O Bluebird of Happiness

Why a bluebird? Sam’s criticism of our nickname and mascot, and symbol
of the club I’m sure has set many thinking. We are the Bluebirds, and
we want to stay the Bluebirds, and we’re called the Bluebirds
because.....

Well, many fans (who have read Graham Lloyd’s excellent ‘C’mon City’)
will have an idea that City’s founder Bart Wilson got the name from a
play ‘The Blue Bird’ by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright and
poet, which was playing in Cardiff at the time Wilson changed the
shirts to blue, the name to Cardiff City, and we entered the football
league. What many won’t know is that Maeterlinck is actually that
famed elusive character - a famous Belgian, who wrote many symbolist
plays, stories and poems (over 60 volumes) and was a winner of the
Nobel prize for Literature in 1911. But why Maeterlinck? (Who was more
likely to be an Anderlecht supporter than anything else), and why this
play? Perhaps it helps to know that the play was ‘an allegorical
fantasy conceived as a play for children that denies the reality of
death’ - a tale of two children searching for the Bluebird of
Happiness - actually written in 1909, with the shadow of World War 1
looming large. It also helps to know that the play was extremely well
known, and had been made into a film a number of times, even by 1920 -
the most notable being in 1918, by surrealist/symbolist French film
director Maurice Tourneur.

The search for the Bluebird of Happiness is perhaps the key to all of
this. For, it transpires, the Bluebird is not (like I’m sure many of
you, like me, thought) a mythological creature, but a real bird, an
inhabitant (mainly) of America, a relative of the plain old thrush,
and historically it is said(this apparently originates from Shamanism)
‘the Bluebird brings happiness, joy and contentment. All birds are
messengers to the Great Spirit. Therefore, whenever you see Bluebird,
ask for happiness and your prayer will fly to Sky Father on the wings
of Bluebird.’

Thus the symbolism of “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs
of Dover..”

and the probably less well-known:

“Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but blue skies from now on”

(Blue Skies - Irving Berlin, 1934).

There have also been other lesser known songs featuring bluebirds, for
example ‘Bluebird Of Happiness’ as sung by Frank Sinatra, and
‘Bluebird’ sung by Anne Murray.

Of course the symbolism of the bluebird was not lost on Bart Wilson,
nor on others at the time - for example Sir Malcolm Campbell, who
named his famous world-beating car ‘The Bluebird’

So, the Bluebird is a symbol of optimism, of hope and of happiness.
Not something, I would suggest, that Cardiff should lose. It’s a shame
that the history and knowledge of the symbolism of the bluebird has
all but disappeared, but I would suggest that the problem would not
have even arisen had the most famous bluebird tune gone “There’ll be
bluebirds over the grey slates of Grangetown..”

And what’s Sam’s alternative to the Bluebird? A dragon. Whilst no one
would argue that the dragon is a fine symbol of Wales, and a magical
symbol, like the Bluebird, that invokes the history and magic of
Wales, it is hard to forget that the dragon was slain by that Maltese
symbol of England, St. George, and who needs reminding of that? So
let’s stick with a positive symbol, a symbol of hope, happiness and
joy, a bluebird.

And perhaps we should forget all the debates about whether the
Bluebirds should run out to the sound of the Super Furry Animals or
Catatonia or The Manic Street Preachers, and go back to the days of
Bart Wilson and run out, as they did in those days, to the sounds of
‘Happy Days are Here Again’.

Whatever the tune, I know what we’ll all be shouting:
“Blooooooooooobirds!”