More modern poets have made many allusions to this touching tale, which Shakespeare knew, for in _Cymbeline_ he makes Arviragus say over Imogen—
Thou shalt not lack The flowers that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured harebell.... The ruddock would With charitable bill bring thee all these.
And in William Collins’s _Dirge to Cymbeline_ are the lines:
The redbreast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid, With heavy moss, and gathered flowers, To deck the ground where thou art laid.
The conceit is far more ancient than Shakespeare or Gay or even than Robert Yarrington—who, in 1601, wrote a ballad on it concluding,
No buriall this pretty pair of any man receives Till Robin Redbreast piously did cover them with leaves—
for Horace relates in one of his poems how he as a child wandering one day on Mount Vultur fell wearily asleep, and was covered by protecting doves with laurel and myrtle leaves.
The robin is always remembered at Christmas in the rural villages and farms of northern Europe, for it is not migratory. In South Germany the custom is to put grain on a roof for the redbreasts, who come trustfully about houses at that season, and find welcome shelter in barns and straw-stacks: and in Sweden and elsewhere an unthreshed sheaf of wheat is set up on a pole for their winter fare.
It will have been noticed that in the ballads quoted, the wren is associated with the robin in a protective way. A whole book might be written about this least of birds, which, although the least, is called “king” in every European language. We are told that a wren was in the stable at Bethlehem when Christ was born; and an Irish proverb runs: “The robin and the wren are God’s two holy men.” How surprising, then, to read of a custom called Hunting (or in some places Burying) the Wren, which once prevailed in southern France, in Keltic parts of England, in Wales, and also in Ireland, where it persisted until abolished by the British Government about the middle of the 19th century. Accounts of the practices, songs, etc., connected with it may be found in antiquarian histories, for example the following from Miles’s book of Christmas customs:
In the Isle of Man very early on Christmas morning, when the church-bells had rung out midnight, servants went out to hunt the wren. They killed the bird, fastened it to the top of a long pole; and carried it in procession to every house, chanting these words: