38 
PICTURES OF BIRD LIFE. 
Much of the folk-lore that gathered round the Nightingale in classical poetry, 
and still furnishes it with poetical epithets, names, and imagery, comes from the 
myth that Philomela and Progne, daughters of Pandion, King of Athens, were 
changed respectively into a Nightingale and a swallow. As this happened at Daulis, 
the former is often called the Daulian and, again, the Attic bird. Pliny says that it 
sings on its first arrival for fifteen days and nights without intermission, and when 
conquered in song often dies from vexation. One sang in the mouth of Stesichorus 
when an infant, he goes on to assert, typifying the sweetness of his future lyrics. 
With a remembrance of this legend Lord Byron said that a Nightingale sang in 
the room in which Moore was born. Pliny, like Bechstein, in an exquisite passage, 
happily hits off the varied yet harmonious song of the Nightingale. It is often 
asserted amongst our poets, and believed by rustics, that the Nightingale builds its 
nest with a thorn to penetrate it and prick the bird’s breast. In France a still 
prettier myth makes the male bird lean upon a thorn as it sings, and thus bewail 
its own sufferings. The Nightingale was associated in English folk-lore with the robin 
for the kind services both were supposed to render to the dead. Thus Herrick says— 
“ When I departed am, ring thou my bell, 
Thou pitiful and pretty Philomel; 
And when I’m laid out for a corse, then be 
Thou sexton, redbreast, for to cover me; ” 
and another old writer makes “the robin waite in his redde livorie on the Nightin¬ 
gale, who sits as a crowner on the murthred man, and plays the sorrie tailour to 
make him a mossy rayment.” 
No bird is so universal a favourite among our poets as the Nightingale. 
Among all their descriptions of its melody, all their delight in its song, Keats’ 
“Ode to a Nightingale” is unsurpassed in feeling and beauty. Chaucer, who was 
as fond of singing birds as of May month and wild flowers, speaks of 
“ The Nightingale, 
That clepith forthe the freshe levis newe ; ” 
and adds it to a picture of spring— 
“ Then doth the Nightingale her might 
To makin noise and singen blithe.” 
Thomson, again, depicts the Nightingale’s woe in words as tender as they are true 
to nature, although due to a classical prototype— 
“ But let not chief the Nightingale lament 
Her ruin’d care, too delicately framed 
