COVERING THE DEAD WITH LEAVES, I4I 
Out-sweeten’d not thy breath: the ruddock would, 
With charitable bill,—O, bill, sore-shaming 
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie 
Without a monument !—bring thee all this ; 
Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none, 
To winter-ground thy corse.”* 
Cymbeline, Act iv. Se. 2, 
Bishop Percy asks, “Is this an allusion to the ‘Babes in 
the Wood,’ or was the notion of the redbreast covering dead 
bodies general before the writing of that ballad?’ Mr. 
Knight says, “ There is no doubt that it was an old popular 
belief, and the notion has been found in an earlier book 
of natural history.” John Webster, writing in 1638, says: 
“Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, 
Since o’er shady groves they hover, 
And with leaves and flowers do cover 
The friendless bodies of unburied men.” 
Izaak Walton, in his “Compleat Angler,” 1653, speaks 
of “the honest robin that loves mankind, both alive and 
dead.’ Possibly Shakespeare intended only to refer to the 
ancient and beautiful custom of strewing the grave with 
flowers. 
With all birds it is the habit of the male to sing while 
* Instead of ‘‘winter-ground” in the last line, Mr. Collier's annotator reads 
“winter-guard ;" but ‘‘ to winter-ground" appears to have been a technical term 
for protecting a plant from the frost by laying straw or hay over it. 
