Birds in folk songs

Birds have featured in folk songs for many a year – Andrew Millham highlights some of the most popular...

We highlight just a few of the many bird-related folk songs

Traditional folk music is transportive, allowing us a rare window into both the recent past and old ways of living. Listening to certain songs feels like travelling back in time and entering into a conversation with the author, since many folk songs hold moral messages or stem from real life events.

Often, the origins of folk songs are unknown, since they have travelled around the country at agricultural fairs, been shared in coffee houses, and more recently on the internet. But, throughout my ongoing education in the world of folk music, there has been a recurring theme – birds.

Folk songs, like the birds they mention, migrate and settle through time, almost as if they can fly. Birds are renowned for singing, so it is no wonder that they appear so frequently within our own songs.

The traditional English folk song ‘Sweet Lemeney’ is an example of this. Many versions of the song have been recorded, all with different titles, exemplifying how folk songs evolve as they are passed on. The name probably arises from the Old English word ‘leman’, which means ‘sweetheart’.

“As I was a-walking one fine summer’s morning,

The fields and the meadows they looked so green and gay.

And the birds they were singing so pleasantly adorning,

So early in the morning at the break of the day.

Oh hark, oh hark, how the nightingale is singing,

The lark she is taking her flight all in the air.

On yonder green bower the turtle doves are building, The sun is just a-glimmering. Arise my dear.

Arise, oh, arise and get your humble posies, For they are the finest flowers that grow in yonder grove. And I will pluck them all sweet lily, pink and roses,

All for Sweet Lemeney, the girl that I love.

Oh, Lemeney, oh, Lemeney, you are the fairest creature, You are the fairest creature that ever my eyes did see.

And then she played it over all on the pipes of ivory,

So early in the morning at the break of the day.

Oh, how could my true-love, how could she vanish from me, Oh, how could she go and

I never shall see her more. But it was her cruel parents that looked so slightly on me,

All for the white robe that I once used to wear.”

It is no coincidence that the image of a ‘lark’ is used in the second verse. This song is set on a ‘fine summer’s morning’ and, traditionally, larks (which would probably refer to the abundant Sky Lark) are associated with daybreak. However, larks are also symbolic of lovers and church services, illuminating why this species was used in a song about the trials of love and a wedding that was prevented by the daughter’s parents.

Birds in folklore

Turtle Doves (used in cockney rhyming slang to mean ‘love’) are placed early in the song to represent innocence, trust and enduring love – representing the couple’s youthful relationship and perhaps naivety to the societal barriers that eventually separate them. In folklore, it is thought that Turtle Doves came to represent love because they are often seen in pairs and their call sounds like a soothing ‘purr’.

When one of a pair of Turtle Doves dies, the other has been known to mourn and never bond with another again, which mirrors the feelings of Lemeney’s suitor.

A Nightingale is also mentioned, a bird which is often used in sad songs and laments. Nightingales signify feelings of melancholy, and by placing the bird early on, the couple’s separation and heartbreak looms over the remainder of the song.

The next song is called ‘Bunclody’, named after a town in county Wexford, Ireland and made famous by Luke Kelly

– a founding member of The Dubliners – and Christy Moore. This timeless lament is about rejection and an Irish emigrant leaving his native soil, where the Clody joins the Slaney river:

“Oh, were I at the Moss House where the birds do increase, At the foot of Mount Leinster or some silent place,

By the streams of Bunclody where all pleasures do meet, And all I would ask is one kiss from you sweet.

The streams of Bunclody they flow down so free, By the streams of Bunclody I am longing to be,