THE LINNET FANCY.
To the Editor of the Table Book.
It is my fantasie to have these things,
For they amuse me in my moody hours:
Their voices waft my soul into the woods:
Where bends th’ enamour’d willow o’er the stream,
They make sweet melody.
Of all the earthly things by which the brain of man is twisted and twirled, heated and cooled, fancy is the most powerful. Like a froward wife, she invariably leads him by the nose, and almost every man is in some degree ruled by her. One fancies a horse, another an ass—one a dog, another a rabbit—one’s delight is in dress, another’s in negligence—one is a lover of flowers, another of insects—one’s mind runs on a pigeon, another’s on a hawk—one fancies himself sick, the doctor fancies he can cure him: death—that stern reality—settles the matter, by fancying both. One, because he has a little of this life’s evil assail him, fancies himself miserable, another, as ragged as a colt, fancies himself happy. One, as ugly as sin, and as hideous as death, fancies himself handsome—another, a little higher than six-penn’orth of halfpence, fancies himself a second Saul. In short, it would take a monthly part of the Table Book to enumerate the different vagaries of fancy—so multifarious are her forms. Leaving this, proceed we to one of the fancies which amuse and divert the mind of man in his leisure and lonely hours—the “Linnet Fancy.”
“Linnet fancy!” I think I hear some taker-up of the Table Book say, “What’s in a linnet?—rubbish—
A bird that, when caught,
May be had for a groat.”
Music! I answer—melody, unrivalled melody—equal to Philomel’s, that ever she-bird of the poets.—I wish they would call things by their proper names; for, after all, it is a cock—hens never make harmonious sounds. The fancy is possessed but by a few, and those, generally, of the “lower orders”—the weavers and cobblers of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, for instance. A good bird has been known to fetch ten sovereigns. I have frequently seen three and four given for one.
Whence the song of the linnet was obtained I cannot tell; but, from what I have heard the tit-lark and sky-lark do, I incline to believe that a good deal of theirs is in the song of the linnet. This song consists of a number of jerks, as they are called, some of which a bird will dwell on, and time with the most beautiful exactness: this is termed a “weighed bird.” Others rattle through it in a hurried manner, and take to what is termed battling; these are birds often “sung” against others. It is with them as in a party where many are inclined to sing, the loudest and quickest tires them out; or, as the phrase is, “knocks them down.” These jerks are as under. Old fanciers remember more, and regret the spoliation and loss of the good old strain. I have heard some of them say, that even larks are not so good as they were forty years ago. The reader must not suppose that the jerks are warbled in the apple-pie order in which he sees them here: the birds put them forth as they please: good birds always finish them.
