The Thrush and the Nightingale is a MIDDLE ENGLISH
poem from the last quarter of the 13th century.
Written in the West Midlands, the work is a
DEBATE POEM in which the two birds argue the
merits of women. As such, it is of the same “beast
debate” genre as the earlier OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE
and CLANVOWE’s 14th-century Cuckoo and
the Nightingale.
The poem is made up of 32 six-line stanzas,
rhyming aabccb. The a and c lines are tetrameter
(four feet), while the b lines are trimeter (three feet).
The Nightingale may be chosen as advocate of one
point of view because of her conventional association
with love or, as Owen and Owen suggest (1971,
271), her connection, in medieval BESTIARIES, with
motherhood and thus the tender aspects associated
with women. The Thrush is chosen, perhaps, because
the beauty of its song rivals that of the
Nightingale, making him a worthy opponent.
The first line of the poem, “Somer is comen
with love to towne” (Owen and Owen 1971, 272),
echoes the well-known HARLEY LYRIC, LENTEN IS
COME WITH LOVE TO TOUNE. As in that poem and
conventionally in medieval poetry, the return of
spring is harbinger of new thoughts of love. The
poem’s speaker, having introduced the idea of love,
abruptly introduces the poem’s subject: He once
heard two birds arguing—the Nightingale contending
that women are admirable, the Thrush
that they are despicable.
Until the end of the poem, it seems a kind of
love debate: The Thrush, apparently male, sounds
like a wronged lover who wants nothing more to
do with women. And for most of the debate, the
Thrush has the best of the argument. Each of his
points is supported by a concrete example—Adam
and Samson, led astray by wicked women, along
with Alexander, Gawain, and Constantine. The
Nightingale defends women by discussing general
“female” nurturing qualities, and seems to be getting
the worst of the argument until the end, when
she gives her single culminating example, the Virgin
Mary. The poem shifts from a love poem to a
religious one. As the epitome of comfort and nurture,
the Virgin trumps all of the Thrush’s negative
examples, and he admits defeat, vowing never
again to disparage woman, after which he leaves
the forest in shame and a kind of self-imposed
exile.
The poem is fairly close in style to conventional
French and Latin debate poems, in which arguments
are given in self-contained stanzas. The sentiments
expressed are quite conventional. The
poem has often been compared with The Owl and
the Nightingale, and it is possible that the earlier
poem influenced The Thrush and the Nightingale.
However, as Gardner points out (1971, 266), the
later poem has “no connective narrative, few personal
touches, and no humor”—all significant
characteristics of The Owl and the Nightingale. It
seems likely that the relationship between the two
poems is not as close as was once thought.
Bibliography
Gardner, John. The Alliterative Morte Arthure, The
Owl and the Nightingale, and Five Other Middle
English Poems: In a Modernized Version with
Comments on the Poem and Notes. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1971.
Owen, Lewis J., and Nancy H. Owen. Middle English
Poetry: An Anthology. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1971.