Bluebird of happiness
The symbol of a bluebird as the harbinger of happiness is found in many cultures and may date back thousands of years.
from North America
Origins of the bluebird as a symbol of happiness
Chinese mythology
One of the oldest examples of a blue bird in myth is from pre-modern China, where a blue or green bird was the messenger bird of Xi Wangmu, who began life as a fearsome goddess and immortal. By the Tang dynasty, she had evolved into a Daoist fairy queen and the protector/patron of "singing girls, dead women, novices, nuns, adepts and priestesses...women stood outside the roles prescribed for women in the traditional Chinese family". Depictions of Xi Wangmu often include a bird—the birds in the earliest depictions are difficult to identify, and by the Tang dynasty, most of the birds appear in a circle, often with three legs, as a symbol of the sun.Native American folklore
Among some Native Americans, the bluebird has mythological or literary significance.According to the Cochiti tribe, the firstborn son of Sun was named Bluebird. In the tale "The Sun's Children", from Tales of the Cochiti Indians by Ruth Benedict, the male child of the sun is named Bluebird.
The Navajo identify the mountain bluebird as a spirit in animal form, associated with the rising sun. The "Bluebird Song" is sung to remind tribe members to wake at dawn and rise to greet the sun:
The "Bluebird Song" is still performed in social settings, including the nine-day Ye'iibicheii winter Nightway ceremony, where it is the final song, performed just before sunrise of the ceremony's last day.
Most O'odham lore associated with the "bluebird" likely refers not to the bluebirds but to the blue grosbeak.
European folklore
In Russian fairy tales, the blue bird is a symbol of hope. More recently, Anton Denikin has characterized the Ice March of the defeated Volunteer Army in the Russian Civil War as follows:We went from the dark night and spiritual slavery to unknown wandering – in search of the bluebird.
In L'Oiseau Bleu a popular tale included by Madame d'Aulnoy in her collection Tales of the Fairies, King Charming is transformed into a blue bird, who aids his lover, the princess Fiordelisa, in her trials.
Most to the point, a "blue bird of happiness" features in ancient Lorraine folklore. In 1886 Catulle Mendès published Les oiseaux bleus, a story bundle inspired by these traditional tales. In 1892 Marcel Schwob, at the time secretary to Mendès, published the collection Le roi au masque d'or, which included the story "Le pays bleu", dedicated to his friend Oscar Wilde. Maurice Maeterlinck had entered Mendès literary circle as well and in 1908 he published a symbolist stage play named The Blue Bird inspired by the same material. Two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, are sent out by the fairy Bérylune to search for the Bluebird of Happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their house all along and create great happiness for another by giving their pet bird to the sick neighbor child. by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, it played on Broadway from 1910. In the programme for the play at London's Haymarket Theatre in 1912, the programme explained: "The Blue Bird, inhabitant of the pays bleu, the fabulous blue country of our dreams, is an ancient symbol in the folk-lore of Lorraine, and stands for happiness." The play was quickly adapted into a children's novel, an opera, and at least seven films between 1910 and 2002.
See the German equivalent blaue Blume.
Popular use of the idiom
The immense popularity of Maeterlinck's play probably originated the idiom in English. In 1934, this was strengthened by the popular American song "Bluebird of Happiness". Written by Sandor Harmati and Edward Heyman, it was recorded several times by American tenor Jan Peerce, for RCA Victor and also by Art Mooney and His Orchestra.The bluebird is featured in the song "Be Like The Bluebird" in the popular musical Anything Goes.
The lyrics "Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly" in Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg's 1938 song for the movie The Wizard of Oz is a likely allusion to the idiom as well.
Shirley Temple starred in the American fantasy The Blue Bird.
In 1942, the popular song " The White Cliffs of Dover" used them, despite an absence of real blue birds on those cliffs, among other imagery to lift spirits.
