Of a Feather: Singing about the singers

COURTESY MANX JAMES
The patterns of the natural world are becoming more important to me as I get older. As I face down the fact of mortality, each turn of the seasons, which used to be purely pleasurable, brings me one revolution further along the finite path. Getting a dog brought me into contact with these cyclic and linear phenomena because the dog likes to do the same things at the same time every day, but she is also getting older and wiser.

Last night we went out for our last excursion of the day and Orion was further over into the southwest than he had been even the night before, never mind last week. This morning it was actually light at 6 a.m. when we took our first circuit through the field and down the woods road. In a portion of an old meadow that has gone to a thicket of birch saplings a male cardinal sang.

This was striking for the cyclical reason that the lengthening of the days has once again prompted this red finch with the shrill, whistling song to begin to set up a breeding territory. But the more linear phenomenon is that cardinals didn’t sing at all in Wilmot until recently; they are spreading north up the river valleys through New Hampshire. In my case, from the Merrimack, to the Contoocook, to the Blackwater, to Cascade Brook to little Cassey Brook, which runs past our cabin.

People have been standing outside and marking the passing of the seasons and the passing of their own lives for as long as there have been people. One of the hallmarks of being human is to look for meaning in everything our senses bring to us. A long time ago, we started putting that search for meaning into music.

My better half just bought a CD that I know well, but was parted with years ago. It is the first Tarbox Ramblers album, which leads off with “The Cuckoo.” It is an old English folk song that came to North America and was preserved (and altered) in the Appalachians. There are many versions of the lyrics, but they usually include the verse:

“The cuckoo is a fine bird he sings as he flies,

He brings us good tidings and tells us no lies.

He sucks the sweet flowers to make his voice clear,

And the more he cries cuckoo, the summer is nigh.”

This chorus is at its base fairly good natural history, although I don’t think the cuckoo is known for singing as it flies. In some versions the cuckoo “sucks little birds’ eggs” instead of flowers. The gender of the cuckoo varies from version to version; male and female cuckoos look very much alike.

Male European cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) sing their cuckoo-clock song constantly during the warmer months. According to D.W. Snow and C. Perrins’s “The Birds of the Western Palearctic,” “during the breeding season the male typically gives this vocalization with intervals of 1–1.5 seconds, in groups of 10–20 with a rest of a few seconds between groups. The female has a loud bubbling call.” The descending interval between the two notes of the male’s song changes from a minor third to a fourth through the spring, and in June it switches to an ascending interval.

A bird that sings so constantly attracts attention. Add to this that the female is a brood parasite and you have a compelling character for a folk song. Cuckoos traditionally symbolize wives who cheat on their husbands. The word “cuckold” is derived from Old French cucuault, which is related to cucu, the French word for the bird. The female does not build her own nest, but goes from nest to nest, eating the eggs of other birds and laying her own in their place. Some versions of the cuckoo song are titled “The Inconstant Lover.”

Yesterday I saw a Carolina wren foraging along the brook in our yard. Like the cardinal it is a plucky Southerner moving northward. Also like the cardinal, it has begun to sing with the lengthening days. It reminds me of the song called “The Cutty Wren,” in which several men are “going to the woods” to “shoot the cutty wren.”

Wrens are little birds with big souls, as it were. They are brassy and loud while being cleverly furtive. In folklore they are described as the “king of all birds.” Most know the story of the wren who challenges the eagle for the kingship. The eagle flies as high as it can and then the wren, which has been riding on its back, flies higher.

This kind of “cleverness as power” combined with its tendency to sing even in midwinter led to the wren becoming the symbol of the “old year” in the shift from one annual cycle to the next. Hence the wren had to be killed in order for the new year to begin. This gave rise to the tradition of “hunting the wren” after Christmas. Formerly, a real wren was used, but animal cruelty laws now dictate that it be stuffed.

In the medieval period, this pagan ritual of “hunting the wren” evolved into the political parable of “shooting the wren.” The wren went from being a blameless symbol of the old year to a powerful oppressor. During the1381 Peasants’ Revolt, the wren symbolized King Richard II, who was killed (in song) and fed to the poor. Later, after Oliver Cromwell toppled the Stuarts in 1649, singing Jacobites planning the restoration equated “John the Red Nose,” one of the hunters of the cutty wren, with Oliver Cromwell, who was often portrayed in broadsides as having a red nose.

Seasons cycle, years pass, the lyrics and the meanings change, but the songs are still sung.

Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher from the age of 10. He is a former managing editor of the Eagle Times and now lives and works in the town of Wilmot. Contact him at [email protected].