The Nightingale

"The Nightingale" is the title of several songs. Our version began life as a Celtic folk song.

An alternate version of the lyrics speaks of the young couple kissing sweetly and walking arm in arm like brother and sister. Then it talks about the maid asking the soldier about marriage and he replies that he has a sweet wife back at home, but that if he sees the maid again, it will be in the spring. Hmm. I like our lyrics better.

One phrase in the song is a little archaic. The soldier says it's time to "give o'er." To give over means to stop; to call it a day.

The nightingale itself is a rather plain looking brown bird with a reddish tail. It can be found in Europe and southwest Asia. It is not naturally found in the Americas. Although its name means "night songstress," it is the unpaired male nightingale who does the singing at night, presumably to find a mate. Nightingales also sing during the day.

Nightingales have enchanted poets and other writers for centuries. The bird became symbolic of love, and its song has long been interpreted as a lament. The poets Shakespeare, Milton, Keats and Shelley all wrote about nightingales. Nightingales were often seen as poets themselves, or muses to poets.

Shelley wrote, in his “A Defense of Poetry": "A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”

There is a website where you can type any word and have it "translated" into "Nightingale." Try it! http://www.nightingale-song.com/