Its fearless confidence, too, in visiting the habitations of men has begotten a kindly feeling for it, while one ancient legend tells us that when our Saviour hung forsaken on the cross the robin strove to draw out the cruel nails, and thus imbrued its breast in the Sacred Blood, an act of piety of which from thenceforth it bore the token in its ruddy feathers. Though there are divers quaint beliefs associated with the wren which we need not here particularize, we may perhaps assume that the main reason for its association with the robin lies in the love of alliteration, for though the actual spelling of the words is against this theory, the sound to the ear favours it, and the two R’s of the Robin and the ’Ren are certainly not more far-fetched than the three R’s that were once held to cover the whole field of rustic scholarship, Reading, Riting and Rithmetic. “The eyes and heart of a nightingale laid about men in bed,” according to the “Magick of Kirani,” serve to “keep them awake, and to make one die for sleep. If anyone dissolve them and give them secretly to anyone in drink, he will never sleep, but will so die, and it admits of no cure.” It was a belief in the Middle Ages, and termed the doctrine of signatures, that every plant bore stamped upon itself, though men’s eyes were in some cases too blind to detect it, an indication of its value to humanity, thus the spots in the inside of a foxglove flower were a sign that this plant was of value for ulcerated sore-throat; the buds of the forget-me-not bent round in a spiral somewhat suggestive possibly of the tail of a scorpion, gave the plant its mediæval name of scorpion-grass, and were held a clear indication that anyone stung by a scorpion would find in this herb his remedy. In a like spirit we see that the eyes and heart of the nightingale, a bird awake when most other creatures are sleeping, were held to be, on application, a cause of wakefulness to anyone coming within their subtle influence. It was a very common and widespread belief that the nightingale when singing pierced its breast with a thorn, but whether this was to keep it awake, or to give its song the sad character that the poets will insist most wrongfully in attributing to it, seems an open question. Sir Philip Sidney in one of his sonnets appears to reflect the popular belief— “The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late bare earth, proud of her clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song book making: And mournfully bewailing Her throat in times expresseth, While grief her heart oppresseth.”