“As a sparrow all alone on the house-top,” said the Psalmist in his day.
In King David’s time, the Sparrow squawked mournfully under the eaves in the [[136]]summer heat, as he does to this day. The buildings of that period differed but little from ours, at least so far as the Sparrow’s convenience was concerned; and the shelter under the tile had been adopted long before. But, when Palestine had nothing more than the camel-hair tent, where did the Sparrow then elect to make his home?
When Virgil sings to us of good Evander, who, preceded by his watch, two Sheep-dogs, visits Æneas, his guest, he shows him to us awakened at dawn by the singing of the birds:
Evandrum ex humili tecto lux alma
Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus.[1]
What could those birds be which, at break of day, twittered under the roof of the old King of Latium? I see only two: the Swallow and the Sparrow, both of them chanticleers of my hermitage and as punctual as in the Saturnian days. There was nothing princely about Evander’s palace. The poet does not conceal the fact, it was a lowly roof: humili tecto, he says. Besides, the furniture enlightens us as to the [[137]]edifice. The illustrious guest is given a Bear-skin and a heap of leaves for a bed:
… stratisque locavit
Effultum foliis et pelle Libystidis ursæ.[2]
Evander’s Louvre therefore was a cabin a little larger than the others, made perhaps of tree-trunks laid one on top of the other, perhaps of unhewn stone employed as found, perhaps of reeds and clay. This rustic palace would have a thatched roof, of course. However primitive the habitation was, the Swallow and Sparrow were there, at least the poet says so. But where did they stay before they found a lodging in man’s abode?
The industry of the Sparrow, the Swallow, the Pelopæus and many others cannot be subordinate to mankind’s: each of them must possess a primordial art of building, one which makes the best use of the site within reach. If better conditions present themselves, they profit thereby; if these conditions are lacking, they go back to their ancient customs, whose practice, though [[138]]sometimes exacting more labour, is at least always possible.