Robbin and Bobbin, two great belly'd men, They ate more victuals than three-score men. (1744, p. 25.) These powers of eating perhaps refer to the first share of these characters at the feast. They are further dwelt on in the following nursery rhyme:-- Robin the Bobbin, the big-headed hen [_or_ ben] He eat more meat than four-score men. He eat a cow, he eat a calf, He eat a butcher and a half; He eat a church, he eat a steeple, He eat the priest and all the people. (_c._ 1783, p. 43.) To which some collections add:-- And yet he complained that his belly was not full. Other pieces dilate on Robin and Richard as lazy in starting, and on Robin, whose efforts as a huntsman were attended with ill luck:-- Robin and Richard were two pretty men, They lay in bed till the clock struck ten: Then up starts Robin, and looks at the sky, Oh! brother Richard, the sun's very high. You go before, with the bottle and bag, And I will come after, on little Jack Nag. (_c._ 1783, p. 42.) Robin-a-Bobbin bent his bow, Shot at a woodcock and killed a yowe [ewe]; The yowe cried ba, and he ran away, And never came back till Midsummer day. (1890, p. 346.) Halliwell saw a relation between the huntsman of this verse and the bird robin, since the robin was reckoned to disappear at Christmas and not to return till Midsummer. As a matter of fact, the robin leaves the abodes of man and retires into the woodland as soon as the sharp winter frost is over. However this may be, the presence of the wren and of the robin was mutually exclusive, as we shall see in the pieces which deal with the proposed union, the jealousy, and the death of these two birds. CHAPTER XVI BIRD SACRIFICE The custom of slaying the wren is widespread in France also. But the chants that deal with it dwell, not like ours, on the actual hunt, but on the sacrificial plucking and dividing up of the bird. Moreover, the French chants depend for their consistency not on repetition like ours, but are set in cumulative form. Both in contents and in form they seem to represent the same idea in a later development.