Held in his slender beak the cruel thing,
Still with his gentle might endeavoring
But to release it.
Then as he strove, spake One—a dying space—
‘Take, for thy pity, as a sign of grace,
‘Semblance of this, my blood, upon thy face
‘A living glory.’
The complaining love-note of the wood-pigeon has, in the northwestern part of Europe, become the subject of a well-adapted and pathetic myth, as Watters[[57]] denominates it in his entertaining Birds of Ireland. “It is said that a dove perched in the neighborhood of the holy cross when the Redeemer was expiring, and, wailing its notes of sorrow, kept repeating the words ‘Kyrie! Kyrie!’ [Kyrie eleison—Lord have mercy!] to alleviate the agony of his dying moments.”
Of all the legends connecting birds with this awful scene those relating to the little robin-redbreast of Europe are most familiar, for they have been celebrated in poems that everyone reads. The story is that the robin, pitying the pain of the cruel crown pressed on the Saviour’s brow, plucked away the sharpest of the thorns; and some say that before that moment the bird was all gray, and was bound to remain so until it had done something worthy of its having a red breast. A forgotten writer, whose lines have been preserved in an old volume of Notes and Queries, tells the story thus:
Bearing his cross, while Christ passed by forlorn,