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THE ROBIN REDBREAST. 



also one in a miller's cast-off coat, filled with young ones ; he 

 never knew of them until he put his hand in the pocket. A 

 pair were kept in a garret, in the severe winter of 1878, till 

 April, then set free — a few days after their nest was found with 

 eggs in the garret, composed of stalks of horehound, which had 

 been hung up to dry, lined inside with the down of some ragwort 

 kept for a bullfinch. They did not desert the locality, but 

 built another nest in the garden close by. The male sang sweetly 

 in the garret, sometimes the hen sang also. The nest is composed 

 of dry leaves and moss, framed with very small roots, dry grass 

 (sometimes worsted), and lined with hair. Eggs — five, six, or 

 seven — reddish-white, freckled with purplish spots at the larger 

 end. As he is so well-known, I need not minutely describe our 

 red-vested little countryman the robin, nor his plainer dressed 

 little wife. They have two, sometimes three, broods in the year. 

 They are, like the rook, omnivorous in their food — from crumbs 

 to worms, larvae, and fruit. In old times the wren was con- 

 sidered the female ; for instance 



" The robin and the wren 

 Are God's own cock and hen." 



And an old legend says he got his breast stained when plucking 

 thorns from Christ's brow on the Cross. It is also said that St 

 Kentigern (who founded Glasgow Cathedral) made the robin a 

 subject for miracle ; for, having a pet one whose neck was 

 wrung by boys, he restored it to life ; also, as the bird- 

 Prometheus, it brought down fire from Heaven to man — hence 

 the red colour of its breast; and we all know the prettier 

 legends of its covering the dead with leaves ; for instance, 

 Webster says — 



" Call for the robin and the wren, 

 Since over shady groves they hover, 

 And with leaves and flowers do cover 

 The friendless bodies of unburied men." 



Herrick also says — 



" The redbreast be 

 The sexton for to cover me, 

 And while the wood nymphs my cold corpse inter, 

 Sing thou my dirge, sweet warbling chorister." 



Stafford, too, in "Niobe dissolved into a Nilus" (in 1611), 

 says — " Bobbin waits in his red livery, who sits as a crowner on 

 the murthered man, and, seeing his body naked, plays the sorrie 

 tailour to make him a mossy raiment." And when Hotspur, in 



