“Made the aisles of the dim wood ring
With the anthems of the free,”
should love the fellowship of these native singers of the field and forest, and give them names their hearts loved in the old home land beyond the sea! They did not consult Linnæus, nor any musty Latin genealogy of Old World birds, at the christening of these songsters. There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket, was very nearly like the same bird in England. For the mellow-throated thrush of the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, color, and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly the same in many respects, though the smaller American wore a pair of red epaulettes. The swallows had their coat tails cut after the same old English pattern, and built their nests after the same model, and twittered under the eaves with the same ecstacy, and played the same antics in the air. But the two dearest home-birds of the fatherland had no family relations nor counterparts in America; and the pilgrim fathers and their children could not make their humble homes happy without the lark and the robin, at least in name and association; so they looked about them for substitutes. There was a plump, full-chested bird, in a chocolate-colored vest, with a bluish dress coat, that would mount the highest tree-top in early spring, and play his flute by the hour for very joy to see the snow melt and the buds swell again. There was such a rollicking happiness in his loud, clear notes, and he apparently sang them in such sympathy with human fellowships, and hopes, and homes, and he was such a cheery and confiding denizen of the orchard and garden withal, that he became at once the pet bird of old and young, and was called the robin; and well would it be if its English namesake possessed its sterling virtues; for, with all its pleasant traits and world-wide reputation, the English robin is a pretentious, arrogant busybody, characteristically pugilistic and troublesome in the winged society of England. In form, dress, deportment, disposition, and in voice and taste for vocal music, the American robin surpasses the English most decidedly. In this our grave forefathers did more than justice to the home-bird they missed on Plymouth Rock. In this generous treatment of their affection for it, they perhaps condoned for mating the English lark so incongruously; but it was true their choice was very limited. To match the prima donna carissima of English field and sky, it was necessary to select a meadow bird, with some other features of resemblance. It would never do to give the cherished name and association to one that lived in the forest, or built its nest in the tree-tops or house-tops, or to one that was black, yellow, or red. Having to conciliate all these conditions, and do the best with the material at hand, they pitched upon a rather large, brownish bird, in a drab waistcoat, slightly mottled, and with a loud, cracked voice, which nobody ever liked. So it never became a favorite, even to those who first gave it the name of lark. It was not its only defect that it lacked an ear and voice for music. There is always a scolding accent that marks its conversation with other birds in the brightest mornings of June. He is very noisy, but never merry nor musical. Indeed, compared with the notes of the English lark, his are like the vehement ejaculations of a maternal duck in distress.
Take it in all, no bird in either hemisphere equals the English lark in heart or voice, for both unite to make it the sweetest, happiest, the welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of God’s love. It is the living ecstacy of joy when it mounts up into its “glorious privacy of light.” On the earth it is timid, silent, and bashful, as if not at home, and not sure of its right to be there at all. It is rather homely withal, having nothing in feather, feature, or form, to attract notice. It is seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children when getting voicy. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of man’s nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of joy. It goes up over the roof-trees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its song, as if to train the rural soul to trial flights heavenward. Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a living thing. It is a marvel—almost a miracle. In a still hour you can hear it at nearly a mile’s distance. When its form is lost in the hazy lace-work of the sun’s rays above, it pours down upon you all the thrilling semitones of its song as distinctly as if it were warbling to you in your window.
The only American bird that could star it with the English lark, and win any admiration at a popular concert by its side, is our favourite comic singer, the Bobolink. I have thought often, when listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low-Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our mowers in haying time. Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish all the human listeners at an English concert. With what a wonderment would one of these blooming, country milkmaids look at the droll harlequin, and listen to those familiar words of his, set to his own music:-
Go to milk! go to milk!
Oh, Miss Phillisey,
Dear Miss Phillisey,
What will Willie say
If you don’t go to milk!
No cheese, no cheese,
No butter nor cheese
If you don’t go to milk.
It is a wonder that in these days of refined civilization, when Jenny Lind, Grisi, Patti, and other celebrated European singers, some of them from very warm climates, are transported to America to delight our Upper-Tendom, that there should be no persistent and successful effort to introduce the English lark into our out-door orchestra of singing-birds. No European voice would be more welcome to the American million. It would be a great gain to the nation, and be helpful to our religious devotions, as well as to our secular satisfactions. In several of our Sabbath hymns there is poetical reference to the lark and its song. For instance, that favorite psalm of gratitude for returning Spring opens with these lines:—
“The winter is over and gone,
The thrush whistles sweet on the spray,
The turtle breathes forth her soft moan,
The lark mounts on high and warbles away.”
