192 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



the nightingale, though this species is known only in a 

 portion of England, actually less than a fourth part 

 of the British area over which the black ouzel with 

 orange-tawny bill is a familar songster. It is, however, 

 not a good test. The fact that our older poets, including 

 those of Scotland and Wales, make much of the night- 

 ingale merely serves to show that they were following 

 a convention of the Continental poets, ancient and 

 modern. 



Ireland is an exception, to judge from the translations 

 of the very early Irish poetiy made by Professor Kuno 

 Meyer. Here, one is glad to find, are no old imported 

 bird myths and conventions, but a native bird life and 

 a feeling for birds which amaze us in those remote and 

 barbarous times. Many species are mentioned in these 

 poems, from the largest — eagle and raven and wild goose 

 — down to the little kitty wren, but the blackbird is first 

 on account of its lovely voice — "sweet and soft and 

 peaceful is his note," one has It. 



There is one blackbird poem in the collection which 

 might have been written by a poet of to-day. For we 

 are apt to think that to love birds as we love them, not 

 merely as feathered angels, beautiful to see and hear, 

 but with hmnan tenderness and sympathy as beings that 

 are kin to us, is a feeling peculiar to our own times. 

 The poet laments the bird's loss when it has seen its 

 nest and fledgelings destroyed or taken by ruthless cow- 

 boy lads. He can understand the bird's grief "for the 

 ruin of its home," because a like calamity has been his: 

 his wife and little ones are dead, and though their taking 



