Many allegedly ancient traditions, beliefs and folk songs originated not in the Celtic past, but in the Victorian era. For example, the notion of the robin (Erithacus rubecula) as a feathery little bundle of winter solstice symbolism, red breast mirroring the sun in the dark winter months, is the kind of wishful thinking that longs for John Barleycorn and Hunting the Wren to be pre-Christian death and resurrection rituals. The robin is now synonymous with Christmas, but that’s a gift from the Victorians rather than the woad-daubed Celts. (Indeed, the very notion of a coherent Celtic past was itself a Victorian construct.) The Christmas-robin origin story is pleasingly festive, but not very pagan. Victorian postmen wore red jackets, giving them the nickname Redbreasts or Robins. On early Christmas cards (the first of which appeared in the mid-1840s), the Redbreast Posties were shown delivering Christmas cheer. In the 1880s, card artists roped in the namesake robin, which was often depicted perched on a red post box with a card clamped in its beak or claws. They’ve been a seasonal staple ever since. The little bird was an appealing subject for Victorian Christmas card designers, and robins delivering Christmas cards have long since replaced images of overworked and underpaid Victorian postmen, joining carol singers, snowscapes, sleighs, carriages, snowmen, and Father Christmases as Christmas card must-haves. But before all the neo-pagans desert this Substack in disgust, I should hastily add that there are many older traditions concerning robins, and their conspicuous presence in winter would have made them a natural subject for Christmas cards, even with the help of the postman. The bird has always been regarded with affection due to a combination of its lively, pugnacious behaviour (fuelled by a metabolism that gives it an astonishing 1,000 heartbeats per minute), its ball-like, toy-like shape when fluffed out in the winter, and its insistence on singing during the cold months when most other birds are sulking in silence. Author Emily Brontë called this song “wildly tender” in an 1837 poem:
Robins also appear in painted winter scenes from earlier centuries, their splash of red adding a dash of life and colour – like holly berries – to an otherwise grey or snow-washed world. So, it’s truer to say that the Victorians cemented the association on their Redbreast Christmas cards rather than created the association from scratch. The macho robinAffection for the robin, and its nature as a wild but relatable woodland spirit, seem at first glance to be captured in the names Robin Hood and Robin Goodfellow. However, it is not clear which came first, the folkloric figures or the bird’s name. Robin Hood is first named in William Langland’s poem The Vision of Piers Plowman, written around 1377, and Robin Goodfellow was first referenced by William Paston in 1489. In both cases, it’s likely that the authors were drawing the names from an older tradition. So, if I had to bet, I would say the names of the folkloric figures predate the name of the bird.
Which Robin came first?Before the 15th century, the robin was called either redbreast or ruddock (from the Old English ruddoc, a reference to the bird’s red or ruddy breast). ‘Robin’ and ‘Robinet’ were added as diminutives of the name Robert, at the same time as the wren became Jenny wren, the daw became Jackdaw, the pie became Magpie (as in Margaret), the tit became Tom tit, and the sparrow became Philip sparrow (the latter originating in a 1508 poem by John Skelton). The robin was firmly associated with a male persona at this time, just as the wren was archetypically female. There is perhaps a streak of sexism in this, arising from Christian folklore that says the treacherous wren sang her song (famously loud) and betrayed St Stephen’s hiding place (or, in some versions, Jesus’ hiding place). In contrast, the faithful robin visited a lowly cattle shed in the hours following Jesus’ birth. The fire had burned low, so the robin fanned it with his wings, resurrecting the flames and burning his breast in the process. In an alternative origins story, the robin tried to remove the nails from Jesus’ hands after the crucifixion, staining its breast red with blood. There are other versions of the fable. The robin burned his breast after taking water to Hell to relieve its suffering inmates. It is also said that the wren and the robin teamed up to bring fire, Prometheus-like, to humans. The poor wren burst into flames from the heat of the burden, and the robin swooped in to douse the flames, receiving its red breast in the process. The notion of the compassionate robin is further evident in the ballad Babes in the Wood, which first appeared in 1596 and is still sung in folk song circles. Here, the robin covers the bodies of the unfortunate babes with leaves and sings a song of mourning. Similarly, John Webster wrote in The White Devil of 1612,
The wren is making amends here (and elsewhere in folklore¹) for its faux pas with St Stephen/Jesus, but in general, the old trope – female bad, male good – is at work in these various legends. The female ‘Mag’-pie, similarly, is painted in a cynical light, as a thief and scold. Gendered stereotypes run through folklore with all the subtlety of a Carry On film.
