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Birds of Song and Story

<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> THE ROMANCE OF ORNITHOLOGY <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> The birds must know. Who wisely sings Will sing as they. The common air has generous wings: Songs make their way. What bird is that? The song is good, And eager eyes Go peering through the dusky wood In glad surprise: The birds must know. </div> Helen Hunt Jackson. </div> As everybody knows, ornithology means a discourse about birds—and people have discoursed about birds ever since spoken or written language gave us the means of exchanging thoughts. In the Biblical history of the creation, birds occurred in the fifth epoch of time, when the evolution of grass and herbs and trees and seeds and fruits had made for them a paradise. With the grass and trees and seeds and fruits had evolved a variable diet for the feathered folk, and by instinct they have continued to follow after their food, migrating on merry tours the wide world over. Lovers of them from earliest dates have discoursed of their ways and means, of their habits, their favorite resorts, their uses relative to cultivation of lands, their faults in connection with civilization. Students of nature have divided the birds into "classes" and "species," as the human race itself is divided. As "order is heaven's first law," ornithologists have taught us to distinguish it in the [ 145 ] study of birds; and so we have the "groups," always with reference to individual habits and anatomical peculiarities. In the Old World, ornithology as a science dates perhaps from Aristotle, 384 years before Christ. True, he was a teacher of A, B, C's on the subject, but he set students to "thinking," But there were students before Aristotle; if not students of science, they were students of religion. It is to religion in many forms that we owe the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the subject "superstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered imagination. It suggests uncanny things, ghosts and goblins, and other creatures that are supposed to wander around in the dark, because they were never seen at midday or any other time. To the educated person actual faith in ghosts and goblins has given place to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in the flavor of superstition, as one takes light desserts after a full meal. And so we have the romance of superstition for the intelligent. Stopping to consider that the word itself means a "standing still" to "stare" at something, an attitude of reverence, so to speak, we see how religion in ornithology preceded the romance of it. Certain of the birds waited on the deities, or had access to their presence, in consequence of which they were set apart and protected. Sometimes they were prophets of the gods, foretelling future events with accuracy. Their flights were noted by religious devotees, who, unconsciously to themselves probably, and certainly unsuspected, by their followers, were sure to be "out" at migration times. At such times, should the birds choose a natural course past a city and be seen only after they had left it behind them, the prophet knew, in the depths of his religious being, that the [ 146 ] gods had doomed that city. It was only when the study of birds as an actual science developed the fact that these denizens of the air depended more upon climate and necessary diet than upon the will of gruesome gods that the religion of ornithology gave place to romance. And romance is the after-dinner course of real ornithology—romance lends a fanciful touch to figures and data, and apologizes to the average student for intermissions that seem dedicated to frolic. In the universe of romance, North America has its full share. Preceding the romance was, and still is (among the native tribes), the religion of superstition. The deities foretell certain death of persons among the Eskimos by the passing of a bluejay or the croak of a raven. Our own poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not an Eskimo, but he indulged in the well-known superstitions about the bird when he permitted the raven to perch above his door. Many of the Arctic tribes are known to protect the ominous bird to this day. The Indians of Alaska revere and even fear it, like a black spirit from the land of demons. Song and story among American aborigines are replete with bird superstition. So prominent was it that early historians made mention of it to preserve it, and students of languages are putting it into books, so that romance and legend may not pass away with our native Indians. The government itself is preserving the history of American superstition among its precious archives. Reports of the Ethnological Bureau are entertaining reading for vacation times. True, they are "heavy volumes" in some cases, but there are supplements. Were these reports placed in more school and other libraries, the inclination to read more objectionable and not half so entertaining literature would [ 147 ] go quickly out, like a fire-proof match, without burning the fingers. To those who find a fascination in prehistoric legends the study of bird representation on the ancient pottery of some of our western Indians, and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, is offered in some of these government