Cunningly guide the rope, shifting it readily;
Welcome my true love, and all that he brings, O!
Now God be praised, my lover’s safe, he’s worth a maiden’s love:
(And the sea below is still as deep as the sky is high above!)
Our song needs but little elucidation. The reader who knows that the wealth of the St. Kildians mainly consists of the feathers and eggs of wild-fowl, to procure which they are obliged to hang suspended from ropes over the most dreadful precipices, in the clefts and along the otherwise inaccessible ledges of which the sea-fowl breed, will have no difficulty in understanding the general drift of the island maid’s very spirited and very earnest song. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say that as ling, conger, hake, and grey-fish are certain kinds of sea fish, so fulmar, guillemot, kittiwake, puffin, and scart are certain kinds of web-footed sea-fowl.
CHAPTER V.
Bird Music—The Skylark’s Song—Imitation of, by a French Poet—Alasdair Macdonald—Scott.
Conscious at last that pouting and inordinate weeping became him not, and that, being constantly on the “rampage,” like Mrs. Joe Gargery, was hardly consistent with his place in the calendar, April [1869] betimes resolved to “tak a thocht and mend,” and now, like Richard, is himself again—all sunshine and smiles. The rain-gauge, to be sure, with stern impartiality, will still show an occasional “inch,” or parts of an inch, if you are very particular in your inquiries, when examined of a morning, but its readings now at least are in no way appalling, for they represent the warm and genial rainfall of April showers, that, after all, are as necessary on the west coast at this moment, and as refreshing to the soil, as the orthodox cup of mulled port of an evening was believed to be to the weary traveller in the good old days of stage-coaches and post-chaises. The country, at all events, is looking very beautiful just now, everything so green and glad, so fresh and fair, and full of promise of a yet gladder, and gayer, and brighter day at hand, when the swallow, twittering, shall dart, a glossy meteor, in the sunlight, and the cuckoo shall challenge the truant schoolboy to repeat its well-known notes, correctly if he can. Now is the time to hear our native song-birds at their best, warbling their sweetest strains, and to decide, once for all, if it be possible, which you like best; the loud, clear, silvery tinkle of the seed-shelling finch’s rich and rapid song; the liquid and mellifluous warblings of the soft-billed tribes; or the soul-entrancing, round, rich, flute-like piping of the throstle, song-thrush, and merle. How it may fare with the reader who tries to decide the point we cannot say. For our own part, no decision that we could ever arrive at could keep its legs for two days together. No sooner did we decide that the skylark and its congeners had the best of it, than the goldfinch, with a score of lively cousins to aid and abet, challenged the verdict, and forced us to acknowledge his exquisite mastery in song—an admission made, however, only to be retracted again almost as soon as made, for in our walk on the evening of that self-same day did we not stand, and for the life of us couldn’t help standing—breathless, and hushed, and still—to listen to the merle and song-thrush from the neighbouring copse pouring forth the indescribable riches of their God-taught vespers as the sun went down; and did we not, then and there, vow, in utter forgetfulness of finch and skylark, that no music of earth could for a moment compare, in execution and compass, in distinctness, and cheeriness, and purity of note, with these matchless twilight strains? The truth is that no music is equal to bird-music—wild-bird music, that is—in its season, and amid all its natural surroundings; and the probability is that we shall give the preference at any time to the melody of one bird over that of another, not on any well-defined principles of choice or selection in the matter, but simply in accordance with our own prevailing mood and temperament of the moment. Such, at least, has been our own experience; but the reader has every opportunity at this season of studying the question for himself and deciding. Except that of the nightingale, perhaps the music of no bird has attracted so much attention by its beauty and suggestiveness as the merry trill of the skylark’s ascending song. The poets of every country in which it is to be found have vied with each other in their praises of the only bird that sings as he soars, and soars as he sings, scaling on quivering pinions the aerial terraces of heaven, until he can scarcely be discerned, a music-showering speck against the background of the blue profound! The other day we fell in with some curious verses by the French poet Du Bartas, in which he strives, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to imitate the merry trill and rhythm of the skylark’s song:—
“La gentille aloüette, avec son tire-lire,