Never was a bird

Using wert in an online Wordscraper game reminded me of the saying Bird thou never wert, probably the only memory I have of that word.  I’d forgotten what came before and had to look it up to be reminded of Shelley’s To a Skylark which begins Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!  Bird thou never wert.  The latter line has become a peculiar way of saying You never were.  Wert is itself a peculiar word these days, and does not appear in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary except as an archaic form of the present subjunctive of be.  It’s amazing how many of these ancient words linger in the subconscious until they’re needed for a word game.  I’m lucky it was considered acceptable in Wordscraper.

All this got me thinking about birds.  Jonathan Franzen says they’re amazing.

Did you know that the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was originally started to fight against the trade in feathers to adorn Victorian women’s hats?  In the late 19th century thousands of birds were killed and marketed for their feathers, a practice decried as Murderous Millinery.  In 1921, the Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act was passed, forbidding plumage from being imported to Britain.

As I sit under the walnut tree on a warm summer day a blackbird chirps incessantly above me, but I can’t see her.  Maybe she never wert.

‘What is the singing that I heard?
Perhaps it never wert a bird.’

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