Merry Christmas - here’s your dead RobinGardener’s friend and harbinger of deathIn the sixth century, St Serf of Culross in Fife had a robin companion that perched on his head or shoulder when he prayed. Serf began hand-feeding the bird. He was understandably upset when some of his disciples killed the robin, but Kentigern (aka St Mungo) brought the bird back to life. Mungo is associated with Glasgow, and the robin still features on the city’s coat of arms. Affection for the robin was reinforced by – or perhaps originated in – its relative tameness. It is referred to as “the tame ruddok” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1382 Parlement of Fowles. The bird has always been the gardener’s companion, its beady eye alert for wriggly food in the freshly-turned soil. Beyond the backyards and allotments, the robin’s worm-hungry attendance at freshly dug graves turned the folklore a bit sour, as the bird became a folkloric companion of the dead, but a fond mourner rather than a seeker of carrion. Consequently, a robin in the house is seen as a harbinger of death, but as a kind of guardian angel presiding over the person’s passing rather than a crow or raven cackling its consolation-free doom. Walter Scott captured these sentiments in his bleak and poignant poem Proud Maisie (1818):
There are numerous anecdotal tales of robins entering houses immediately before and after a death, but less morbid folklore asserts that a robin in the house is a sign of oncoming frost or snow. When they linger near a house or on its threshold or window ledges, it is a sign of rain. Sticking with weatherlore, a robin singing from a rooftop or high in a bush or tree heralds fine weather, while a song delivered from lower down or within a hedge means meteorological misery.
Britain’s national birdThe robin’s fondness for nesting in human spaces such as potting sheds and old boots and kettles has endeared it to us further. There are many tales of eccentric nesting sites, including a cannon-shot hole in the mast of the HMS Victory, against which Admiral Horatio Nelson had been leaning when he received his fatal wound at the Battle of Trafalgar. The mast was in Bushy House in London at the time of the robin’s nest building. Affection for the robin resulted in it being adopted as Britain’s national bird in 1960. This is not just sentimental attachment – the British robin is a subspecies, Erithacus rubecula melophilus (meaning “little red bird”, with the subspecies name “song-loving”) and is notably friendlier than other European robins, which are essentially shy woodland birds. Friendliness translates into good luck, hence old sayings such as “Good luck to you, good luck to me, good luck to every robin I see”. Somerset folklore asserts that anyone who steals robins’ eggs will develop crooked fingers. Writing in 1787, Francis Grose noted,
Similarly, Flora Thompson notes in Lark Rise (1939),
In the unusually harsh winter of 1947, many wild birds were captured for food, but in Norfolk, any robins blundering into the nets or quicklime were reverently buried rather than eaten. This respect is captured in rhymes such as this, first recorded in the late 18th century:
(Alternative second couplet: “The martin and the swallow are God’s mate and marrow”) William Blake summed up British national feeling for the bird in Auguries of Innocence (1803), with his lines,
However, putting a dampener on the pro-robin propaganda, Gilbert White notes in his Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne (1789),
But this is a lone voice of cynicism in a chorus of approval. And we can probably pin the affection and positivity down to a simple fact: The robin is still singing in the garden, red-breast aglow, when the world is feeling glum at the onset of winter. That boisterous optimism has won human affection since those far distant days when the robin made himself into an altruistic fire extinguisher to douse the combustible wren.
ReferencesMark Cocker and Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica, 2005 Quentin Cooper and Paul Sullivan, Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, 1994 Elizabeth Knowles (ed), The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, second edition, 2005 John Simpson and Jennifer Speake (eds), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, second edition, 1992 Angela Partington (ed), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, revised third edition, 1998 Gilbert White, ed. J.G. Wood, The Natural History of Selborne (1860 edition) Richard Inwards, Weather Lore, 4th edition, 1945 If you’ve enjoyed this article, please share it with your fellow readers via this button:If you haven’t already, you could support my writing by subscribing, with free or paying options: And as the sound of a boiling kettle is music to my ears, you might consider buying me a one-off or regular cuppa… 1 The wren is most definitely male in the Irish and Manx tradition of Hunting the Wren on St Stephen’s Day, as it is heralded “The wren, the wren, the king of the birds”, echoing the legend in which the wren became king after flying higher than any other bird (by hitching a ride on the eagle’s back). The wren as King and the wren as Jenny play separate roles in folklore. You could argue that the King is Celtic and Jenny is English, but that would be mere surmise). You’re currently a free subscriber to A Stranger In Your Country. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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