In the “Passionate Pilgrim” (xxi.) there is an allusion:
“Everything did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.”
Beaumont and Fletcher, in “The Faithful Shepherdess” (v. 3), speak of
“The nightingale among the thick-leaved spring,
That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing
Whole nights away in mourning.”
Sir Thomas Browne[268] asks “Whether the nightingale’s sitting with her breast against a thorn 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?”[269] In the “Zoologist” for 1862 the Rev. A. C. Smith mentions “the discovery, on two occasions, of a strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the nightingale’s nest.” Another notion is that the nightingale never sings by day; and thus Portia, in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), says:
“I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.”
Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old superstition[270] that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself awake, lest the glow-worm should devour her. The classical fable[271] of the unhappy Philomela turned into a nightingale, when her sister Progne was changed to a swallow, has doubtless given rise to this bird being spoken of as she; thus Juliet tells Romeo (iii. 5):
“It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree;
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.”
Sometimes the nightingale is termed Philomel, as in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2, song):[272]
“Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby.”