204 June — Tradition amongst the Peasants. 



Whereof I had inly so great pleasure, 

 That, as methought, I surely ravished was 

 Into Paradise, where my desire 

 Was for to be.' 



Beautifully, however, as the poets may have sung of 

 the nightingale, I doubt whether it ever occurred to the 

 most inventive of them to imagine such an exquisitely 

 poetical reason for his choice of the night-time for 

 singing as the simple peasants about the Val Ste. 

 Veronique have handed down by a believed tradition. 

 Some peasant-poet must have had this original fancy, 

 and then been pleased with it, and told it to his neigh- 

 bors, whose poetic sense preserved it with that inability 

 to distinguish between history and fiction which always 

 marks the uncultivated human being. They say, and 

 believe, that long ago the nightingale sang in the day- 

 time like other birds, but that once in a warm night of 

 May, when the vine was growing quickly, a bird of this 

 species went to rest upon a vine and fell asleep there ; 

 and whilst he slept the tendrils grew very fast, and as 

 they grew they twined about his tiny legs and held 

 them, so that when morning came he could not get 

 away, though his comrades came to help him. The 

 poor bird died in this miserable situation, and his com- 

 rades were so impressed by what they had seen that 

 they dared no longer go to sleep at night, but watched 

 in fear of the same sad fate, and sang to keep each 

 other awake. Even now, in the early summer, they 

 utter the same notes of warning, and what they say- 

 is this : ' La vigne pousse — pousse — ponsse vitevite 



