The old English somewhat obscures the meaning, which is, that while all other birds "sing" with their throats, the blackbird alone "plays" upon a pipe. This "dulcet pipe" occurs in other poets, and two or three, Wordsworth, for instance, speak of "blackbird pipers." It is almost the only bird said to "whistle" and to "flute." The distinction is just, for it is, I think, the only European songster whose melody so curiously suggests artificial assistance. No voice is so completely a bird's voice as the nightingale's, but the blackbird, when at its best, is the master playing on some exquisite instrument. So the ear that has once distinguished the difference can never mistake the blackbird for the thrush. It is, too, perhaps the only bird that sings its best in captivity. There used to be one in an inn in Epping Forest that outsang all the wild birds within hearing. Why do caged birds sing, if singing is the expression of happiness and joy? That human beings should, by the exercise of reason, or the growth of new interests, by the lapse of time, or the consolations of religion, recover, after a severe blow, their original serenity and even light-heartedness, is sufficiently intelligible. But what would the world say of any bridegroom, torn away from the arms of his bride, and shut up in a kennel; or of a young father kidnapped in the bosom of his young family, and ignominiously imprisoned in a fowl-run, who should straightway behave himself with the utmost gaiety, and exhibit to passers-by every symptom of happiness? Yet this is what the blackbird, caught in full song during the pairing season, does. He goes on singing just as if nothing had happened. It may be, of course, that the brief days of moping through which the poor bird passes, correspond to long years of human sorrowing, and that then hope revives, and the blackbird, remembering how song used to be "once upon a time" associated with all the joys of home and home-life, thinks that if he only sings long enough and well enough, they may all come back again. But surely there cannot be any happiness in that happy-sounding song? Love-notes of birds are generally unmusical and often grotesque. When they are pretty they are monosyllabic. So the emotions that prompt lengthened melody are, as a rule, the sterner and unamiable. Anger, defiance, pride and possessiveness supply the motives of their songs. When a lion is amiable, he is quiet; his loudest utterance is a yawn; when courting, he grunts and hiccoughs; when aggressive or inclined to assert himself, "just to let Africa know" as it were, he opens upon the world with the artillery of his voice. Is that the lion's way of "singing"? and is the blackbird's song its way of "roaring"?