VI On the Songs of Birds 1 3 3 



such short, sweet phrases as the best bird -singers 

 delight in ; yet I am disposed to think that the 

 impression thus made on me is one of fancy and 

 association rather than of reality. When, as in the 

 andante of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the 

 voices of birds are consciously imitated, the effect, 

 though not unpleasing, is not truly artistic ; and we 

 are reconciled to it only because it is immediately 

 followed by a really beautiful phrase, which brings 

 us back at once into the region of true music. 



I maintain, then, that the songs of birds have no 

 true relation to our music, which is a highly-developed 

 product of science and art combined ; that you can- 

 not write them down on our musical scale without 

 depriving them of all that freedom and wildness iu 

 which their very life and beauty consist ; and that 

 they cannot be played upon a highly artistic instru- 

 ment of man's making, though they can be rudely 

 imitated on a rude one. If they are to be compared 

 with anything human, it should rather be with that 

 rude music of primitive man out of which our own 

 has gradually been evolved — with the cries of victory, 

 the wailing of women, the weird chant of the prophet- 

 ess, or even the " hwyl " that may still occasionally 

 be heard in Welsh pulpits. Where these have 

 assumed a stereotyped form, as in the last-mentioned 

 case, or in the Greek Psean or Linus-chant, they may 

 perhaps be considered analogous to the songs of such 



