The Magpie's Songlines
by Cavan Brown
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

Song of the Magpie

The magpie is Australian but its name is not. This bird was named by the early settlers after the magpie of Europe, a black and white bird belonging to the Corvidae family and therefore related to the crows and ravens. Australian magpies belong to the family of Cracticidae along with the butcherbirds and currawongs. Magpies prefer to live in extended families. In Western Australia, where things are generally more gregarious, the family may extend up to 24 birds. In the East, magpies think that 10 is enough. Depending on the size of the family, the magpies claim a territory ranging from two to 18 hectares, which means that the wooded areas of Australia and the leafy suburbs are neatly divided up into magpie blocks. The magpie's outstanding feature is its song. It is one of the premier Australian songbirds. While the kookaburra cheers the morning and evening with raucous laughter, the magpie sings a tuneful song. Roland Robinson describes the sound poetically, but accurately, as a "liquid throated song . . . as though his throat was filled with rain". Frank Williamson, wrote in praise of the magpie: "O, I love to be by Bindi . . . Just to hear the magpies warble in the blue gums on the hill" ("The Magpies Song", Landscape and Life, C. McKaskill and F.J. Kavanagh, McGraw Hill, 1966). And not only in Bindi. Williamson notes in his poem of praise to the magpie that, like the crow, it seems to appear in a wide variety of Australian landscapes. He remembers magpies in the snow country, along the coastal heaths and in the city, "calling, chiming, trolling, crooning" their own distinctive song.

The Song of the Magpie is worthy of Williamson's praise. Their song is even better if it leads us to recognise the place of songs in the human experience. We listen to songs continually-radios, CD, TV, computers and even telephones carry songs. We sing songs-in church, in restaurants around karaoke microphones, in AFL football grandstands, cricket and Rugby league change rooms. Not all sing well. Footballers cannot match Pavarotti but it does not stop them. Nature sings in a myriad of sounds. Birds, insects, frogs, dingoes and whales all sing. Even trees sing-listen to the wind in the she-oaks.

Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament recognises the ability of nature to join in songs of praise. "Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; Let them sing before the Lord." (Psalm 98:7-9) "The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." (Isaiah 55:12). In this exuberant vision, the whole of creation is seen to be singing songs that ultimately reflect the Creator God. One of the best songs is sung by the Australian Magpie. It sings to let us know that "songs are in the air, everywhere", Songs of Creation sung by all nature.

Traditional Aborigines have heard these Songs of Creation in nature and have written their songs that reflect their own culture with its highs and lows, its light and darkness-the same as any other culture. These songs relate back to the Dreaming when everything was made by the Ancestor Spirits under the power of an All-Father God. Each prominent natural feature, each tribe, each animal has a story which was often formed into a song and when this song is sung the people are intrinsically connected to the spirituality of their land. The songs are then formed into songlines and they become, for the traditional people, the path of life . . . literally.

When they travel from one place to another they sing the right songs in the right order and the physical world, as it comes before them, becomes a known land. The songlines become not only their maps, but also their passports when passing through another tribe's land. The songs are also their worship. To know the songlines of the land is to know the world in its dimension of matter and spirit. The songs also link the land with their personal 'rites of passage' (birth, initiation, marriage, death) which means that each personal story is seen as part of the higher 'sacred story' that was written in the land.

As Bruce Chatwin noted, what to a white man is nothing more than a stretch of featureless scrub, is to a traditional Aboriginal the equivalent of Beethoven's Opus 111, a passage of the Iliad or the book of Psalms. To follow the right songline was to have a song for every occasion. Bruce Chatwin's closing anecdote tells of an old Aboriginal man called Limpy who asked Chatwin and his Australian friend Arkady for a lift to a place called Cycad Valley. He had never been there before but he said he now needed to go to that place. For most of the trip he lay on the back seat of the Land Cruiser but 10 miles before arriving at the Valley, Limpy suddenly sat up muttering things, sticking his head out of the window, and then silence. Again, he started-half talking, half singing to himself and Chatwin could see he was becoming very agitated. Arkady, then realised what was happening. Limpy had learnt his songlines at walking pace and they were in a Land Cruiser travelling at running speed.

They stopped and let old Limpy out of the vehicle and he began to walk and sing with a big smile on his face. He walked and sang until he arrived at a place where three old men, not much more than skeletons, lay on old beds under the shade of a tree. For Limpy and the three men, this place was their 'conception site' and now, in the neat Aboriginal cycle of life, it was to become their death site-the place where their songline ended. When Limpy introduced himself "all three smiled, spontaneously, the same toothless grin . . . smiling at death in the shade of a ghost-gum".

The Bible has its own songline. From Genesis to Revelation, the major themes of the Bible are connected together by songs. There are songs of the beginning-the creation of the world, the creation of the human community and the community of faith. There are songs about the journey. The "Song of Moses and Miriam" (Exodus 15) and the "Song of Moses" (Deuteronomy 32) celebrate the deliverance from Egypt and the desert years. Sacred sites are set in song. There are songs about human frailty and the faithfulness of God to forgive. There are songs about God's intervention in human history like the Servant Songs of Isaiah. When that Servant was born, new songs were sung: Mary's song (Luke 1:46-54), Zechariah's song (Luke 1:68-79) and Simeon's song (Luke 2:29-32). More songs came from the life, death and resurrection of the Servant, Jesus Christ, like Philippians 2:6-11 ("Who, being in the very nature of God . . . made himself nothing . . . being made in human likeness . . . became obedient to death-therefore God has exalted him . . . gave him a name above every name . . . Jesus is Lord").

The final movement of the songline is in the book of Revelation. At one point a heavenly choir re-sings all the songs from Moses to the new songs of the final movement-the song of the Lamb (Revelation 15:3). The songline finishes with the words "Now the dwelling of God is with people, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (21:3-4).

This final song is the completion of all songlines. "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (21:6). Meaningful life is lived by learning the right songs and to sing them with reality. Songs without reality are empty. Amos, the prophet of the desert town of Tekoa, said to the people "Away with the noise of your songs!" (Amos 5:23). Ezekiel spoke similar words from God: "I will put an end to your noisy songs" (Ezekiel 26:13). At other times, some of the songs became stale and lost their original power.

Learning the right songs, in the right order interprets our individual spiritual journeys through the Divine songline themes of creation, development, failure, recovery, death and resurrection. Having gaps in the songline is to risk losing the way and not being able to sing that last Song, "Now the dwelling of God is with men."

Having no songline is living in a world without any understanding of spirituality. 'An unsung land is a dead land.' The Song of the Magpie is to be enjoyed for its own melody but when it becomes part of a wider symphony then the appreciation deepens. Its "calling, chiming, trolling, crooning", leads us to find the Songline of God that makes each stage of life meaningful. Frank Williamson, who wrote his poem in praise of the magpies in the blue gums at Bindi, expresses his hope that the magpie song will continue to be heard through all the changing scenes of life and particularly in his closing days. He wants the comfort of hearing the magpies sing their Song of Creation when he faces that last scene of his life.

And my life seems one long lovely
vale where grow the rosy years;
Lilting, lilting, lilting; when I
slumber at the last,
Let your music in the joyous wind be
ever wandering past.

On that day the Song of the Magpie will be overtaken by the final Song of Creation: "Now the dwelling of God is with his people and he will live with them."

To: Perspectives Issue 60

Cavan Brown Cavan Brown is the minister of Geraldton Baptist Church, WA, and is the author of Pilgrim Through Barren Land, Albatross, 1991, and the forthcoming The Blackfellas Friend: a life of John Gribble (Access Press, 1999).