"the martlet Builds in the weather, on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty."
Forster[267] says that the circumstance of this bird's nest being built so close to the habitations of man indicates that it has long enjoyed freedom from molestation. There is a popular rhyme still current in the north of England:
"The martin and the swallow Are God Almighty's bow and arrow."
[267] "Atmospherical Researches," 1823, p. 262.
_Nightingale._ The popular error that the nightingale sings with its breast impaled upon a thorn is noticed by Shakespeare, who makes Lucrece say:
"And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part To keep thy sharp woes waking."
In the "Passionate Pilgrim" (xxi.) there is an allusion:
"Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity."
Beaumont and Fletcher, in "The Faithful Shepherdess" (v. 3), speak of
"The nightingale among the thick-leaved spring, That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing Whole nights away in mourning."
Sir Thomas Browne[268] asks "Whether the nightingale's sitting with her breast against a thorn be any more than that she placeth some prickles on the outside of her nest, or roosteth in thorny, prickly places, where serpents may least approach her?"[269] In the "Zoologist" for 1862 the Rev. A. C. Smith mentions "the discovery, on two occasions, of a strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the nightingale's nest." Another notion is that the nightingale never sings by day; and thus Portia, in "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), says:
"I think, The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren."
[268] Sir Thomas Browne's Works, 1852, vol. i. p. 378.
[269] See "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 515.
Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old superstition[270] that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself awake, lest the glow-worm should devour her. The classical fable[271] of the unhappy Philomela turned into a nightingale, when her sister Progne was changed to a swallow, has doubtless given rise to this bird being spoken of as _she_; thus Juliet tells Romeo (iii. 5):