Sydney Smith wrote: s-idea of heaven is, eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Who was the blank? Himself? Anyway, a friend says that his own Christmas exceeded that in bliss; he ate a game pie, specialty made for him, to the resounding voice of many nightingales. These immortals ("Thow wast not born for death, immortal bird", wrote Keats) came from Greece, France, Finland, the Danube Delta and central Romania.
You may say that other birds sing, at times, with equal sweetness, but no bird sings so insistently, so heartfully - and often all through the dark hours. No wonder poets have serenaded the nightingale in their turn. Edna St Vincent Millay tells it all:
The great song boiling in the narrow throat
And the beak near splitting,
A small bird hunched and frail,
Whom the divine uncompro mising note that brought the world to its window
Shook from head to tail.
This is quoted from Lifelines 2, the "letters from famous people about their favourite poem", collected by the young people of Wesley College, Dublin, the royalties going to Concern. Brian D'Arcy chose this poem. The nightingale song that our friend enjoyed so much came from a compact disc, which has 65 minutes and forty seconds of uninterrupted Nightingale song, collected by Jean C Roche since 1958. The background in intriguing too, with blackcaps, warblers, cuckoo, woodpigeon, blackbird and others. But most intriguingly, from near Bresse in France, "Edible frogs", and from central Romania "Many Green Toads."
The record is called Rossignois in French and A Nocturne of Nightingales in English. It costs 30 Swiss francs in Geneva and the label of the firm is Sittelle. The birds from France are simply nightingales and those from Finland and Romania Thrush nightingales. In Latin, luscinia megarhyncos and luscinia luscinia.
This wonderful little brown bird, not much bigger than a robin, doesn't sing in this country, though Eric Dempsey and Michael O'Clery say in their Complete Guide to Ireland's Birds that one was heard in Kildare in 1955 - a record year for sun, surely. And maybe now and then in offshore islands. Sydney Smith's man can have his trumpets and paste. The sublime bird soars above all.