640 APPENDIX

thanks, lavish in wise praise; yet intimates that three things are still wanting to the palace, which if they could be obtained, would make it a faultless pattern of a royal dwelling, radiant with honour and felicity. Pressed to say what things these are, the old woman for a while refuses, warning the princess that there would be danger in seeking them. At last she tells her,-the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water; and so departs, without farther lessoning.

Returning from their chase, the princes find their sister melancholy. She would fain keep the secret from them-but to have any secret to keep is already an unnatural and unendurable state for her; she cannot but confess to them; then the three resolve, like wise children, to be content with their palace as it is; but the unwisdom of mortality prevails against the girl-her brothers see that the perfect cheerfulness of her youth is clouded; they determine to go in quest of what she desires,-not together, but first the elder, leaving her in the younger’s charge. At parting he gives his sister a sheathed dagger, which she is to draw out of its sheath every morning. If it is bright and stainless, her brother is well; if blood runs down the point, he is lost or dead. And he rides away alone. After many days’ journey, he sees a grey-haired dervish praying by the roadside, who asks alms of him. Giving with free hand, the prince asks if the dervish can tell him the way to find the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and Golden Water. The old man’s face becomes very grave, and he answers that indeed he can tell him; but that many have before asked that question, and of all who have gone forward on the venture, none have ever returned. But the prince will not be deterred. Then the dervish gives him a ball (I suppose a ball of thread) and tells him, arriving at such and such a place, to throw it before him, and that it will roll on till it guides him to the foot of a steep hill, up which there is a straight path marked out by multitudes of black stones on each side.

I pass to the interpretation of the tale, in which there is no doubt for any one accustomed to the use of symbols in the mythology common to all nations in their strength.

The careless reader might at first think the bird should have sung, and the tree spoken. But,-with all love and honour to the bird nation be it said,-birds can’t sing! They can only chirp and whistle. There is no living creature that can sing, but the immortal one. Song is only possible, physically, to the lip of man: it is not possible to the beaks of birds, nor the jaws of beasts, nor, spiritually, to the hearts of any but those creatures of God who can see Him, and rejoice before Him.

When we are ourselves happy, we are of course ready to call the skylark’s twitter, or the nightingale’s zug, song. A blackbird’s whistle is a beautiful and tender whistle,-to my own mind, finer than a flute,-but it is not singing, except in so far as we ourselves sing with it and put soul into it. Any mountebank can imitate it, so as to deceive the bird himself, on the ends of his fingers.

And though birds cannot sing, they can talk, to purpose; and to more purpose than any of us, bred in these accursed days of sport in killing birds, can ever know. Supposing the wanton slaughter of all birds forbidden, for shame, and their companionship accepted,-the greater number of land-birds would more or less associate with man, and all their voices

[Version 0.04: March 2008]