OWLS IN A VILLAGE 179 



growing steady and clear, with some slight modula- 

 tion in it. The symbols hoo-hoo and to-whit to-who, 

 as Shakespeare wrote it, stand for the wood owl's 

 note in books ; but you cannot spell the sound of an 

 oaten straw, nor of the owl's pipe. There is no w in 

 it, and no h and no t. It suggests some wind instru- 

 ment that resembles the human voice, but a very un- 

 English one — perhaps the high-pitched somewhat 

 nasal voice of an Arab intoning a prayer to Allah. 

 One cannot hit on the precise instrument, there are 

 so many ; perhaps it is obsolete, and the owl was 

 taught his song by lovers in the long ago, who wooed 

 at twilight in a forgotten tongue. 



And gave the soft winds a voice, 

 With instruments of unremembered forms. 



No, that cannot be ; for the wood owl's music is 



doubtless older than any instrument made by hands 



to be blown by human lips. Listening by night to 



their concert, the many notes that come from far 



and near, human-like, yet airy, delicate, mysterious, 



one could imagine that the sounds had a meaning 



and a message to us ; that, like the fairy-folk in Mr 



Yeats's Celtic lyric, the singers were singing — 



We who are old, old and gay, 



0, so old ; 

 Thousands of years, thousands of years, 



If all were told ! 



