BRITISH BIRDS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8123, 21 March 1887, Page 2

BRITISH BIRDS.

i. (Daily News.) ( T* lo succession of hard frosts s?°iT s ' which makes life unpleasant to men, Shakes it all but impossible to birds. Tenderhearted people are found to feed even, tha Xiondon sparrows (which would not fetch even the low price at which they were quoted m ancient Judaea), and in tha country children please themselves by throwing crumbs to the more mspeetabjp flocks of fieldfares, robins, andthruEea. • . ppy sight to see the birds displaymg their various characters on the snow that covers some “ bird-haunted EngTiaE lawn,” to watch the quarrelsome, pert, familiar robin, the thrush aud blackbird, more shy and distant, while, on the fringe of the throng, a crow swoops down now and then, and wilder birds, not quitetamed by hunger, look on wistfully from the trees, and venture a half-hearted approval to human charity, and flit away again. It is a winter that brings thrushes to die even in the shelter of London houses, and sends black game to roost in the shrubberies and gardens of villas almost within Scotch towns. When birds are forced tocome to terms with man, Mr Swainson's " Folk Lore of British Birds," which just been published for the Folk |<ore Society, seems a seasonable and should be a popular book. A scientific critic might object to the author that he does not always, give his references and authorities with precision, but quotes occasionally from Aristotleor "an old writer,” without offering; the slenderest clue as to the whereaboute of the passage adduced. However, people who merely care for the quaint and pleasant and ancient fancies of men about theirshy kindred, the birds, will find Mr Swainson’s book quite MI of poetry and entertainment. Wherever men- live, in

whatever stage of society, there do their fancies flit, more feely and more prettily, about the theme of birds than about any other topic. AH beasts are the subjects off multitudes of myths, intended to explain, their habits atid characteristics. But themost agreeable legends gather round thebirds, which are the very poetry of nature. Their songs are interpreted in. all languages, their power of flight, their sudden vanishings and appearances, their sweet, or melancholy, or boding cries ace all respected as omens. Aristophanes, in the most Shaksperian of his comedies, makes the birds declare thatthey are wiser and more ancient than men, and in writing this Aristophanes probably followed some old Greek myth now- lost tons. Like almost every people, the Greeks attributed the origin of the world to the egg of some mysterious bird, whence, as Mr Swinburne paraphrases Aristophanes, “Love broke forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on its wings.” "Much more ancient than the blessed gods are,” sings the comic Chorus, and indeed the very gods of Homer are almost birds, and now and again assume the wings of nightjars, and vultures, and swallows. Aristophanes knew a Goldfinch Artemis, and a Redstart Sabazius, and a Quail Leto (the mother of Apollo), and the Queen of Heaven had been a Cuckoo, and there was a Sparrow Cybele. Nor were other peoplesless quick to take birds for gods, or. gods for birds. The Latins had tbeir Woodpecker divinity, the Mexicans their god. that was a Humming Bird; the Australian blacks, and the Egyptians, and the Norsemen had their Eagle and their Hawk, Horns, Woden, or Pundjet. These were "far more ancient than all the other immortals.” British birds no longer hold quite this lofty place in popular belief, and in thelegenda of the country folk, but they can trace their pedigree to these old legendary fowls. Thus, in France and elsewhere in Europe, the robin or the wren played th* part of the kind Titan, Prometheus the-fire-stealer. Fire was only to be found in tbe sky, or in Hades, and the gallant bird flew for the treasure aud brought it tomen, scorching his breast or head; hence his read breast or crest of gold. The owl, too, is scouted by other birds, and flies/ darkling by night, because when the wren/ had burnt his feathers in his all the birds but this one subscribed a feather apiece for him. The owl wa» stingy, and would not give a single plume, wherefore the other birds avoid her and hate her. Tblinkeets, and the Melanesians, and the Maories, and the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, have all stories like this, and most of them attribute the first stealing of fire for men to birds. But some say that the frog had a hand in it, and othersmake the coyote their Prometheus. When Woden wanted to steal Saftung'smead, the inspiration of poets, he put on the skin of an eagle, and flew in that, exactly like the hero of a story currentamong the Indians of the remotest Northwest of Canada. Probably the truth is that men have always envied the power of flight, the most magical of things natural, and therefore have, in their days of early ignorance, attributed to birds all kinds of supernatural accomplishments. Thereforewitches can become birds, as they tom into hares in Scotland. When Father Lafitan was with the Iroquois at the beginning of last century his flock told Min that a witch-bird had been shot lately with an. enchanted arrow. She just fluttered away to the wigwam of a certain old woman, who was found at home in great distress with the magic arrow sticking in her body. This exactly answers to our own rural talesabout shooting a-witch-hare with a silverbuUet. A very uncanny bird in Scotland, is the yeUow-hammer or " yeUow yorlihg,’*' which, according to the rhyme. Brinks a drop o’ tha deil’s blood ft Every May morning-. For this cause the bird is persecuted, and no reason can be given for the superstition,, except that the little bird wears the devil'slivery—yellow. A happier bird is the robin redbreast, who is protected even from boys “ before they grow to pity” by a dozen kind and pitiful legends. In America, where our" robin redbreast is not a native bird, there is a larger scarlet-bosomed friend of man, about whom the Indians teU that he was once a boy. Just before attaining manhood every lad is expected to undergo a - long fast in a lonely lodge. This boy "liked his meals regular,” but when his parents insisted on his fasting he emulated Merlatti and Succi, and Dr Tanner. Finally he turned into a redbreast, and stiU likes to dweU in the neighbourhood of men. Our own robin redbreast made his fortune for ever when he covered the Babes in tbe Wood with leaves. Webster had already sung of the Bohln and the wren, That with fallen leaves do cover The friendless bodies of unbuxied men.. Wordsworth truly declares, " all men whoknow thee call thee brother.” That the sentiment should have spread in the case of a similar bird to tne remote, rude CMppeway Indians is a pleasant proof of the identity of human nature. Kindness to the robin is sanctioned by strange punishments visiting the cruel. If a Scotchman or a German kills the redbreast, his cows wiU give "bloody milk.”’ The wren, on the other hand, is hnnted and persecuted in Ireland; according toone legend, he got mixed up (like everybody else) in local politics, and never wasforgiven. In Carmarthen, the robin isfabled to carry a drop of water in his bill to h place which, unlike an old Catholic voyager, we venture to hope is "very far off,” and there the bird ministers tothirsty souls in Dives’ case. When he returns he feels cold, and no wonder ; and: that is why he haunts the precincts of cheerful human fires. Such are samples of the prettiest and brightest folklore—thefolk lore of our friends the birds.