It is noted in Gray’s Shakspeare that, according to the oldest traditions, if the Robin finds the dead body of a human being, he will cover the face at least with Moss and leaves.
“Cov’ring with Moss the dead’s unclosed eye
The little Redbreast teacheth charitie.”—Drayton’s ‘Owl.’
The Wren is also credited with employing plants for acts of similar charity. In Reed’s old plays, we read—
“Call for the Robin Redbreast and the Wren,
Since o’er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flow’rs do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.”
A writer in one of our popular periodicals[15] gives another quaint quotation expressive of the tradition, from Stafford’s ‘Niobe dissolved into a Nilus’: “On her (the Nightingale) smiles Robin in his redde livvrie; who sits as a coroner on the murthred man; and seeing his body naked, plays the sorrie tailour to make him a Mossy rayment.”
The Missel or Missel-Thrush is sometimes called the Mistletoe-Thrush, because it feeds upon Mistletoe berries. Lord Bacon, in Sylva Sylvarum, refers (as already noted) to an old belief that the seeds of Mistletoe will not vegetate unless they have passed through the stomach of this bird.