According to tradition, it was the robin who originated the first conception of decorating the graves of martyrs. "The robin-redbreast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his aid, With hoary moss and gathered flowers To deck the grave where thou art laid." And again from one of the old poets, who was naturally anxious that his own last rites should be proper as well as pathetic: "And while the wood nymphs my old corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister; My epitaph in foliage next write this: 'Here, here, the tomb of Robert Herrick is.'" And so it came to pass, by the patronage of the poets, that in the early centuries this little bird came to be protected by an affectionate, unwritten law. To molest a redbreast was to bring the swift vengeance of lightning on the house. The ancient boy knew better, if he cherished his personal safety, than to steal a young bird for the purpose of captivity, for "A robin in a cage Sets all heaven in a rage." The "sobbing, sobbing of pretty, pretty robin" would surely call down upon the head of the luckless thief the dire displeasure of the deities; as runs the rhyme, meant in all reverence (as it should also be quoted); "The robin and the wren Are God Almighty's cock and hen. Him that harries their nest Never shall his soul have rest." Terrible punishments were thus meted out to the ancient urchin whose instincts would lead him to rob bird's nests. In Pilgrim's Progress, Christiana is said to have been greatly astonished at seeing a robin with a spider in its beak. Said she, "What a disparagement it is to such a little, pretty bird as the robin-redbreast is, he being also a bird above many, that loveth to maintain a kind of sociableness with man; I had thought they had lived on crumbs of bread--I like him worse than I did-." And the wordy-wise Interpreter, to clinch a moral lesson in the mind of the religious woman, explained how the robins "when they are by themselves, catch and gobble up spiders; they can change their diet (like the ungodly hypocrite), drink iniquity, and swallow down sin like water." And so, obedient to her spiritual adviser, Christiana liked the robin "worse than she did." Poor soul; she should have observed for herself that for a robin to gobble up a spider is no "iniquity." Did she think that crumbs grew on bushes, ready made for early breakfast, or that the under side of woodland leaves was buttered to order?