The Brimstone Canary

My job as a field researcher for the Royal Ornithological Society had taken me to almost every corner of the globe.

I'd seen vultures in North Africa, kiwi's in Australia, peacocks in India, sunbirds in Palestine, parakeets in Venezuela and even emperor penguins breeding in the icy waters of the Antarctic but never, in all those years, had I been called upon to visit the mining villages of western Scotland: not until that unfortunate Friday when I received, from one of my colleagues working in the archives,an old newspaper cutting from a small town publication called 'The Chronicle' which reported the ‘alleged’ astonishing discovery of a talking canary in the small, isolated Scottish village of Kirkinnock, Ayrshire.

The ability to mimic human speech is not unusual in many different types of tropical bird from various varieties of parrot to cockatoos, minah birds and budgerigars but canary's are generally noted for their song rather than their mimicry and this particular bird was said to be capable of much more than a few simple words or phrases; apparently, this canary was said to possess the conversational powers and intelligence of the average adult homo-sapien. I greatly doubted such an astounding claim when I first read the article and yet there was some childhood curiosity in me: the kind that draws children to marvel at bottled mermaids in a sideshow, that nagged at me for weeks and I knew that I would not be wholly satisfied that it was merely a hoax until I had listened to the bird with my own ears.

Packing up my, rather clunky, reel-to-reel tape recorder (the latest technology in those days), a polaroid camera,my reference and note books; I took a train from London-Euston to Glasgow Central and from Glasgow, I took another train to the small town of Auchinleck in East Ayrshire where I was received by a Mr. Dalziel: the curate of a little local, grant-funded museum and an expert on all things to do with the history of Kirkinnock. It was then only a matter of a few miles by hired-car to my ultimate destination.

According to Mr. Dalziel, Kirkinnock had once been home to a very prosperous mining community. Around it's immense, ragged quarry had sprung up several small, cobbled streets and granite cottages ; a medium-sized primary-school building that catered to the numerous children of the mineworkers and a small sandstone church in the traditional romanesque style. After the much documented mining disaster of '27,however, the colliery had had to be closed down indefinitely which meant that Kirkinnocks' nine-hundred parishoners had all had to move elsewhere; leaving the village a crumbling,neglected ghost town.

Only one light still shone from the window of one of the old miners cottages; seeming particularly eery in such a deserted place, and that was the house of William McCulloch; an old ex-miner who, according to Dalziel, had worked down Kirkinnock pit in his youth but who now lived like a semi-recluse,divorced and deserted by his wife and children with no one for company except that allegedly miraculous talking bird.

In contrast with what would soon unfold, McCullochs house was not especially remarkable: seeming from the outside like all the other small, stone-walled and slate rooved, Edwardian style dwellings with green painted, wooden window frames; off-white net curtains and frosted panes; demarcated from its neighbours by a small rectangle of lawn surrounded by green painted, waist-high, iron railings and a creaking green gate.

However; McCulloch himself was more curious. When he opened his door to me, I was instantly struck
by the old man’s snow-white, emaciated features and the dark rings beneath his dull, impassive eyes which gave him an almost cadaver like appearance. Also,when I introduced myself and told him that we had spoken a week earlier over the telephone, he merely gazed through me with those shadowy,deserted eyes and nothing came from his mouth except a thin droplet of clear saliva drooling from one of its downturned corners.

"Show 'im in, Wullie", a sharp,high voice suddenly screeched from deeper inside the house and responding to this command, as obediently as a loyal child to an aeging parent, William McCulloch ushered me in through a narrow hallway and into a small dimly-lit living-room where finally, amid the dust and clutter of a lonely, old man’s parlour; I saw the bird hanging from a tall wooden stand in a long,bell-shaped, wire cage; noting immediately from it's dark throat that it was of the African variety S.sulphuratus or Brimstone Canary. Hastilly McCulloch went about the business of tidying up the clutter and clearing a seat for me in an old faded leather armchair and I tried to tell him "not to go to too much trouble" but I got no answer from him; only from the bird.

"Ye willn'y get awny words oot o' him, I'm afraid", said the canary in a high-pitched but slow screech that was tinged with remorse, "Wullie McCulloch husnae uttered a soond for awmost twenty years. Naw since that day when the mine collapsed. Ye ken?".

From that shocking moment I was totally transfixed and slightly terrified by the strange creature apparently addressing me; not just with intelligence but with emotion and the weariness of age and pessimism. Infact,I was so unnerved by it that I dared not set up my recording equipment as I'd planned, nor take any photographs or make
any notes. All I could do was gawp but certain things about the bird are etched deeper in my memory than anything that can be captured on magnetic tape or celluloid.

