The Flight of Birds

Animal Studies Journal Volume 3 | Number 1 5-2014 The Flight of Birds Joshua Lobb University of Wollongong, Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj Recommended Citation Lobb, Joshua, The Flight of Birds, Animal Studies Journal, 3(1), 2014, 73-79. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol3/iss1/6 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: Article 6 The Flight of Birds Abstract 'The Flight of Birds' is a retelling – and a reconfiguration – of a story contained in Katharine Briggs’ British Folk-Tales and Legends (1977). It engages with the way animals are used in folk tales as symbols of human psyche, but, more importantly, the way animals in stories can move beyond simply symbolic value. In the original story, and in my retelling of it, birds appear both as extensions of the characters’ emotional state, and as creatures with an agency and power beyond human interests. The piece tells the story twice: first as a simplified summary of the original, followed by what Philip Pullman calls a ‘personal interpretation’ or ‘poetic variation’. In doing this, I attempt to show not only, as Miller and Hilbert note, that ‘changes in history become changes in narrative’(140), but also to reflect on Reinhard Friedrich’s observation that ‘Animal Tales have a residual power that percolates up through sedimented layers of history’(196). In my double vision I play with the function of the birds as guardians of morality and empathy, while still maintaining their presence outside human experience, gliding above us in miraculous unfathomable patterns. The birds in my story, I hope, have the capacity to transcend the pettiness of human concerns. As Merleau-Ponty states, when trying to decipher da Vinci’s symbolic use of birds, ‘we are caught in a secret history…[it is nearly impossible] to decipher the riddle from what we know about the meaning of the flight of birds’(22). This journal article is available in Animal Studies Journal: https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol3/iss1/6 Joshua Lobb University of Wollongong Abstract: 'The Flight of Birds' is a retelling – and a reconfiguration – of a story contained in Katharine Briggs’ British Folk-Tales and Legends (1977). It engages with the way animals are used in folk tales as symbols of human psyche, but, more importantly, the way animals in stories can move beyond simply symbolic value. In the original story, and in my retelling of it, birds appear both as extensions of the characters’ emotional state, and as creatures with an agency and power beyond human interests. The piece tells the story twice: first as a simplified summary of the original, followed by what Philip Pullman calls a ‘personal interpretation’ or ‘poetic variation’. In doing this, I attempt to show not only, as Miller and Hilbert note, that ‘changes in history become changes in narrative’(140), but also to reflect on Reinhard Friedrich’s observation that ‘Animal Tales have a residual power that percolates up through sedimented layers of history’(196), In my double vision I play with the function of the birds as guardians of morality and empathy, while still maintaining their presence outside human experience, gliding above us in miraculous unfathomable patterns. The birds in my story, I hope, have the capacity to transcend the pettiness of human concerns. As Merleau-Ponty states, when trying to decipher da Vinci’s symbolic use of birds, ‘we are caught in a secret history…[it is nearly impossible] to decipher the riddle from what we know about the meaning of the flight of birds’(22). 73 There’s an old fairy tale — I think it’s Celtic, or from the north of England — about a farmer so jealous of his wife that he decides to take her out onto the moors and hang her. Why is he jealous? The story doesn’t tell us; it doesn’t need to. He’s jealous, he doesn’t trust her, and he is resolute in his decision to hang her. Nothing she can say will soften his heart, the story says. The farmer reaches for a hempen rope from the rafters of his cottage, drags his wife by the elbow through the stone doorway, and out into the cold night. It’s a lonely farmhouse, and the moor is desolate. The wind is bitter. The farmer spots a solitary tree on the horizon, silhouetted against the midnight blue sky. As the man and his wife trudge towards it — dragging, pleading — a flock of birds sweep over them, fluttering against the wind. The story doesn’t tell what kind of birds they are. Maybe they’re crows, sharp-beaked and gloomy, their black wings barely trembling as they sweep overhead. Maybe they’re sparrows, quivering against the brisk night air. I like to think of them as seagulls. The farmhouse could be perched on a clifftop and the wind could be an ocean squall. The seagulls lift off from the gnarled rocks below the farmhouse. They glide across the empty sky, over the lumbering couple, their white feathers glimmering in the moonlight. The farmer and his wife reach the tree. It’s a dead husk, grey and leafless, like a skeleton’s hand reaching out of the ground. The birds have settled on one of the branches. They stare down at the couple, silently, with only the occasional twitch of a wing. The farmer puts the noose around his wife’s neck; she’s too exhausted to struggle any more. Her face is spattered with tears. The farmer throws the rope up towards the strongest bough, the one where the birds are perched. The rope arches over the branch, but doesn’t stick: the rope slides over the birds’ silken wings. The farmer tries another branch, higher up. But the birds swoop up and land on that branch, too; once again, the rope slips and coils itself to the ground. The man sees another solitary tree, sharp against another horizon, across the expanse of the moor. The couple move towards it — stumbling, weeping. The wife’s head is still in the noose. The birds fly with them. The farmer and his wife reach the tree: it’s another hollow, barren shell. The birds settle on the branches and, try as hard as he might, the farmer cannot 74 fasten the rope. He hefts the rope again, but it slithers over the birds’ feathers and falls to the muddy ground. It’s lighter now and the wind has dropped. It’s that still, pale time of morning before the day begins. There’s one more tree to be seen across the expanse. The farmer and his wife set off. The birds soar high in the air, off, and away. Maybe the birds have forgotten the wife; maybe they’ve caught a scent of a fish on an ocean wave, and left her to her fate. The farmer and his wife shuffle and sob towards the next dead tree. Much to his relief, the branches of the tree remain birdless as he flings the rope up. But as he throws, there’s a great whirr of wings, the birds whoop down, as if from nowhere, and the rope falls once more. The man tries again. He is sweating, his arms are aching. The wife is quiet, as still as the morning. The farmer look (...truncated)