The Preaching of the Swallow Five Fables

At the end of the 15th century, a Scottish notary and teacher called

Robert Henryson writes a series of animal fables

based on the old stories of Aesop.

Aesop, myne authour, makis mentioun

Of twa myis, and thay wer sisteris deir.

Henryson is little known these days, but experts consider him a master.

He's the greatest poet, I think, of the 15th century in English or Scots.

Fast forward over 500 years

and Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney catches

a glimpse of an early manuscript of the Fables and is spellbound.

It had a little rooster on the top right-hand corner of the manuscript.

But the rooster was crowing. Something so jaunty about it.

Over several years, Seamus creates a series of modern English

translations infused with the language of his rural childhood

in Northern Ireland.

It's absolutely brilliant. It's a wonderful translation.

And he persuades Scottish actor

and comedy legend Billy Connolly to record them.

This country mouse when winter came endured cold and hunger...

I think he's amazing. His reputation swells before him.

-It's kind of scary now with you sitting out here.

-Oh, for God's sake.

Now five of these fables have been animated for a project that

Seamus Heaney was working on at the time of his death.

Bringing a modern dimension to tales that were written

over half a millennium ago.

With a specially composed score by international pianist

and conductor Barry Douglas.

This is a very major thing for me. It's a new departure.

-I'm very excited.

-In a moment,

the full animated story of The Preaching Of The Swallow.

With an introduction by Seamus Heaney himself.

And later, some revealing behind-the-scenes footage

of how these morality tales made it to the screen.

Five medieval fables are now ready for their second coming.

The Preaching Of The Swallow is a darker

and starker fable than the others.

From the beginning, there is a kind of ominous note.

When the poet describes the seasons,

the season of winter gets the most stanzas and it's the darkest.

And it's as if the dark mood of the story is being foreshadowed.

The swallow is mentioned in the title,

the swallow is a feminine bird. It's a she.

And she is warning other little birds from the beginning to beware

this field that is being sown with seed.

Flaxseed.

Beware it because if you let it grow, the farmer, who's a fowler,

somebody out after fowl also,

the farmer will get you in the end, little birds.

And they mock the swallow and fly off.

And it happens again.

Each time more menacingly. And by this time, the flax has grown.

They've harvested it.

And the farmer has made a net with the fibres of the flax.

And the little birds have a very stark ending.

God's great wisdom and his marvellous workings,

The deep insight of the Omnipotent,

Are in themselves so perfect and discerning

They far excel our merely human judgment,

All things for Him being ever present,

As they are now and at all times shall be

In the full sight of His divinity.

The firmament, star-stippled, sheer and clear,

From east to west rolling round and round

Every planet in its proper sphere

And motion making harmony and sound

The fire, the air, the water and the ground

They should suffice to demonstrate to us

The intelligence of God in all his works.

Consider well the fish that swim the sea,

Consider too the beasts that dwell on land,

Birds in their strength and beauty as they fly

Cleaving the air with large or small wingspan,

Consider then His last creation, man

Made in His image and similitude

By these we know that God is just and good.

Summer comes in his garment green and cheerful,

Every hem and pleating flounced with flowers,

Which Flora, queen and goddess bountiful,

Has lent that lord for his due season's hours,

And Phoebus with his golden beams and glamours

And heat and moisture hazing from the sky

Has decked and dyed with colours pleasantly.

Next then warm autumn when the goddess Ceres

Heaps the barn floors high with her abundance,

And Bacchus, god of wine, replenishes Her casks for her in Italy and France

With heady wines and liquors that entrance

And the plenty of the season fills that horn

Of plenty never filled with wheat or corn.

Then gloomy winter, when stern Aeolus, God of the wind,

with his bleak northern blasts Tears open, rends

and rips into small pieces

The green and glorious garment summer sports.

Now fairest flowers must fade and fall to frosts

And the nearly perished songbirds modulate

Their sweet notes to lament the snow and sleet.

The dales are flooded deep with dirty puddles,

Hills and hedges covered with hoar frost,

The sheltering bough is stripped and shrinks and shudders

In cruel winds as winter does its worst.

All creatures of the wild withdraw perforce

From blasted farmlands to hole up and cower

Against the cold in burrow, den or lair.

Then when winter's gone there comes the spring

Summer's secretary, bearing his seal

When columbine peeps out after hiding Her

fearful head beneath the frosty field.

The thrushes and the blackbirds sing their fill.

The lark on high, soaring far up yonder, is seen again,

and other little songsters.

That same season, one mild and pleasant morning,

Delighted that the bitter blasts were gone,

I walked in woods to see the flowers blooming

And hear the thrush and songbirds at their song,

And as I walked and looked and wandered on

Enjoyed the prospect of the vernal soil

Ready for seed, in good heart, fresh and fertile.