The first thing that startled me about the bird, besides it's remarkable power of speech, was it's movement: the way it hobbled on it's perch, hunched forward, reminded me partly of Olivier's Richard the III but also, accompanied by that squawking delivery, of the comically malevolent Mr.Punch and when it looked me squarely in the face; it would turn it's head to the side and view me with only one large,lidless eye and that eye would be so intense and full of feeling that I could not help but think that within that caged bird was a trapped human soul.

"I ken whit yer wantin' tae ask me", said the bird, sensing my utter dumbfoundedness, "How did this auld man's voice get inside the body of a wee bird ?". It pressed it's bright yellow head and brilliant blue eye up to the bars
of its cage as if to try and get closer to me and said,"I'll tell you".

(The following story is my account of the one told to me by the bird in as much detail as I am able to recall.)

At sunset, the great pulley turned inside it's iron girder frame and the cage-like lift rose out of the dark pithead,carrying a handful of miners up into the light of early evening: men with faces blackened by coal dust;coughing as they filled up their lungs with the treasured elixir of sweet fresh-air.

All looked exhausted but happy to be unearthed from the grave like confines of the mine shaft. All except for one: young William McCulloch, whose face was chalk white with sheer terror despite the coating of coal dust; his sparrow thin body trembling like a child with a fever; his eyes wide and white as billiard balls imprinted with whatever terror they had just witnessed; gasping and stuttering but unable to communicate except by releasing a wild bloodcurdling scream from his lungs like the sound of trapped steam escaping a train whistle.

"Whit in the name o' Gawd", said Mr. Ferguson; foreman of Kirkinnock colliery, trundling over angrilly; in no mood for any carry-on from one of his workers; not with all the pressure he’d been getting from the coal board to step-up their excavation, "Whit's goat intae him?".

Speaking up from amid the throng of miners in his usual frail, apologetic tone, Patrick Shields: an old timer who’d always seemed to know everything about everyone, though some just called him "nosy", answered,"The lad's just had a fricht, that's aw. He telled me he thought he saw a moanster doon there".

These last words were greeted by the assembled miners with an explosion of derisive laughter and even Mr. Ferguson, who was normally too dour and serious to waste words making a joke, scoffed and commented sarcastically, "Oh, aye and I suppase you'll be demandin' mare money to work doon there noo. I didnae come up the clyde in a banana boat, ye ken".

Those mocking comments and the callous laughter of the other men must have been too much for the already over-frayed nerves of McCulloch because, suddenly, he was reacting like a claustrophobic; penned in by the bodies of the large men clustered round him; pushing his way through them to escape their oppressive company, "You’ve goat tae stoap!", he yelled; breaking free of their circle like a swimmer struggling against
the rivers current, "You’ve goat tae stoap all yer diggin' ".

There was another conflagration of raucous laughter at this absurd suggestion by this obviously sick or mad,young boy. It was absurd because it was such an anathema to these men whose lives depended so much on their jobs as coal miners.

"Oh aye?", said one, "Where's the coal gonnae come frae then" and, in response, another one jeered, "Wullie's gonnae pull it oot his airse", before smaning at the self-perceived genius of his own remark.

Mhari McCulloch leaned over the snoring head of her husband William. Her forehead was wrinkled
and her eyes weary with worry; not merely for he who snored but for what would become of her and her children if their father were to become too sick to work or even worse: if their father went crazy. She'd already known one man in her life who'd lost his mind: her father. William wasn't a violent man or a habitual drinker but she'd always watched warilly for a sign that he might change and somehow be unable to do his job as a father and a husband and if that ever happened, she'd sworn that she wouldn't think twice
before taking her children and running away.

William had been brought home that evening by some other men: two of whom worked at the colliery. One they called big Tam, who was easilly the size of two normal men, had got into a fight with William just trying to bring him to his senses and had knocked him senseless in the process but had then felt so guilty about it
that he'd insisted on carrying him home along with Pat Shields and a constable. When she'd seen them approach the house, she had hoped that he'd only had some small injury at work or perhaps he'd just got himself drunk on the way home and made a public nuisance of himself but then they'd told her what he'd done and how he'd ranted and behaved like a madman and her spirits had sunk.

Later in the evening; when she had laid out his supper on the table and pleaded over and over with him that he should stop pacing infront of the fireplace, staring into the flaming hearth, he had just gone into a rage; yelling about the "damned" this and the "damned" that and she had had to gather up her children and cover their ears with her hands to guard them from hearing their father’s blasphemy.

Worse still, after he had finished eating, he had dissappeared outside in the dark to drink a bottle
of malt whisky by himself and an hour later had come storming back into the house shouting treasonous threats about burning down the colliery and Mhari had thought of the times she'd read in ‘the Chronicle’ about striking men who'd broken machines and destroyed company property, only to end up losing their jobs or being sent to gaol and she'd prayed that he hadn't shouted his treason so loudly that the neighbours would
hear.

