AS is so often the case, it began with legend, when the robin’s bold frontal display was interpreted as blood. The compassionate little bird had perched on the shoulder of Christ on the cross, singing a melody to console him and trying to pull out the thorns of the crown that pierced his brow, thereby covering its face, neck, and breast in gore. This tale goes way back. It was related in the 6th century, if not sooner, by Kentigern, Bishop of Cumbria (COUNTRY LIFE, May 27), who is remembered there with six churches dedicated to him and four more in Scotland, including Glasgow Cathedral. Also known as Mungo, St Kentigern was famed for bringing back to life by prayer a robin so tame it was fed by hand—it had been killed by boys jealous of the affection it enjoyed.
The notion of the blood-stained robin was established and, in his late-14th-century poem The Parlement of Foules, Chaucer referred to ‘Robert redbreast’—the first recorded example of a bird given a human name (and hence of anthropomorphism) in the English language. Also well established was the belief in robin’s sympathetic nature. Babes in the Wood, an anonymous ballad first published in Norwich in 1595, based on a traditional tale and subsequently incorporated into pantomime, ended with the lines: ‘No burial these pretty babes/Of any man receives,/Till Robin Redbreast painfully/Did cover them with leaves.’
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 16 - 23, 2020 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 16 - 23, 2020 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
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We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
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After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