Now, not one American man, woman, or child in a thousand ever heard or saw an English lark, and how is he, she, or it to sing the last line of the foregoing verse with the spirit and understanding due to an exercise of devotion? The American lark never mounts higher than the top of a meadow elm, on which it see-saws, and screams, or quacks, till it is tired; then draws a bee-line for another tree, or a fence-post, never even undulating on the voyage. It may be said, truly enough, that the hymn was written in England. Still, if sung in America from generation to generation, we ought to have the English lark with us, for our children to see and hear, lest they may be tempted to believe that other and more serious similes in our Sabbath hymns are founded on fancy instead of fact.
Nor would it be straining the point, nor be dealing in poetical fancies, if we should predicate upon the introduction of the English lark into American society a supplementary influence much needed to unify and nationalise the heterogeneous elements of our population. Men, women, and children, speaking all the languages and representing all the countries and races of Europe, are streaming in upon us weekly in widening currents. The rapidity with which they become assimilated to the native population is remarkable. But there is one element from abroad that does not Americanise itself so easily—and that, curiously, is one the most American that comes from Europe—in other words, the English. They find with us everything as English as it can possibly be out of England—their language, their laws, their literature, their very bibles, psalm-books, psalm-tunes, the same faith and forms of worship, the same common histories, memories, affinities, affections, and general structure of social life and public institutions; yet they are generally the very last to be and feel at home in America. A Norwegian mountaineer, in his deerskin doublet, and with a dozen English words picked up on the voyage, will Americanise himself more in one year on an Illinois prairie than an intelligent, middle-class Englishman will do in ten, in the best society of Massachusetts. Now, I am not dallying with a facetious fantasy when I express the opinion, that the life and song of the English lark in America, superadded to the other institutions and influences indicated, would go a great way in fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and blending it harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation. And this consummation would well repay a special and extraordinary effect. Perhaps this expedient would be the most successful of all that remain untried. A single incident will prove that it is more than a mere theory. Here it is, in substance:—
Some years ago, when the Australian gold fever was hot in the veins of thousands, and fleets of ships were conveying them to that far-off, uncultivated world, a poor old woman landed with the great multitude of rough and reckless men, who were fired to almost frenzy by dreams of ponderous nuggets and golden fortunes. For these they left behind them all the enjoyments, endearments, all the softening sanctities and surroundings of home and social life in England. For these they left mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. There they were, thinly tented in the rain, and the dew, and the mist, a busy, boisterous, womanless camp of diggers and grubbers, roughing-and-tumbling it in the scramble for gold mites, with no quiet Sabbath breaks, nor Sabbath songs, nor Sabbath bells to measure off and sweeten a season of rest. Well, the poor widow, who had her cabin within a few miles of “the diggings,” brought with her but few comforts from the old homeland—a few simple articles of furniture, the bible and psalm-book of her youth, and an English lark to sing to her solitude the songs that had cheered her on the other side of the globe. And the little thing did it with all the fervor of its first notes in the English sky. In her cottage window it sang to her hour by hour at her labor, with a voice never heard before on that wild continent. The strange birds of the land came circling around in their gorgeous plumage to hear it. Even four-footed animals, of grim countenance, paused to hear it. Then, one by one, came other listeners. They came reverently, and their voices softened into silence as they listened. Hard-visaged men, bare-breasted and unshaven, came and stood gentle as girls; and tears came out upon many a tanned and sun-blistered cheek as the little bird warbled forth the silvery treble of its song about the green hedges, the meadow streams, the cottage homes, and all the sunny memories of the fatherland. And they came near unto the lone widow with pebbles of gold in their hard and horny hands, and asked her to sell them the bird, that it might sing to them while they were bending to the pick and the spade. She was poor, and the gold was heavy; yet she could not sell the warbling joy of her life. But she told them that they might come whenever they would to hear it sing. So, on Sabbath days, having no other preacher nor teacher, nor sanctuary privilege, they came down in large companies from their gold-pits, and listened to the devotional hymns of the lark, and became better and happier men for its music.