CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A BIRD-HAUNTED CHURCHYARD.

"Adieu, sweet bird! thou erst hast been Companion of each summer scene, Loved inmate of our meadows green, And rural home; The music of thy cheerful song We loved to hear; and all day long Saw thee on pinion fleet and strong About us roam."

It is usual in the far north of Scotland, where the writer was reared, to have, as in England, the graveyard surrounding the parish church. The custom is a very ancient and a very beautiful one; life's fitful fever past and gone, to rest under the soft sward, and under the shadow of the church where one gleaned spiritual guidance. There is something in the very idea of this which tends to dispel much of the gloom of death, and cast a halo round the tomb itself.

But at the very door of the old church of N--a tragedy had, years before I had opened my eyes in life, been enacted, and since that day service had never again been conducted within its walls. The new church was built on an open site quite a mile from the old, which latter stands all by itself--crumbling ivy-clad ruins, in the midst of the greenery of an acre of ancient graves. There is a high wall around it, and giant ash and plane trees in summer almost hide it from view. It is a solitary spot, and on moonlit nights in winter, although the highway skirts it, few there be who care to pass that way. The parish school or academy is situated some quarter of a mile from the auld kirkyard, and in the days of my boyhood even bird-nesting boys seldom, if ever, visited the place. It was not considered "canny." For me, however, the spot had a peculiar charm. It was so quiet, so retired, and haunted, not with ghosts, but with birds, and many a long sunny forenoon did I spend wandering about in it, or reclining on the grass with my Virgil or Horace in hand--poets, by the way, who can only be thoroughly enjoyed out of doors in the country.

A pair of owls built in this auld kirkyard for years. I used to think they were always the same old pair, who, year after year, stuck to the same old spot, sending their young ones away to the neighbouring woods to begin life on their own account as soon as they were able to fly. They were lazy birds; for two whole years they never built a nest of their own, but took possession of a magpie's old one. But at last the lady owl said to her lord--

"My lord, this nest is getting quite disreputable--we _must_ have a new one this spring."

"Very well," said his lordship, looking terribly learned, "but you'll have to build it, my lady, for I've got to think, and think, you know."

"To be sure, my lord," said she. "The world would never go on unless you thought, and thought."

She chose an old window embrasure, and, half hid in ivy, there she built the new nest with weeds and sticks and stubble, while he did nothing but sit and talk Greek and natural philosophy at her.

There were tree sparrows built in the ivy of those crumbling walls, each nest about as big as the bottom of an armchair, and containing as many feathers as would stuff a small pillow-case, to say nothing of threads of all colours, hair, and pieces of printed paper. Seven, eight, and ten eggs would be in some of those, white as to ground, and beautifully speckled with brown and grey.

I have heard the tree sparrow called a nasty, common, dowdy thing. It really is not at all dowdy, and although it may be called the country cousin of the busy, chattering little morsel of feathers and fluff that hops nimbly but noisily about our roof-tops, and is constantly quarrelling with its neighbours, the tree sparrow is far more pretty. Nor is it quite plebeian. It is the _Passer montanus_ of some naturalists, the _becfin friquet_ of the French; it belongs to the Greek family, the _Fringillidae_, and does not the linnet belong to that family too? Yes, and the beautiful bullfinch and the gaudy goldfinch as well, to say nothing of the siskin and canary, so it cannot be plebeian. The tree sparrow makes a nice wee pet, very loving and gentle, and not at all particular as to food. It likes canary-seed, but insects and worms as well, and it is not shy at picking a morsel of sugar, nor a tiny bit of bread and butter.

There were more birds of the same family that haunted this auld kirkyard. The greenfinch or green-grosbeak used to flit hither and thither among the ivy like a tiny streak of lightning, and the pretty wee redpole was also there.

There was one bird in particular that used to build in the trees that grew inside the graveyard wall. I refer to my old friend and favourite the chaffinch, called in Scotland the boldie. He is most brilliant in plumage, being richly clad in russet red and brown, picked out with blue, yellow, and white. The chaffinch is lovely whether sitting or flying, whether trilling his song with head erect and throat puffed out, or keeking down from the branch of a tree with one saucy eye, to see if any one is going near his nest. His song in the wild state is more celebrated for brilliancy and boldness than for sweetness or variation, but in confinement it may be improved.

But this same nest is something to look at and admire for minutes at a time. I used to think my chaffinch--the chaffinch that built in my churchyard--was particularly proud of his nest.

"Pink, pink, pink," he used to say to me; "I see you looking up at my nest. You may go up, if you like, and have a look in. _She_ is from home just now, and there are four eggs in at present. There will be five by-and-by. Now, did you ever see such beautiful eggs?"

"Never," I would reply; "they are most lovely."

"Well, then," he would continue, "pink, pink, pink! look at the nest itself. What do you think of that for architecture? It is built, you see, some twelve feet from the ground, against the stem, but held in its place by a little branch. It is out of the reach of cats; if it were higher up the wind would shake it, or the hawks would see it. It is not much bigger than your two hands; and just look at the artistic way in which the lichens are mingled with the moss on the outside, to blend with the colour of the tree!"

"Yes, but," I would remark, "there are bits of paper there, as well as lichens."

"Yes, yes, yes," the bird would reply; "bits of paper do almost as well as lichens. Pink, pink, pink! There is the whole of Lord Palmerston's speech there; Palmerston is a clever man, but he couldn't build a nest like that."

I mentioned the redpole. It is, as far as beauty goes, one of the best cage-birds we have; a modest, wee, affectionate, unassuming pet, but deficient in song.

"Cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, chee-ee!" What sweet little voice is that repeating the same soft song over and over again, and dwelling on the last syllable with long-drawn cadence? The music--for music it is, although a song without variations--is coming from yonder bonnie bush of golden-blossomed broom, that grows in the angle between the two walls in a remote corner of the auld kirkyard. I throw Horace down, and get up from the grass and walk towards it.

"Chick, chick, chick, chick, chee-ee!"

"Oh, yes! I daresay you haven't a nest anywhere near; but I know better." This is my reply.

I walk across the unhallowed ground, as this patch is called, for-- whisper it!--suicides lie here, and the graves have not been raised, nor do stones mark the spot where they lie.

Here is the nest, in under a bit of weedy bank, and yonder is the bird himself--the yellow-hammer, skite, or yellow bunting--looking as gay as a hornet, for well he knows that I will not disturb his treasures. The eggs are shapely, white in ground, and beautifully streaked and speckled, and splashed with reddish brown. But there are no eggs; only four morsels of yellow fluff, apparently, surrounded by four gaping orange-red mouths. But they are cosy. I catch a tiny slug, and break it up between them, and the cock-bird goes on singing among the broom, while the hen perches a little way off, twittering nervously and peevishly.

"Chick, chick, che-ee!" says the bird. "I don't pretend to build such a pretty nest as the chaffinch; besides, such a flimsy thing as his would not do on the ground; mine has a solid foundation of hay, don't you see? That keeps out the damp, and that lining of hair is warmer than anything else in the world."

A poor, persecuted little bird is this same yellow bunting; and schoolboys often, when they find the nest, scatter it and its precious contents to the four winds of heaven.

All the more reason why we should be kind to the pet if we happen to have it in confinement. It is true the wild song is not very interesting; but when a young one is got, it will improve itself if it can listen to the song of another bird, for nearly all our feathered songsters possess the gift of imitation.