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The skin was rapidly pushed off till the wings were reached. "Owls is hard, anyway," he went on, "though not so bad as Water-fowl. If ye want a real easy bird for a starter, take a Robin or a Blackbird, or any land Bird about that size except Woodpeckers." Yan got along fairly well, tearing and cutting the skin once or twice, but learning very quickly to manage it.
They would first settle themselves at the strawberry-bed, though it must be confessed that this part of the feast was attended with some peril. They felt a certain degree of nervousness, a sense of insecurity, for a horrid net had been stretched over this particular bed, and sometimes the dark feathered heads got caught in it. One day the Blackbird had a most terrible fright.
Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing again.
Then they went on picking, while Edward read them snatches of 'Natural Law. Hazel was soothed by the reading, to the sense of which she paid no heed. It mingled with the drone of the hot bees falling in and out of the big red peonies, the far-off sound of grass-cutting, the grave, measured soliloquy of a blackbird hidden in the flame-flowered chestnut.
It fell with incessant, rippling murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between each, and so it went on to the mill-pond a mile away. Close to me a blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy in its rays.
Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the violet, all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and without the blackbird, even the nightingale would be but half welcome.
As it was, two did crack open, but he got the other one, and that was virtually his dinner. A Purple Blackbird came hopping in the door now. "Will, now, thayer's Jack. Whayer hev ye been? I thought ye wuz gone fur good. Shure Oi saved him from a murtherin' gunner," she explained.
He had few relations in England, for he was what folks call a rare bird, and the Blackbird was sorry for it, for he thought him both pretty and attractive. The following day the Blackbird had a long talk with the Rook. The latter was perched on an elm, whose leaves were just beginning to burst forth, and it was there that the Blackbird joined him.
A Blackbird was piping away on a thornbush as if his heart was running over with happiness. The Cat had breakfasted, and so was able to listen without any mixture of feeling. She didn't sneak. She walked boldly up under the bush, and the bird, seeing she had no bad purpose, sate still and sung on. 'Good morning, Blackbird; you seem to be enjoying yourself this fine day. 'Good morning, Cat.
Probably her best song is the setting of W.E. Henley's fine poem, "Dark is the Night." It is of the "Erl-King" style, but highly original and tremendously fierce and eerie. The same poet's "Western Wind" is given a setting contrastingly dainty and serene. "The Blackbird" is delicious and quite unhackneyed. "A Secret" is bizarre, and "Empress of the Night" is brilliant.
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