The Song of a Blackbird

In MacBeth, William Shakespeare writes:

"Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?"

And I have often thought how interesting it is that one of the plainest of God's birds ~ the blackbird ~ has one of the most beautiful melodies of nature.

William Henley wrote aptly:

The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
The lark's is a clarion call,
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
But I love him best of all.

For his song is all of the joy of life,
And we in the mad, spring weather,
We two have listened till he sang
Our hearts and lips together

This song is the song of my childhood. And I am very grateful that the blackbird was introduced to Australia in the 1800's, though their habitat is confined to the southern states of Australia where I was born and lived until my early teens. I now live in a sub tropical, northern state and no long here this song...

I feel sad that my children's lives are not filled with this warble and it will not form a musical backdrop to their precious memories. Memories can be strange and delightful experiences, when I hear the song of a blackbird in a movie I'm instantly transported, I'm immediately warmed and cheered in a most delightful way.

And that brings me to admission...I love to play the BBC's The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends..um, often.

It is there I can hear the bird of my childhood..and it cheers my busy often hectic day..if the little ones want to watch something while I'm schooling the older children, my first choice is always Peter Rabbit ~ it calms and gladdens me, and I feel it's influence as a cartoon, on my family is one of gentle manners and other such old fashioned virtues sadly lacking in today's shows for children. I feel it puts out a subtle ripple of gentleness and cherry happiness in our home and makes for a very contented mother.

So this morning I put on a Peter Rabbit dvd on, quietly playing in the early hours of this morning as I was doing my early morning jobs before most of the family had awoken and the bird calls moved me sufficiently enough to write this post.