It’s often easy to overlook what we see every day, or at least regularly. Perhaps that’s why we overlook our humble garden birds in favour of majestic eagles or mischievous ravens as our favourite birds.
Yet the commonality of these small, yet often noisy, garden birds explains why there is a comparative wealth of folklore about them. Compared to other birds, there’s a plethora to choose from. Death omens, cheeky tricksters in myth, and stars of nursery rhymes – these birds do it all!
I’m talking about the European varieties of these garden birds since I’m in Britain. They’re all relatively common in British gardens so you’ve got more chance to see one!
Let’s explore the folklore of blackbirds, sparrows, wrens, and robins.
Common Blackbirds
We’ll start with the common blackbird (Turdus merula), sometimes called the Eurasian blackbird, one of Britain’s songbirds.
You may be familiar with the sudden blackbird alarm calls at dusk, even when there’s no obvious reason. A French tale offers a possible explanation, in which the blackbird was originally white. A magpie told it where it could find a cavern full of treasure, but it needed to offer services to the Prince of Riches before it could get near the gold. The blackbird found the cavern but skipped the part involving the Prince of Riches, and dove into the gold. A huge fire-breathing creature reared up out of the gold, and it chased the blackbird. The blackbird escaped, but not before its feathers were charred and turned black (Woolf 2022: 17).
I’ve talked about the practice of ornithomancy, which recommended young women to pay attention to the first bird they saw on Valentine’s Day. This would dictate the career of their future partner. In this form of divination, blackbirds indicated clergymen (Woolf 2022: 18).
Despite this link with clergymen, blackbirds enjoy an ambivalent status within Christianity. St Kevin of Glendalough apparently remained so still in prayer that birds sat on his shoulders and hands. On one occasion, a blackbird apparently made a nest in his palm, and the saint remained still until the eggs hatched and the baby birds fledged (Woolf 2022: 19).
By comparison, the Devil apparently took the form of a blackbird when he tried to tempt St Benedict. He did so by fluttering in front of the saint in blackbird form. St Benedict made the sign of the cross and the blackbird left. But St Benedict was suddenly seized by licentious thoughts about a woman he’d seen. Realising the Devil’s influence, he rolled in nettles and brambles to overcome his overwhelming desire for pleasure.
Blackbirds in Nursery Rhymes
You’re probably also familiar with the nursery rhyme, ‘Sing a song of sixpence’, which involves twenty-four blackbirds being baked in a pie. In the medieval era, cooks hid live birds under a pastry crust just before it was served at a banquet. The blackbirds would thus spring forth, surprising (and apparently delighting) the guests (Woolf 2022: 19).
This nursery rhyme is as open to wild interpretations as any other. People try to insist it refers to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, with the blackbirds representing monks. The first verse appeared in print in c.1744, although it mentions naughty boys in the pie, rather than blackbirds (Opie 1997: 394). It’s unlikely the rhyme has anything to do with Henry VIII.
We also talk a lot about apotropaic practices on the blog. But it seems even blackbirds were believed to use them. At one stage, people believed blackbirds wove myrtle into their nests to ward off witchcraft (Woolf 2022: 18).
House Sparrows
Sparrows are one of those garden birds that almost eagerly moved into towns and cities alongside humans. Our language reflects it. In Wales, they’re called the ‘aderyn y to’, or ‘bird of the roof’. In the Cockney dialect, a long-standing male friend is ‘my old cock sparrow’. Tree sparrows are much rarer than the more ubiquitous house sparrow (Passer domesticus) (Woolf 2022: 189).
Here in the north east, they’re known as spuggies. You might remember ‘Spuggy’ being a character nickname in Newcastle-set teen TV show Byker Grove.
Despite their diminutive size, people caught them for food at one stage. The birds were even sacred to Aphrodite thanks to their breeding capacity (Woolf 2022: 190).
