Without fail each year, the sound of the robin's singing in spring stirs my heart, the familiar song gives hint of the coming season as well as bittersweet evidence of the passing of mortal time. Just as I scan the sky, tilt an ear and watch for the various winged messengers of each season, so did the early inhabitants of Eire, Alba and Britannia take note of a variety of birds which they considered heralds of Otherworldly news.
Because of the ability of birds to navigate air, land and sea they were regarded as divine messengers with the ability to traverse worlds, time and realities. The flight patterns, habits and songs of birds were all methods by which the future might be told or an unfortunate circumstance avoided.
In Celtic mythology the appearance of sea birds often provided the hero with a means of crossing the boundary into the Otherworld. Tales are told of half-bird and half-human beings and from time to time one might come upon a fairy village with cottages thatched in bird feathers.
The singing of the Birds of Rhiannon transported the dead to life and the living into the sleep of death. The children of Lir, cruelly enchanted in childhood to live as swans, sang so sweetly that it was criminal to kill a swan and today it is still considered most unlucky to do harm to these beautiful birds. The master poets, whose vocation blended at times with the shaman, wore cloaks of bird skin and feathers as a symbol of their preternatural acquaintance.
Several birds such as the raven and the owl were associated with prophecy and the screeching cries of the owl goddess Echtach boded ill on a winter landscape. The hooded crow, depending upon circumstance, could be the disguise of the war goddess Badb or Erui, the Mother of all Ireland.
Birds associated with turns of the weather include the blackbird and the curlew whose whistles portend rain, the wild pigeon, who brought mild weather and the lark, whose song heard on St. Brigid's day promised luck and sunny days for whosoever heard it.
The robin, agent of the Oak King and later Christ, is a lucky bird. The wren, symbol of the Holly King and later Christ's tormentors, is unhappily hunted down each Christmas season in the reenactment of the ancient cycle of the turning Celtic year.
In Ireland, local lore holds that the person who first hears the cuckoo in the Spring will have luck the whole summer through. The cuckoo is thought to be a bringer of good weather and is a quite mysterious bird more often heard than seen. Having heard (and seen) this interesting bird on a sultry May day on the Burren, I can attest to the truth and the temperature of the favourable weather which apparently accompanies this bird.
The notes of each bird song flow together in a universal moment where the brilliance of Nature is unequalled. Chickadee or robin, cuckoo or crow, the beauty and mystery of our feathered friends remains as available and constant today as it was to our ancestors so long ago.