AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 



183 



informed me that a blackbird in his garden whistled 

 a perfect musical phrase. 



He took me to hear it at his house in the High 

 Street, which had a large garden at the back; there 

 we seated ourselves in the summer-house and in a 

 very few minutes the bird began fluting his little 

 human roundelay for our benefit. My host whistled 

 and hummed it after him, then took me to his drawing- 

 room and touched it off on his piano, and finally 

 when I told him that after all it would perhaps escape 

 my memory he noted it down for me, and here it is: 



id=s£ 



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It is not a rare thing to hear phrases in the black- 

 bird's singing which are like human music and speech 

 and may be taken down in our musical notation. I 

 will give a quotation here on this subject from one of 

 C. A. Johns' pleasant but forgotten little books — 

 Home Walks and Holiday Rambles (1863). 



A blackbird had stationed himself on the top of a tree hard 

 by, and seemed resolved to sing on until fine weather returned. 

 The burden of his song was the following passage, which was 

 repeated so often that if one could tire of natural music I should 

 have been tired then: 



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All the other strains were unmetrical, and there seemed to 



