These various survivals support the view that the ass in Western Europe somehow got mixed up with the birds. When and how this came about is difficult to tell. The representatives of Christianity were in a position to accept the feast of the ass, since the ass figured largely in the Old and the New Testaments. But we do not know if they consciously did so, and introduced the ass in the place of another animal, or if they took over an animal which had before their time been accepted in the place of a bird. CHAPTER XVII THE ROBIN AND THE WREN One side of the subject remains to be discussed. It is the relation of the robin to the wren. Many custom rhymes, legends, and nursery pieces name the birds together, and they sometimes enlarge on the jealousy of the birds, and on the fact that their presence was reckoned mutually exclusive. Perhaps the birds, looked at from one point of view, were accounted the representatives of the seasons, and, as such, came and went by turns. The robin and the wren are mentioned together in several custom rhymes, some of which mention other birds also:-- The robin redbreast and the wren Are God's cock and hen. (1826, p. 292.) In Warwickshire they say:-- The robin and the wren Are God Almighty's cock and hen; The martin and the swallow Are God Almighty's bow and arrow. (1870, p. 188.) In Lancashire this takes the form:-- The robin and the wren are God's cock and hen; The spink and the sparrow are the de'il's bow and arrow. (1892, p. 275.) This association of the sparrow with the bow and arrow reappears in some nursery pieces, as we shall see later. The robin and the wren are coupled together also in the following rhyme from Scotland, which has found its way into some modern English nursery collections:-- The robin redbreast and the wran Coost out about the parritch pan; And ere the robin got a spune The wran she had the parritch dune. (1870, p. 188.) _The Robin's Testament_ already quoted concludes with anger on the part of the robin at the entrance of the wren, whose appearance heralds his death. Other pieces describe the inverse case, when the wren dies in spite of the robin's efforts to keep her alive. This conception forms the subject of a Scottish ballad called _The Birds' Lamentation_, which is included in the collection of David Herd of the year 1776. It contains the following lines:-- The Wren she lyes in Care's bed, in meikle dule and pyne, O! Quhen in came Robin Red-breast wi' sugar saps and wine, O! --Now, maiden will ye taste o' this?--It's sugar saps and wine, O! Na, ne'er a drap, Robin, (I wis); gin it be ne'er so fine, O! --Ye're no sae kind's ye was yestreen, or sair I hae mistae'n, O! Ye're no the lass, to pit me by, and bid me gang my lane, O! And quhere's the ring that I gied ye, ye little cutty quean, O! --I gied it till an ox-ee [tomtit], a kind sweat-heart o' myne, O!