Names of the Nightingale. 
179 
north of Lichfield. Its song is heard in Yorkshire and 
occasionally in the more northern counties, but not in 
Scotland. Fynes Moryson records that it was unknown 
in Ireland. 
Mr. Harting has noticed at some length the fable 
that the nightingale leans against a thorn for fear she 
should be overtaken by sleep, so often referred to by 
poets. Of all epithets applied to this songster none is 
more poetical and appropriate than that used by Ben 
Jonson, in his pastoral poem, The Sad Shepherd (ii. 3)— 
“ I grant the linnet, lark, and bullfinch sing, 
But best the dear good angel of the spring. 
The nightingale.” 
Though, as Mr. Gifford points out, this expression is a 
literal translation from the Greek of Sappho, angel is 
used in the original signification of a messenger or 
harbinger. Spenser writes :— 
“ Like as the darling of the summer’s pryde 
Faire Philomele.” 
{The Tears of the Muses , 1. 235.) 
Giles Fletcher calls the nightingale “the bird of sorrow,” 
and Drayton, “ that charmer of the night.” In the Mirror 
for Magistrates (vol. ii. p. 468) we find a different 
epithet- 
u Sweete are the songs that merry night crow singes, 
For many parts are in those charming notes. 
***** 
“ It is a sport to heare the fine night crow 
Chaunt in the queere upon a pricke-song plaine : 
No musicke more may please a prince’s vaine 
Than descant strange, and voice of faurets breest, 
In quiet bower when birds be all at rest.” 
Of all the small birds that seek the neighbourhood 
of dwelling-houses, the Robin Redbreast, or 
Ruddock, has ever held first place in the 
affections of man; and the robin has been associated in 
