The Robin by Stephen Moss

Author:Stephen Moss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

The same principle, incidentally, applies to swallows, though that has a stronger basis in meteorology, as the flying insects they hunt will generally stay closer to the ground when bad weather is due.

In another observation, though, Inwards noted that the ‘long and loud singing of robins in the morning denotes rain’. Such contradictory observations only reveal that most nature-based ways to forecast the weather are at best dubious, and at worst simply wrong.

Perhaps more usefully for our understanding of the deep cultural connection between us and robins, they feature in a wealth of nursery rhymes and children’s tales, of which the best known are ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ and ‘Babes in the Wood’.

‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ first appeared in print as recently as the mid-eighteenth century, in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book. Typical of many traditional children’s verses – designed to be recited aloud rather than read, and passed down from parent to child for generations – it consists of a series of simple, short, rhyming verses, each of which builds on the previous one to keep the same format:

Who killed Cock Robin?

I, said the Sparrow,

With my bow and arrow,

I killed Cock Robin.

Who saw him die?

I, said the Fly,

With my little eye,

I saw him die.

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