Fletcher speaks of
“The bird forlorn,
That singeth with her breast against a thorn.”
And Pomfret, writing towards the close of the seventeenth century, says:
“The first music of the grove we owe
To mourning Philomel’s harmonious woe;
And while her grief in charming notes express’d,
A thorny bramble pricks her tender breast.”
The origin of such an odd notion it is not easy to ascertain, but I suspect Sir Thomas Browne was not far from the truth when he pointed to the fact that the Nightingale frequents thorny copses, and builds her nest amongst brambles on the ground. He inquires “whether it be any more than that she placeth some prickles on the outside of her nest, or roosteth in thorny, prickly places, where serpents may least approach her?”[13]
In an article upon this subject published in the “Zoologist” for 1862 (p. 8029), the Rev. A. C. Smith has narrated the discovery on two occasions of a strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the Nightingale’s nest. It cannot be doubted, however, that this was the result of accident rather than design; and Mr. Hewitson, in his “Eggs of British Birds,” has adduced two similar instances in the case of the Hedge Sparrow.