The next morning, there was no sign of William McCulloch at the coal-face. He was still sleeping off his excessive late-night drinking and in comparison to the furore of the day before, it seemed pre-ternaturally quiet with the noise of crows barking from a nearby field being the only sound that could be heard above ground.

Deep under the surface, though, tallow lamps flickered, casting long trembling shadows along the narrow, oblong tunnels; shadows of men hacking; their picks crashing and clanking as they gouged out lumps of coal from the craggy black earth and loaded them into barrows. Small, thickly-muscled, blinkered pony's,
taken out of their natural environment and forced to drag heaps of coal through the underground labyrinthe, drudged wearilly and dirty yellow canary's, detecting the faint scent of coal-gas, twittered and fluttered hysterically like gas-lamp flames in their cages.

Patrick Shields had been lost in the rhythm of his digging and had buried all the troubles and
disturbances of the day before in the back of his head. He never would have thought of them again if
that chink hadn't appeared in the wall infront of him and a strange amber light like the
colour of flaming whisky hadn't poured out of it. He had been told all his life to mind his own buisness. He'd been warned by his
parents,teachers,constables and priests of the fate of boys who eavesdrop at doors and peep through keyholes but he couldn't help it: it was his nature to be nosy.

Through the crack in the wall of coal (a wall which shouldn't naturally have been hollow) Patrick Shields glimpsed something astonishing :a bright-orange, glowing world like the fiery insides of a furnace with a peculiar ,acrid smell like rotting eggs that filled his nostrils, then suddenly, through the glow, came a line of dark
human figures like solid silhouettes and he noticed that round the ankles of each was a band of black iron like a manacle and linking every manacle together was a long black chain. He'd thought at the time that they looked like african slaves; ("darkies" he’d called them) but then he noticed a heavy, sharp sound like the crack of a horse-whip and he saw the figures jerk as a lash
landed upon one of their backs.

Craning his neck, he tried to make out the shape of their master with the cruel whip and only then did he realise what it was that he was seeing as the tall, bright-red figure of a half beast/half man came into view and Patrick noticed,with a small yelp, that on it's head were a pair of long, straight,dark horns like the horns of a goat.

Then, all of a sudden, Patrick’s vision was obscured by a big,black,darting,elliptical object. It was a large, piercing,eye staring back at him from the other side of the wall.

Letting out a gut-wrenching scream that one would not have thought possible from the mouth of
that softly-spoken old man, Patrick fell back onto the floor of the tunnel; giddy from shock
at what he'd just witnessed.

Stumbling and scrambling, he tried to run along that low,cramped,uneven tunnel but he could not
move fast enough and all the time, he could hear the terrifying shattering of the coal wall behind him splintering under an immense blow; then glancing back over his shoulder, he saw a long arm stretching out after him: a long, thick arm with a broad clawing hand and it seemed to Patrick to be made entirely of golden and
red flames like the scales on a reptile and at the points of it's long fingers were sharp, skewer-like talons of white heat.

To his further surprise and confusion, up ahead, he could hear echos of familiar voices, shouting and coughing and saw the scurrying, dark outlines of other miners hurrying to get out. From other tunnels he could hear the heaving and snapping of timbers subsiding and smashing down with the ferocity of falling trees as, one by one, pit props collapsed and earth corridors caved in and then suddenly above his own head Patrick heard the same noise of timbers giving way but now it was ten times as loud. As the tunnels' ceiling fell and the flames caught him from behind, his consciousness too caved in.

Upon the last of his words, the bird stopped and swivelling round on it's perch, it seemed to gaze out of a dusty window at the green hills far beyond McCullochs house where the old quarry had once been; then turning back to face me, it said, "That day Auld Nick took Patrick Shields's boady because he had peered intae Hell but his soul managed tae escape. God had been looking oot for him ever since he’d stuck up for poor Willie McCulloch and had seen fit to set a canary free frae it's cage. Patrick Shields's soul seeped into that wee bird’s boady like coal gas intae lungs and the bird foond it's way oot o' the pit just in time".

At the time, I had not known how to react to the bird’s bizarre story. I had felt compelled to get out of that old man’s house for fear that I might be losing my sanity and could not rest easily again until hours later when my flight had left the runway at Prestwick Airport . I did, however, investigate further into the Kirkinnock mine disaster of '27 and looking through the newspaper archives belonging to the local historian Mr. Dalziel, I discovered an old black and white photograph that had been printed in ‘the Chronicle’ shortly after the disaster which confirmed that, out of four hundred deaths there had only been one survivor- a small Brimstone canary; fluttering out of the black smoke which had risen over the blazing pit.

But, since that day, I've convinced myself that McCulloch’s miraculous talking bird was no more than a hoax; perhaps merely an elaborate act of ventriloquism,at least, that is what I wrote in my report for the society. However; when they offered me the chance to go back and prove it in a proper scientific investigation, I declined. I never,ever wanted to go back to that place again.