The Academy Award-winning song, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," from Walt Disney's 1946 live-action and animated film Song of the South, makes reference to "Mr. Bluebird on my shoulder" as a symbol of good cheer.
In the 1946 Japanese film No Regrets for Our Youth, directed by Akira Kurosawa, when Yukie and Noge reunite in Tokyo during the war, Yukie laments that she is not happy with her career and wants to do something truly meaningful in the struggle for freedom. Noge responds, "Who finds work like that even once in their lives? It's like finding The Blue Bird of Happiness."
The bluebird is mentioned at the end of the 1968 Beatles film Yellow Submarine, when the leader of the Blue Meanies claims that his "cousin is the bluebird of happiness". Beatles Paul McCartney wrote a song about them for his band Wings’ 1973 album Band on the Run, "Bluebird".
The Allman Brothers Band's 1972 song "Blue Sky" has the lyric "Don't fly, mister blue bird, I'm just walking down the road".
A scene in the 1977 Disney film The Rescuers uses the bluebird as a symbol of "faith... you see from afar."
In the 1985 film , the Sleaze Brothers kidnap Big Bird and press him into service in their fun fair, where he is painted blue and billed as the Blue Bird of Happiness. In a play on the word "blue," Big Bird sings the mournful song "I'm So Blue."
The lyrics of the They Might Be Giants 1989 song "Birdhouse in Your Soul" by John Linnell includes the phrase "blue bird of friendliness."
The 2001 film K-PAX, directed by Iain Softley, written by Charles Leavitt and based on the book of the same name by Gene Brewer, contains a scene in which the lead character Prot, claiming to be a visitor from outer space. He ends up in a psychiatric ward where he 'prescribes' a fellow patient with the task of finding a 'Bluebird Of Happiness'. In a later scene, the fellow patient excitedly yells out that he finally found the Bluebird, resulting in pandemonium amongst patients spanning several floors of the institution.
The bluebird is also mentioned in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episode "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Part III" in 2006.
Musician Neil Young has a song "Beautiful Bluebird" about a lost love on his 2007 album Chrome Dreams II.
"Blue Bird" is a song by Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions from their 2009 album Through the Devil Softly.
The character Luna from the 2012 video game and visual novel wears a necklace with a caged bluebird, and the story is discussed in one ending.
The titular bluebird of the song "Birds", from the 2013 album Government Plates by the experimental hip hop group Death Grips, is thought to be referencing Charles Bukowski's poem "Bluebird", wherein the bluebird represents the vulnerability that Bukowski felt as a result of child abuse from his father.
The bluebird is also mentioned by David Bowie in the song "Lazarus" from his 2016 album Blackstar.
In the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2, during the scene where John Marston builds the ranch at Beecher's Hope, a bluebird is seen perched next to the gang while they are hammering and nailing the wood.
Bluebirds in nature
Three species of blue-headed North American thrushes occupy the genus Sialia. The most widespread and best-known is the eastern bluebird, breeding from Canada's prairie provinces to Texas and from the Maritimes to Florida; discrete populations of this species are also found from southeastern Arizona through west Mexico into Guatemala and Nicaragua. The mountain bluebird breeds on high-elevation plains from central Alaska to Arizona and New Mexico, and the western bluebird inhabits dry coniferous forests from extreme southwestern Canada to Baja California and from the Great Basin south into west Mexico. Other all-blue birds in North and Central America are the blue mockingbird, blue bunting, indigo bunting, blue grosbeak and a number of jays, including the blue jay.Europe has only a few birds with conspicuous blue in the plumage, including the great tit, the various blue tits of the genus and the common kingfisher. The adult male of the blue rock-thrush is the only European passerine with all-blue plumage; this species is best known from its literary treatment by Giacomo Leopardi, whose poem Il passero solitario makes of the rock-thrush a figure of the poet's isolation.
In South and Southeast Asia, the fairy-bluebirds, blue whistling thrush and verditer flycatcher are strikingly blue.