They also don’t come out of Christian stories very well. In one folk tale, birds tried to lure the guards away from Jesus’ hiding place in the Garden of Gethsemane, but the sparrows gave it away. Swallows later pulled the nails from the cross but the sparrows brought them back (Woolf 2022: 191). It’s worth noting in other stories that the crossbill apparently tried to pull out the nails. This caused the distinctive crossing over of the top and bottom parts of its beak (Woolf 2022: 72).
It’s unclear what sparrows did to earn such a treacherous reputation, especially when they were used in augury, the practice of divination using birds. According to legend, seeing nine sparrows being eaten by a snake was an omen that Troy wouldn’t fall for nine years (Woolf 2022: 191).
Wrens
The wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) is a common bird in the British Isles, and you can see them all year round.
Wrens were once subject to the horrid practice of the Wren Hunt at Christmas. The practice predominantly occurs in Ireland, England, Wales, and France, with only a single recorded instance in Scotland. In some places, the hunt took place during the festive period, in others, the hunt fell on a specific day. This might be St Stephen’s Day (December 26), Valentine’s Day, or Twelfth Night. Gangs of boys would range around the local area, beating hedges until the wrens emerged, before killing them (Armstrong 1959).
In France, the bird was hung on a pole and paraded through town (Armstrong 1959: 144). In parts of Wales, four men carried the wren in a box supported by four poles, though in some places, the wren was still alive during the proceedings (Armstrong 1959: 151). Women might present ribbons to the wren. Surprisingly, a belief persisted that you shouldn’t steal from a wren’s nest. If you did, you’d suffer ill health for the rest of your life (Armstrong 1959: 152).
Why did people do this?
One Irish explanation for the hunt was that a bird woke St Stephen’s guards as he was trying to escape (Armstrong 1959: 141). Elsewhere, people blamed a wren for waking the Danes so the Irish couldn’t mount a surprise attack. The Danes might be swapped for Cromwell’s forces or King William’s army (Armstrong 1959: 160). It doesn’t seem to matter what the combat was, the wren was always blamed for alerting the enemy. People even claimed the wren gave away Jesus’ hiding place, something also ascribed to sparrows.
A slightly different explanation for the practice refers to Scottish New Year shooting customs, in which men and boys tried to kill something before sunrise on New Year’s Day to bring themselves good fortune. Because the size of the kill didn’t matter, the wren may have been a popular choice due to their numbers (Armstrong 1959: 144).
On the Isle of Man, a legend claimed a fairy lured the men of the island to an early death in the sea. To escape persecution, she took the form of a wren. Someone cast a spell on her, which doomed her to take the form every New Year’s Day, and to be killed by humans every year (Ingersoll 1923: 119).
Either way, the general prohibition on killing wrens throughout the year was suspended for this single day. If you killed a wren in Wales at any other time of year, your house would burn down (Trevelyan 1909: 113).
The Wren and the Eagle
But the wren is also the cheeky star of an old fable which also involves an eagle. The birds were trying to decide who to crown as their king, with the eagle and wren both vying for the title. To decide it once and for all, the two birds needed to see who could fly the highest.
The eagle flew upwards in great, wide circles, while the wren went straight up. The wren tired, and settled on the eagle’s back, enjoying the ride high above the ground. Eventually the eagle also tired, and called out, asking the wren where he was. The wren shouted back that he was above the eagle, and the wren won the match (Douglas 1901).
In some versions of the story, the eagle attacks the wren, explaining the wren’s stubby tail. In other versions, the wren gets disqualified, explaining why it never flies higher than a hawthorn now (Woolf 2022: 223).
European Robins
It seems only right to end with robins which were often associated with wrens in folklore. The story of ‘The Marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren’, told in verse form, perhaps helps prolong this association. This refers to the European robin, or Erithacus rubecula.