Free and easy like that, on I go,

Happy watching labourers at their tasks,

Some digging ditches, some behind the plough,

Some in full stride, sowing the seed broadcast,

The harrow hopping off the ground they'd paced.

For one who loved the corn crop, it was joy

To see them at their work there, late and early.

Then as I stood beneath a bank to rest,

Heartened and elated by the scene,

There swooped into the hedge in sudden haste

And quickly lit and roosted on the green

Leaves of the hawthorn bush that was my screen

A flock of small birds, everywhere at once,

Innumerable, amazing, marvellous.

Among them next I heard a swallow cry

From where she perched on the top branch of the thorn,

You birds there on your branches, hear,

O hear me,

And be instructed, understand and learn.

When dangers loom or when perils threaten

The wise course is to foresee and take care

Plan, make provision, think, forestall and store.

The lark laughed and then answered,

Lady Swallow,

What have you seen that's making you afraid?

Do you see, she said, yon fellow with his plough

Sowing - look - hemp and flax, broadcasting seed?

In no time at all the flax will braird

And when it's grown that churl will make a net

And already plots to snare us under it.

So my advice is this

When he is gone this evening we descend and with our claws

Scrape every seed out of the earth and then

Eat it immediately, for if it grows

We'll surely rue the day - and with good cause.

Thus straightway we shall remedy our case

Since the one who takes precautions suffers less.

For scholars say it is not sufficient

To consider only things that you can see,

Prudence being an inner discipline

That causes one to look ahead and be

Aware what good or evil end is likely,

Which course of action better guarantees

Our safety in the last analysis.

The lark laughed at the swallow then for scorn

And said she fished before she'd found a net.

The baby's easy dressed before it's born.

What grows is never all that has been set

It's time enough to bend and bare the neck

When the blow is aimed, most fated's like to fall.

And so they scorned the swallow, one and all.

Despising thus her salutary lesson

The birds departed in a sudden flurry

Some whirled across the fields in quick commotion

Some to the greenwood in a panicked hurry.

Left on my own then, out there in the country

I took my staff and headed back for home

In wonderment, as in a waking dream.

Time passed, then came the pleasant month of June

When seeds that had been sown earlier

Grew high round corncrakes cracking out their tune

And hiding places of the leaping hare.

So again one morning I went roving where I found that same hedge

and green hawthorn tree

Which held those birds I've spoken of already.

And as I stood there, by the strangest chance,

Those same birds you have heard me talk about

Maybe because it was one of their haunts

A safer, maybe, or a lonelier spot

They lighted down and when they had alit

The swallow cheeped, still harping on her theme:

Woe to the one who won't beware in time.

You birds, so blinded and so negligent,

Unmindful of your own security,

Lift up your eyes, see clearly what has happened

Look at the flax now growing on yon lea.

That is the stuff I argued once that we

Should uproot, while it was seed, from the earth.

Now it's a crop, young stalks, a sprouting braird.

While it's still tender, immature, and small

Go, stop it growing.

Pull it up this minute.

It makes my heart beat fast and my flesh crawl,

It gives me nightmares just to think of it.

The other birds then cried out and protested

And told the swallow

That flax will do us good.

Is linseed not our little fledglings' food?

When the flax is grown and the seed-pods ripe

We'll feast and take our fill then of the seed

And sing and swing on it and peep and pipe.

Who cares about the farmer?

So be it, the swallow said.

But I am sore afraid

You'll find things bitter that now seem so sweet

When you're scorched and skewered on yon fellow's spit.

The owner of that flax field is a fowler

A stealthy hunter, full of craft and guile,

We'll all be prey for him, birds of a feather,

Unless we watch and match him, wile for wile.

Our kith and kin he has been wont to kill

He spilled their blood for sport, most casually.

God and his holy cross save and preserve me.

These little birds who hardly gave a thought

To dangers that might fall by misadventure

Ignored the swallow, they set her words at nought

As they rose up and flew away together,

Some to the wood, some to the heather moor.

Noontime was approaching, I took my staff

And bearing all in mind I headed off.

The flax grew ripe, the farmer pulled it green,

Combed and dressed the seed-heads, stooked the beets,

Then buried it and steeped it in the burn,

Spread and dried it, beetled the stalks to bits,

And scutched and heckled all to tow in plaits.

His wife then spun a linen thread from it

Which the fowler took and wove into a net.

The winter came, the freezing wind did blow,

Green woods wilted in the weltering wet,

Hoar frosts hardened over hill and hollow,

Glens and gullies were slippery with sleet.

The frail and famished birds fell off their feet

Useless to try to shelter on bare boughs,

So they hied them to the haggard and outhouses.

