86 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



in the viUage, of this old Patagonian experience and 

 of the strange human-like weakness or passion for 

 something new and arresting in music or song, 

 something " tuney " or " catchy." 



It chanced that when I left London a new popular 

 song had come out and was " all the rage," a tune 

 and words invented or first produced in the music- 

 halls by a woman named Lottie Collins, with a 

 chorus to it — Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay — ^repeated several 

 times. First caught up in the music-halls it spread 

 to the streets, and in ever-widening circles over all 

 London and over all the land. In London people 

 were getting tired of hearing it, but when I arrived 

 at my village " in a hole " and settled down among 

 the Badgers, I heard it on every hand, in cottages, 

 in the streets, in the fields, men, women, and children 

 were singing, whistling, and humming it, and in 

 the evening at the inn roaring it out with as much 

 ^st as if they had been singing " Rule, Britannia." 



This state of things lasted from May to the middle 

 of June ; then one very hot still day, about three 

 o'clock, I was sitting at my cottage window when I 

 caught the sound of a rumbling cart and a man 

 singing. As the noise grew louder my interest in 

 the approaching man and cart was excited to an 

 extraordinary degree : never had I heard such a 

 noise J And no wonder, since the man was driving 

 a heavy springless farm cart in the most reckless 