In the British Isles, the robin enjoyed a degree of respect and reverence from humans. Treating a robin badly invited disaster into your home. If you broke a robin’s wing or leg, you’d likewise suffer a broken limb. Stealing their eggs in Wales left you open to punishment by witches or even the Devil (Trevelyan 1909: 113). Such was the prohibition against killing them that people believed anyone who did kill a robin would be betrayed by their hand, which wouldn’t stop shaking (Armstrong 1959: 167).
We can find the prohibition against harming robins and wrens in a variety of sayings. In Devon, it ran, “Kill a robin or a wren/Never prosper, boy or man”. Meanwhile, in Essex, it said, “The robin and the redbreast,/The robin and the wren,/If ye tak’ out of the nest/Ye’ll never thrive again” (Armstrong 1959: 168).
Robins and Death
Despite this apparent reverence for the robin, people in Rutland and Leicestershire considered it bad luck for a robin to enter the house. In Suffolk, this was a death omen, while a robin singing at the door in Wales also heralded illness or death. Simply hearing robin song in Buckinghamshire was believed to foretell death, and elsewhere it foretold doom if an invalid heard robin song (Armstrong 1959: 169). If a robin tapped on a person’s window three times, it meant they would die (Henderson 1879: 124). According to one anecdote, a robin pecked at the window of T. E. Lawrence shortly before he died in 1935 (Woolf 2022: 180).
There’s also a link between robins and the dead via their apparent care for the deceased. In the story of The Babes in the Wood, it is apparently a robin who finds the dead children and covers their bodies with leaves. This echoes an older belief that robins would cover the face of dead bodies with moss (Armstrong 1959: 173).
In Brittany, people believed robins would sing laments near bodies until burial (Armstrong 1959: 174).
Other Robin Omens
Robins could also apparently predict the weather. In East Anglia, robins singing in hedgerows predicted bad weather, while robins singing on a barn roof meant warm weather. Likewise, in Northumberland, people thought birds singing from high trees also meant fine weather. In Scotland, seeing a robin regularly in the autumn around your home foretold an early winter (Armstrong 1959: 170).
What do we make of the folklore of these garden birds?
These four garden birds are all year-round residents of the British Isles, making them a common sight in gardens and parks. In the case of the robin, some commentators suggest their ubiquity explains the friendly relationship between the bird and humans. Their small stature also makes them pretty lousy as a meal for people, thus sparing them from the fate meted out to larger birds.
Their appearance in Christian stories is perhaps more surprising, as there is little about sparrow behaviour to explain their treachery towards Jesus. That said, robins find kinship with St Kentigern, while the link between St Kevin and blackbirds suggests a holy fondness for birds similar to that of St Cuthbert and his eider ducks.
The use of these garden birds as omens is surprising given how common a sight they are. Yet they appear as the omen based on their behaviour, not simply by appearing. Given it’s less likely for a robin to peck on your window, you could see one every day for a year and not have this omen appear.
Which of these garden birds is your favourite?
References
Armstrong, Edward A. (1959), Folklore of Birds, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Douglas, George (1901), Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales, New York: A. L. Burt Co.
Henderson, William (1879), Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, London: W. Satchell, Peyton and Co.
Ingersoll, Ernest (1923), Birds in legend, fable and folklore, New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
Opie, Iona and Peter (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woolf, Jo (2022), Britain’s Birds: A Treasury of Fact, Fiction & Folklore, London: National Trust Books (affiliate link).
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There’s a similar story about crow from Siberia as the colour of the Blackbird, only a Raven. Starting with all creatures being as white as the snow. Owl and Raven were friends. They sat around a fire and Raven sees wood popping and ashes marking the snow. He takes a stick and decorates Owls wings with patterns. Owl had a go with Raven but Owl’s art was way better and he didn’t want Raven to have better art on him, so waved his wings rising the ash and covering Raven from top to toe. They ceased being friends after that and Owl began to hunt at night. (Riodan, James; The Sun Maidenand the Crescent Moon, 1989). I was told as a child that the red breast from the Robin was from it tried to remove the crown of thorns from Christ. Not sure if that was a literary tale or folklore.
Great episode.