned
city were gathered to witness a solemn tragedy, in which certain verses
were spoken that had a strange meaning to their war-weary souls? "Those
who sleep in the morning in the arms of peace do not start from them at
the sound of the trumpet, and nothing interrupts their slumbers but the
peaceful crowing of the cock." And at these words the whole concourse
was electrified, and rose up like one man, and from thousands of lips
went forth a great cry of "Peace! Peace! Let us make peace with Sparta!"
Hark! once more that long clarion call: it is the last time--the very
last; for all the others have sung a dozen times apiece and have gone to
sleep again. So would this one have done, but cocks, like minstrels
among men, are vain creatures, and some kind officious fairy whispered
in his ear that there was an appreciative listener hard by, and so to
please me he sang, just one stave more.
Lying and listening in the dark, it seemed to me that there were two
opposite qualities commingled in the sound, with an effect analogous to
that of shadow mingling with and chastening light at eventide. First, it
was strong and clear, full of assurance and freedom, qualities admirably
suited to the song of a bird of Chanticleer's disposition; a lusty,
ringing strain, not sung in the clouds or from a lofty perch midway
between earth and heaven, but with feet firmly planted on the soil, and
earthly; and compared with the notes of the grove like a versified
utterance of Walt Whitman compared with the poems of the true inspired
children of song--Blake, Shelley, Poe. Earthly, but not hostile and
eager; on the contrary, leisurely, _peaceful_ even dreamy, with a touch
of tenderness which brings it into relationship with the more aerial
tones of the true singers; and this is the second quality I spoke of,
which gave a charm to this note and made it seem better than the others.
This is partly the effect of distance, which clarifies and softens
sound, just as distance gives indistinctness of outline and ethereal
blueness to things that meet the sight. To objects beautiful in
themselves, in graceful lines and harmonious proportions and colouring,
the haziness imparts an additional grace; but it does not make beautiful
the objects which are ugly in themselves, as, for instance, an ugly
square house. So in the etherealizing effect of distance on sound, when
so loud a sound as the crowing of a strong-lunged cock becomes dreamy
and tender at a distance of one hundred yards, there must be good
musical elements in it to begin with. I do not remark this dreaminess
in the notes of other birds, some crowing at an equal distance, others
still further away. All natural music is heard best at a distance; like
the chiming of bells, and the music of the flute, and the wild confused
strains of the bagpipes, for among artificial sounds these come the
nearest to those made by nature. The "shrill sharps" of the thrush must
be softened by distance to charm; and the skylark, when close at hand,
has both shrill and harsh sounds scarcely pleasing. He must mount
high before you can appreciate his merit. I do not recommend any one to
keep a caged cock in his study for the sake of its music, crow it never
so well.
To return to the ten cockerels; they did not crow very much, and at
first I paid little attention to them. After a few days I remarked that
one individual among them was rapidly acquiring the clear vigorous
strain of the adult bird. Compared with that fine note which I have
described, it was still weak and shaky, but in shape it was similar, and
the change had come while its brethren were still uttering brief and
harsh screeches as at the beginning. Probably, where there is a great
mixture of varieties, it is the same with the fowl as with man in the
diversity of the young, different ancestral characters appearing in
different members of the same family. This cockerel was apparently the
musical member, and promised in a short time to rival his neighbour.
Having heard that it was intended to keep one of the cockerels to be the
parent of future broods, I began to wonder whether the prize in the
lottery--to wit, life and a modest harem--would fall to this fine
singer or not. The odds were that his musical career would be cut short
by an early death, since the ten birds were very much alike in other
respects, and I felt perfectly sure that his superior note would weigh
nothing in the balance. For when has the character of the voice
influenced a fancier in selecting? Never I believe, odd as it seems. I
have read a very big book on the various breeds of the fowl, but the
crowing of the cock was not mentioned in it. This would not seem so
strange if fanciers had invariably looked solely to utility, and their
highest ambition had ended at size, weight and quality of flesh, early
maturity, hardihood, and the greatest number of eggs. This has not been
the case. They possess, like others, the love of the beautiful,
artificial as their standards sometimes appear; and there are breeds in
which beauty seems to have been the principal object, as, for instance,
in several of the gold and silver spangled and pencilled varieties. But,
besides beauty of plumage, there are other things in the fowl worthy of
being improved by selection. One of these has been cultivated by man for
thousands of years, namely, the combative spirit and splendid courage of
the male bird. But there is a spirit abroad now which condemns
cock-fighting, and to continue selecting and breeding cocks solely for
their game-points seems a mere futility. The energy and enthusiasm
expended in this direction would be much better employed in improving
the bird's vocal powers.
The morning song of the cock is a sound unique in nature, and of all
natural sounds it is the most universal. "All climates agree with brave
Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is
ever good; his lungs are sound; his spirits never flag." He is a pet
bird among tribes that have never seen the peacock, goose, and turkey.
In tropical countries where the dog becomes dumb, or degenerates into a
mere growler, his trumpet never rusts. It is true that he was cradled in
the torrid zone, yet in all Western lands, where he "shakes off the
powdery snow," with vigorous wings, his voice sounds as loud and
inspiriting as in the hot jungle. Pale-faced Londoners, and blacks, and
bronzed or painted barbarians, all men all the world over, wake at morn
to the "peaceful crowing of the cock," just as the Athenians woke of
old, and the nations older still. It is not, therefore, strange that
this song has more associations for man than any other sound in nature.
But, apart from any adventitious claims to our attention, the sound
possesses intrinsic merits and pleases for its own sake. In our other
domestic birds we have, with regard to this point, been unfortunate. We
have the gobbling of turkeys, and the hoarse, monotonous come back of
the guinea-fowl, screaming of peacocks and geese, and quacking, hissing,
and rasping of mallard and mus-covy. Above all these sounds the ringing,
lusty, triumphant call of Chanticleer, as the far-reaching toll of the
bell-bird sounds above the screaming and chattering of parrots and
toucans in the Brazilian forest. A fine sound, which in spite of many
changes of climate and long centuries of domestication still preserves
that forest-born character of wildness, which gives so great a charm to
the language of many woodland gallinaceous birds. As we have seen, it is
variable, and in some artificial varieties has been suffered to
degenerate into sounds harsh and disagreeable; yet it is plain that an
improved voice in a beautiful breed would double the bird's value from
an aesthetic point of view. As things now are, the fine voices are in a
very small minority. Some bad voices in artificial breeds, i.e., those
which, like the Brahma and Cochin, diverge most widely from the original
type--are perhaps incurable, like the carrion crow's voice; for that
bird will probably always caw harshly in spite of the musical throat
which anatomists find in it. We can only listen to our birds, and begin
experimenting with those already possessed of shapely notes and voices
of good quality.