From the verses of the poet Jami may be learnt how the first Rose appeared in Gulistan at the time when the flowers, dissatisfied with the reign of the torpid Lotus, who would slumber at night, demanded a new sovereign from Allah. At first the Rose queen was snowy white, and guarded by a protecting circlet of Thorns; but the amorous Nightingale fell into such a transport of love over her charms, and so recklessly pressed his ravished heart against the cruel Thorns, that his blood trickling into the lovely blossom’s bosom, dyed it crimson; and, in corroboration of this, the poet demands, “Are not the petals white at the extremity where the poor little bird’s blood could not reach?” Perhaps this Eastern poetic legend may have given rise to the belief, which has long been entertained, that the Nightingale usually sleeps on, or with its bosom against, a Thorn, under the impression that in such a painful situation it must remain awake. Young, in his ‘Night Thoughts,’ thus refers to this curious idea-- “Grief’s sharpest Thorn hard-pressing on my breast, I share with wakeful melody to cheer The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee, And call the stars to listen.” And in Thomson’s ‘Hymn to May,’ we find this allusion:-- “The lowly Nightingale, A Thorn her pillow, trills her doleful tale.” In a sonnet by Sir Philip Sydney, afterwards set to music by Bateson, we read-- “The Nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, When late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a Thorn her song-book making, And mournfully bewailing, Her throat in tunes expresseth, While grief her heart oppresseth, For Tereus o’er her chaste will prevailing.” Shakspeare notices the story in the following quaint lines-- “Everything did banish moan, Save the Nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Leaned her breast up till a Thorn, And then sung the doleful ditty, That to hear it was great pity.” In Yorkshire, there is a tradition of Hops having been planted many years ago, near Doncaster, and of the Nightingale making its first appearance there about the same time. The popular idea was, that between the bird and the plant some mysterious connecting link existed. Be this as it may, both the Hops and the Nightingale disappeared long ago.