reports. They are a very mine of suggestion and information. Imagination, subtle guide to many a self-entertaining mind, runs fast and faster on before while one reads, and one wonders how it came to pass one never knew about government reports before. The Ethnological Bureau is the poet's corner of our government—the romance of our dull facts and figures. Without its unsleeping eye forever scanning the sky of unwritten literature for gems, how would some of us know about the history of the human race as preserved by the Iroquois Indians? And that birds had a wing, if not a hand, in the peopling of America at least? Of course America was "all the world" to these Indians, and naturally enough their priests and poets combined to give some adequate genesis for the people. It is said that a story, once started on its rounds in civilized society, gathers facts and things as it goes, until at last—and not before very long—its own original parent "wouldn't recognize it." Not so the legends that have come to us through savage tongues. Simple to start with, they maintain their original type without a trace of addition. What students gather for us of folk-lore is as correct as though the first text had been copyrighted by its author. Note this simplicity in all barbaric legends, the discourse coming straight to the facts and leaving off when it is done. [ 148 ] This one legend referred to of the origin of the human race makes so good a preface to the closing rhyme of our text, that we are tempted to give it for that special purpose. According to this story of the Iroquois Indians, it is to birds that woman owes her history. Unconsciously to these natives of America, they identified woman with birds and birds' wings for all time. Unconsciously, perhaps, to herself, woman has also identified her sex with birds and bird wings, though in a different relation to that of the Iroquois. The legend will need no further introduction to the girl or woman of America who may become interested in "Birds of Song and Story." There was once a time when all the earth was hidden under great waters. No island or continent gave foothold. No tree, torn from its moorings, afforded rest to tired foot or wing; for finny and winged people were all the inhabitants in being. Birds soared unceasingly in the air, and fish disported their beautiful armor-plate in the water. In the consciousness of bird and fish there was need of higher intelligences than themselves. They watched and waited for some hint, some glimpse, of other and superior beings. One day the birds, congregating in the sky, discoursing on this very matter, beheld a lovely woman dropping out of the far blue. Hurriedly they talked of possible means of saving her from drowning, for they had a subtle sense that this falling object, with arms outstretched like wings, was the being they hoped for. One of their number, a prophet, suggested the means. As the lovely being dropped toward the great sea the birds came together and lapped wings over wings in a thick feathered island. Upon the soft deck of this throbbing life-boat the beautiful being descended and lay panting. Slowly and [ 149 ] lovingly her soft hand caressed the wings of her benefactors. She lifted the variously tinted plumage of the breasts on which she reclined, and kissed the down of them. That was long, long ago! We will conclude our text with the ending of the poem preceding the first chapter in our book, repeating four lines of the same, and dedicating this same "ending" to the Birds. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> While the church-bell rings its discourse They are sitting on the spires; Psalm and anthem, song and carol, Quaver as from mystic lyres. </div> <div class="stanza"> Wing and throat are in a tremor, While they pay their Sunday dues, And escorted by the ushers. They are sitting in the pews. </div> <div class="stanza"> Oh, the travesty of worship! Perched above each reverent face. Sit these feathered sacrifices. Closely pinioned to their place. </div> <div class="stanza"> Chant a dirge for woman's pity, Choir, before the text is read! Sing a requiem for compassion, Woman's tenderness is dead. </div> <div class="stanza"> On her head are funeral emblems; She has made herself a bier For the martyred birds who, shroudless, Coffinless, are waiting here. </div> <div class="stanza"> Eyes dilate and forms distorted. Praying as in dumb distress, Poising, crouching, reeling, swooning. Supplicating wretchedness. </div> [ 150 ] <div class="stanza"> Twisted into shapes so ghastly, Frightful, grim, disconsolate; Writhing in a moveless torture. Passion inarticulate. </div> <div class="stanza"> Call it "love of what is lovely," "Choice of best in nature's grace," Back of all the giddy tangle Lurks the tradesman's wily face, </div> E.G. </div> <hr class="chap" /> [=151=] Index <div class="blockquot"> [Transcriber Note: Although two unique copies of this volume are stored at The Internet Archive and both of them list an Index at Page 151, neither one of them has an Index and both end at Page 150.]</div> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="transnotes"> Transcriber Note In order to prevent images from splitting paragraphs, text was reformatted. Minor typos may have been corrected. </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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