Singing Like Larks
A Celebration of Birds in Folk Songs
Birds are beloved for their song and have featured in our own music for centuries. Singing Like Larks opens a rare window onto birdlife, folklore, traditional verse, and song writing, especially in the British Isles.
In this charming volume, folklore, verse, and nature writing combine to explore why birds appear in so many folk songs, with song lyrics, history, and anecdotes drawing on a rich heritage. Ornithological folk songs are themselves something of a threatened species. Melodies lost in the passage of time, their lyrics tucked in archives, our awareness of birds, their song and our own traditions must be passed down from one generation to the next. Lifetimes of wisdom are etched into these songs, preserving the natural rhythms of times past and our connection to feathered friends.
A treasury of bird-related folk songs, this is also an account of one young nature writer’s journey into the world of folk music, and a joyous celebration of song, the seasons, and our love of birds.
Andrew Millham is a nature and folk history writer, with features and columns published in a wide range of national publications including BBC Wildlife, Coast, and The Countryman. He graduated with a first class honours degree in environmental science, has received a Field Studies Council Young Darwin Scholarship and is now a Forest School leader, teaching outdoor skills to grade-school children.
