Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale’s complaining notes
Tune my distresses and record my woes.”
Id. Act v. Sc. 4.
The word “record” here, refers to the singing of birds, and, according to Douce, is derived from the recorder, a sort of flute, by which they were taught to sing.[72]
RECORDING.
The “recording” of young birds is indeed always very different from their song, as is also the warble of old birds after moulting, as Herr Bechstein has justly remarked. “It is,” he says, “a very striking circumstance, that birds which continue in song nearly the whole year, such as the redbreast, the siskin, and the goldfinch, are obliged, after their moulting is over, to record, as if they had forgotten their song. I am convinced, however, that this exercise is less a study than an endeavour to bring the organs of voice into proper flexibility, what they utter being properly only a sort of warble, the notes of which have scarcely any resemblance to the perfect song; and by a little attention we may perceive how the throat is gradually brought to emit the notes of the usual song. This view,
then, leads us to ascribe the circumstance, not to defect of memory, but rather to a roughness in the vocal organs, arising from disuse. It is in this way that the chaffinch makes endeavours during several successive weeks before attaining to its former perfection, and the nightingale tries for a long time to model the strophes of its superb song, before it can produce the full extent of compass and brilliancy.”[73]
THE LARK,
The nightingale has not more happily inspired our poets than the Lark (Alauda arvensis). Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shelley, and Wordsworth have all sung the praises of this famed songster; while Shakespeare, in undying verse, has paid many a tribute to “the blythesome bird.” Let us, then,