In June the coming of dusk is the audible movement of summer. The day is so full of myriad beauty, so full of sound and fragrance, that it is not till the hour of the dew that one may hear the breathing of the miraculous presence. The birds, who still sing early in the month, and many even of those whose songs follow the feet of May begin a new love-life at the coming of June, are silent: though sometimes, in the south, the nightingale will still suddenly put the pulse of song into the gloaming, though brieflier now; and elsewhere the night-loving thrush will awake, and call his long liquid notes above the wild-growth of honeysuckle and brier. At the rising of the moon I have heard the cuckoos calling well after the date when they are supposed to be silent, and near midnight have known the blackcap fill a woodland hollow in Argyll with a music as solitary, as intoxicating, as that of a nightingale in a Surrey dell. The thrush, the blackbird, the blackcap, the willow-warbler and other birds may often be heard singing in the dusk, or on moonlit nights, in a warm May: and doubtless it is for this reason that many people declare they have heard the nightingale even in regions where that bird never penetrates. Often, too, the nightingale’s song is attributed to the blackcap, and even to the thrush or merle, simply because heard by day, for there seems to be a common idea that this bird will not sing save at dusk or in darkness or in the morning twilight. I doubt if the nightingale ever sings in actual darkness, though the bird is most eager just before and at dawn, at moonlit or starlit dusk, or at full moon, it may be heard at any hour of the day. I have heard the song and watched the singer at full noon, and that not in deep woods but in a copse by the wayside. Strange that both name and legend survive in lands where the nightingale is now unseen. There is no question but that it was once plentiful, or at any rate often seen, in the Western Highlands; though now, it is said, not a bird of its tribe has crossed the Solway since the Union! It is still spoken of in Argyll and elsewhere, and not confusedly with any other woodlander. In no country has it a lovelier name than the Gaelic _Ros-an-Ceol_, the Rose of Music. I have heard it spoken of as the _smiol_ or _smiolach_, the _eosag_, and the _spideag_, though this latter name, perhaps the commonest, is misleading, as it is applied to one or two other songsters. In Iona, Colonsay, Tiree, and other isles, I have heard the robin alluded to as the _spideag_. I remember the drift, but cannot recall the text of a Gaelic poem where the nightingale (for neither in literary nor legendary language is any other bird indicated by ‘Ros-an-Ceol’) is called the Sister of Sorrow, with an allusion to a singular legend, which in some variant or another I believe is also found in the Austrian highlands, parts of Germany, and elsewhere, to the effect that