Some to the barn, some to the stacks of corn

Fly for shelter and settle themselves in.

The fowler sees them coming and has sworn

He'll catch and make them pay for pilfering.

He spreads his nets and in preparation

Clears a space, shovels the surface snow off,

Then smoothes it level with a layer of chaff.

The small birds saw the chaff and were distracted.

Believing it was corn they lighted down.

The net was the last thing they suspected.

They set to work to scrape and grub for grain

With no thought of the fowler's cunning plan.

The swallow on a little branch nearby,

Fearing a trick, shouted this warning cry:

Scrape in that chaff until your nails are bleeding,

You won't find any corn, no matter what.

Do you think yon churl's the sort who would be feeding

Birds out of pity?

No, that chaff is bait.

I'm warning you, away, or you'll get caught.

The nets are set and ready for their prey.

Beware in time therefore, or rue the day.

Only a fool is going to risk life

And honour on a useless enterprise

Only a fool persists when he's warned off

And continues to ignore all good advice.

Only a fool fails to take cognisance

Of what the future holds and thinks the present

Forever stable, safe and permanent.

These little birds, half-dead from hunger now

And foraging for dear life for their food,

Paid no heed to the preaching of the swallow

Although their grubbing did them little good.

That was the moment when she understood

Their foolish hearts and minds were obdurate

And as she fled the fowler drew his net.

Alas, it was heartbreaking then to see him

Butcher those little songbirds out of hand

And hear, when they understood their hour had come,

How grievously they sang their last and mourned.

Some he hit with his stick and left there stunned,

Some he beheaded, on some he broke the neck,

Some he just stuffed alive into his sack.

And when the swallow saw that they were dead,

Behold, she said, the fate that often follows

Those who won't take counsel or pay heed

To words of prudent men or wisest scholars

Three times and more I warned them of the perils.

Now they are dead.

I am saddened and heartsore.

She flew off and I saw her then no more.

I try to be in an empty room. Maybe I'm looking at the window at nature.

But that's the only thing that's going to distract me,

and then I just try to imagine the mood that these

words are having on me, and the music that might match that.

I compose away from the piano, but then I go to the piano,

and I play what I've composed.

And I see what works and what maybe need a little tweaking.

But essentially, I think it's a much more pure process if you use your

imagination and you sit there with a blank piece of manuscript paper.

You have to kind of imagine the world that these

fables are taking place in.

That's kind of the backdrop to the whole thing.

That's the whole atmosphere. That's the ambience.

And then there are the added layers of this incredible poetry

that's being translated by Seamus Heaney and all the rich, English

words he's used to bring this whole thing to life for our time.

And then there's another level,

and all of these are equal levels, of course.

Billy Connolly, his reading of it, the humour, the pathos

and the drama in his voice.

And so they scorned the swallow one and all.

And then you have to try and match the music to that,

so that there is a kind of multifaceted kind of menu of flavours,

which are balancing, rather like a good wine and a good meal.

You try to match those flavours together.

That same season, one mild and pleasant morning,

Delighted that the bitter blasts were gone,

I walked in woods to see the flowers blooming

And hear the thrush and songbirds at their song.

Because this project IS so international,

and yet so local, it's very complicated.

And so you have to try and find those different strands

and do something with the music.

Free and easy like that, on I go,

Happy watching labourers at their tasks,

Some digging ditches, some behind the plough,

Some in full stride, sowing the seed broadcast...

I'm enjoying this very, very much.

As a child and teenager and in my early '20s, I wrote reams of music

and mostly rubbish.

that's a double bar.

If the cello tune can relax more, you know,

and when the violin comes in, if we can sort of move it on slightly.

And then get much more excited right up until the offbeat bits.

Since then, I've tried to get a bit more serious and so,

I wrote cadenzas for Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos.

And I've written a little bit of music, but very kind of low-key.

So, this is a very major thing for me.

It's a new departure and I'm very excited.

I wanted to have this kind of flowing music

and yet it's such a kind of timeless story,

that I wanted the beginning, the preamble, the small,

prologue introduction music to sound like it's a kind of beginning

of creation and then,

so it goes naturally into the songs of the birds, the fact that he

is walking through the woods and the storms and the winter, it's all

finished, it's a great atmosphere of replenishment in spring.

I thought it would be interesting to bring the human voice in, not

singing any particular words, but just bringing that human quality and

the frailty of the human condition in through the female voices.

# Oooh, oooh... #

I have chosen some wind instruments, some stringed instruments,

and a piano. The piano was kind of the bread of the sandwich,

but the real flavour

and the real stuff that's going on is in the different instruments

and how they relate to the characters

and the particular moments of the drama.

