THE HOUSE WREN
Neltje Blanchan
When you are sound asleep some April morning, a tiny brown bird, just returned from a long visit south, will probably alight on the perch in front of one of your boxes, peep in the doorhole, enter—although his pert little cocked-up tail has to be lowered to let him through—look about with approval, go out, spring to the roof and pour out of his wee throat a gushing torrent of music. The song seems to bubble up faster than he can sing. After the wren’s happy discovery of a place to live, his song will go off in a series of musical explosions all day long, now from the roof, now from the clothes posts, the fence, the barn, or the woodpile. There never was a more tireless, spirited, brilliant singer. From the intensity of his feelings, he sometimes droops that expressive little tail of his, which is usually so erect and saucy.
With characteristic energy, he frequently begins to carry twigs into the house before he finds a mate. The day little Jenny Wren appears on the scene, how he does sing! Dashing off for more twigs, but stopping to sing to her every other minute, he helps furnish the cottage quickly, but, of course, he overdoes—he carries in more twigs and hay and feathers than the little house can hold, then pulls half of them out again. Jenny gathers, too, for she is a bustling housewife and arranges matters with neatness and despatch. Neither vermin nor dust will she tolerate within her well-kept home. Everything she does to suit herself pleases her ardent little lover. He applauds her with song; he flies about after her with a nervous desire to protect; he seems beside himself with happiness. Let any one pass too near his best beloved, and he begins to chatter excitedly: “Chit-chit-chit-chit,” as much as to say, “Oh, do go away; go quickly! Can’t you see how nervous and fidgety you make me?”
If you fancy that Jenny Wren, who is patiently sitting on the little pinkish, chocolate spotted eggs in the centre of her feather bed, is a demure, angelic creature, you have never seen her attack the sparrow, nearly twice her size, that dares put his impudent head inside her door. Oh! how she flies at him! How she chatters and scolds! What a plucky little shrew she is, after all! Her piercing, chattering, scolding notes are fairly hissed into his ears until he is thankful enough to escape.
There’s a little brown wren that has built in our tree,[10]
And she’s scarcely as big as a big bumble-bee;
She has hollowed a house in the heart of a limb,
And made the walls tidy and made the doors trim
With the down of the crow’s foot, and tow, and with straw
The cosiest dwelling that you ever saw.
The little brown wren has the brightest of eyes
And a foot of very diminutive size.
Her tail is as big as the sail of a ship.
She’s demure, though she walks with a hop and a skip;
And her voice—but a flute were more fit than a pen
To tell of the voice of the little brown wren.
One morning Sir Sparrow came sauntering by
And cast on the wren’s house an envious eye;
With a strut of bravado and toss of his head,
“I’ll put in my claim here,” the bold fellow said;
So straightway he mounted on impudent wing,
And entered the door without pausing to ring.
An instant—, and swiftly that feathery knight
All towsled and tumbled, in terror took flight,
While there by the door, in her favourite perch,
As neat as a lady just starting for church,
With this song on her lips, “He will not call again
Unless he is asked,” sat the little brown wren.
If the bluebirds had her courage and hot, quick temper, they would never let the sparrows drive them away from their boxes. Unfortunately a hole large enough to admit a bluebird will easily admit those grasping monopolists; but Jenny Wren is safe, if she did but know it, in her house with its tiny front door. It is amusing to see a sparrow try to work his shoulders through the small hole of an empty wren house, pushing and kicking madly, but all in vain.
What rent do the wrens pay for their little houses? No man is clever enough to estimate the vast numbers of insects on your place that they destroy. They eat nothing else, which is the chief reason why they are so lively and excitable. Unable to soar after flying insects because of their short, round wings, they keep, as a rule, rather close to the ground which their finely barred brown feathers so closely match. Whether hunting for grubs in the wood-pile, scrambling over the brush heap after spiders, searching among the trees to provide a dinner for their large families, or creeping, like little feathered mice, in queer nooks and crannies among the outbuildings on the farm, they are always busy in your interest which is also theirs. It certainly pays, in every sense, to encourage the wrens.
THE CHILDREN OF WIND AND THE CLAN OF PEACE
A CHRIST LEGEND
Fiona MacLeod
It was the last month of the last year of the seven years’ silence and peace. When would that be, you ask?
Surely what other would it be than the seven holy years when Jesus the Christ was a little lad.
It was a still day. The little white flowers that were called Breaths of Hope and that we now call Stars of Bethlehem were so hushed in quiet that the shadows of the moths lay on them like the dark motionless violet in the hearts of pansies. In the long swords of tender grass the multitude of the daisies were white as milk faintly stained with flusht dews fallen from roses. On the meadows of white poppies were long shadows blue as the blue lagoons of the sky among drifting snow white moors of cloud. Three white aspens on the pastures were in a still sleep; their tremulous leaves made no rustle; ewes and lambs were sleeping and yearling kids opened and closed their eyes among the garths of white clover.
It was Sabbath and Jesus walked alone. When He came to a little rise in the grass He turned and looked back at the house where His parents dwelled. Suddenly He heard a noise as of many birds and turned and looked beyond the low upland where He stood. A pool of pure water lay in the hollow, fed by a ceaseless wellspring and round it and over it circled birds whose breasts were grey as pearl and whose necks shone purple and grass green and rose. The noise was of their wings, for though the birds were beautiful they were voiceless and dumb as flowers.
At the edge of the pool stood two figures like angels, but the child did not know them. One He saw was beautiful as Night, and one beautiful as Morning.
He drew near.
“I have lived seven years,” He said, “and I wish to send peace to the far ends of the world.”
“Tell your secret to the birds,” said one.
“Tell your secret to the birds,” said the other.
So Jesus called the birds.
“Come,” He cried, and they came.
Seven came flying from the left, from the side of the angel beautiful as Night. Seven came flying from the right, from the side of the angel beautiful as Morning.
To the first He said: “Look into my heart.”
But they wheeled about Him, and with new found voices mocked, crying, “How could we see into your heart that is hidden ...” and mocked and derided, crying, “What is Peace! ... leave us alone. Leave us alone.”
So Christ said to them: “I know you for the birds of Evil. Henceforth ye shall be black as night, and be children of the winds.”
To the seven other birds which circled about Him, voiceless, and brushing their wings against His arms, He cried:
“Look into my heart.”
And they swerved and hung before Him in a maze of wings, and looked into His pure heart: and, as they looked, a soft murmurous sound came from them—drowsy, sweet, full of peace—and as they hung there like a breath in frost they became white as snow.
“Ye are the Doves of the Spirit,” said Christ, “and to you I will commit that which ye have seen. Henceforth shall your plumage be white and your voices be the voices of peace.”
The young Christ turned, for He heard Mary calling to the sheep and goats, and knew that dayset was come and that in the valleys the gloaming was already rising like smoke from the urns of the twilight. When he looked back he saw that seven white doves were in the cedar beyond the pool, cooing in low ecstasy of peace and awaiting through sleep and dreams the rose-red pathways of the dawn. Down the long grey reaches of the ebbing day He saw seven birds rising and falling on the wind black as black water in caves, black as the darkness of night in old pathless woods.
And that is how the first doves became white, and how the first crows became black and were called by a name that means the clan of darkness, the children of wind.