The nightingale and the thorn

Chambers called the nightingale the bird of April, arriving in England about the middle of the month and at once breaking into full song. He noted the once common, and still not quite forgotten, popular error that the bird sang with its breast pressed against a thorn, a notion he thought might owe something to the classical tale of Philomela. Shakespeare’s Passionate Pilgrim has the forlorn nightingale leaning her breast against a thorn, and Sir Philip Sidney has her making a thorn her song-book.