There swooped into the hedge in sudden haste

And quickly lit and roosted on the green

Leaves of the hawthorn bush that was my screen

A flock of small birds, everywhere at once.

Obviously, capturing the birdsong is always tricky, because we have the

swallow, we have the lark and then we have later on the corncrake.

And many composers have been very good at this,

certainly Olivier Messiaen, the French composer,

spent his whole life recording

birdsong and trying to translate that into orchestral terms.

So, we just want to give a flavour of that,

but at the same time, in the swallows warning

and the preaching, underneath, there is this darkness.

So I wanted to kind of capture this.

I can't do all the instruments on the piano,

but because the flute, the choir will be in this too.

HE PLAYS THE PIANO

So, this is the preaching,

this is the main thing that the swallow was talking about,

which is beware of the future and what you're actually doing.

Can you see what is going to happen to you later on?

And then the lark, of course, laughs.

The slow, inexorable descent to a very bad place.

Because they don't listen to the swallow.

He just has a knack for sort of getting to the emotional

core of the shot. And he just gets the mood right, you know?

And that's really the mark of a good composer, that they

can do that, whether it's tragic or comic.

They know the right music to reflect that

and really bring out the mood in a shot.

First and foremost, I'm going

to read it with my kind of interpretation.

That's to produce the music and the moods that I'm trying to match up.

But then, Billy Connolly has already done this,

and I have the tape of his interpretation of the fables.

And so, I must pay attention also to his rhythm,

so there will be a little bit of tweaking of the music there as well.

The swallow on a little branch nearby,

Fearing a trick, shouted this warning cry:

Scrape in that chaff until your nails are bleeding

You won't find any corn, no matter what.

-I couldn't hear Billy, because I played too loudly!

-THEY LAUGH

And of course, he's a great multitasker.

I witnessed this at one of the recording sessions where during...

He was recording the cues,

he was playing this fantastic piece on the piano.

But at the same time, he was conducting a 20-piece choir,

he was watching the animation on a big screen.

He had his headphones on listening to Billy Connolly, hitting the cues.

He was also conducting a flautist at the other side. All at the same time.

Sometimes playing with one hand, conducting with the other, then back to two hands.

That was just very, very impressive.

This is very complicated.

Normally in film recordings, everyone in the orchestra would have

headphones with their click track so everyone is playing to that.

So, I think to do what he's doing,

where it's kind of free hands, very difficult.

It's like juggling a lot of balls in the air at once.

Also changing the length of things to fit

the screen, maybe even changing some of the notes,

when you would hear it for real, it might have a different effect

with another sound, different dynamics, that kind of thing.

So, it's a very evolutionary process.

And bar 100. So, play 100 twice and then play 101 twice also.

You kind of divide your brain into four and just hope for the best.

So far so good. We'll see what happens.

Sir, said the fox,

He is a hefty bod

One heave and you will be high and dry aloft.

But this much I can guarantee you

If you haul that herring safely out of there,

You needn't fish again till lent next year.

Obviously, we're all inspired by some great successful works.

I mean, Peter And The Wolf springs out, of course,

whenever I first heard about this project,

and so, one instrument might represent one animal or one

theme might represent one kind of drama.

So, there are those kind of local, pinpointed,

spotlighted bits of motifs, which are coming through the music.

And so, we have a violin, we have a cello with the double bass

for the oxen and the clarinet for the fox.

And I try to bring those colours of the instruments

which are totally natural, and match them with the story.

For the lion in The Lion And The Mouse fable,

I've got a French horn playing

because I think that's the kind of very brassy, regal and there's

quite a pompous Lion who shows great mercy to the poor old mouse.

He's great to work with.

I mean, he has an incredible respect for all of the people he works with.

And he never gets flustered. He is never rude. He's never in a hurry.

Just talk amongst yourselves for a second.

He really is a fantastic colleague to work with all the time.

We must fetch that lent food here.

My strong teeth can lay waste to the herringbone

and basket work, I trust?

Indeed, the Fox replied,

I often wished for your bite and brawn

To help me raise that fish.

It's like a side of salmon, more or less.

Shiny as a partridge eye and luscious.

Worth more than all of those herring on the grass,

Three times as tasty

Three times more precious.

My first experience of Seamus Heaney was

when I got my win in the Moscow Competition in '86.

He wrote the most beautiful message to me on a postcard.

That was out of the blue.

I'd never met him.

And he talked about soaring higher

and higher and it was real poetry.

I had the good fortune to meet him

several times after that on many occasions.

And he would come to my concerts when I was in Dublin.

And then when I was in Oxford for a sabbatical in '93,

I had the chance to hear him lecture there in one of the colleges.

And so, he's been a great influence

and of course his poetry is a huge influence on all of us.

A great inspiration.