SOURCE: Perryman, Judith. “Lore, Life, and Logic in The Owl and the Nightingale.” Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters 14, no. 2 (1984): 97-109.

[In the following essay, Perryman explores the debate in The Owl and the Nightingale by focusing on the traditional characteristics associated with these birds, their respective methods of argumentation, and the poem's overall concern with contention, arbitration, and judgment.]

The early thirteenth-century Middle English work The Owl and the Nightingale, the first of a number of bird debates in English, is an outstanding and interesting poem, none the less because there has been so much controversy about its meaning.¹ Though the interpretation of it may be troublesome, its humour and lively argument give it great appeal. The birds as they reveal themselves as characters are at once infuriating and likeable, cantankerous and restrained, timid, angry and exultant. They seem like squabbling children who are to be understood and controlled rather than heard and respected, and who need a mature mind to intervene and reconcile them. That is the role of the elusive Nicholas of Guildford, possible author of the poem, who is the man with whom the final judgment will rest. He receives high praise in the poem for his wisdom (11. 1755-56) and diplomacy, for his hatred of vice, and for his lack of rashness in dealing with it (11. 192-93).² The only point about which almost every critic seems to be agreed is that the poem is a plea for the professional preferment of Nicholas because of his capacity as arbitrator. But what he has to arbitrate about and what is the precise theme of the poem has been the subject of many varying opinions.

There are a number of important issues raised in the poem that were of current interest. They include, as Lumiansky puts it:

… love, honest and illicit, and marriage … new love poetry and the traditional didactic religious poetry … astrology and witchcraft … new gentle preaching as opposed to the old thundering sermon … ascendancy of wisdom over strength and … the folly of warfare.

(p. 415)³

The drawback in looking for what Nicholas' judgment might be on any of these topics is that the points in the argument are presented so murkily by the birds, and the level of debate is so low.

The various views expressed by the birds in the course of discussing these questions have led to a number of other ideas both about the subject of Nicholas' judgment and about which bird he will favour. It has been suggested that the debate may be a contest between gloom and joy, or a confrontation between philosophy and art, orthodoxy and heresy, the cleric and the minstrel, or practicalism and idealism, to name a few.⁴

The most convincing interpretation to date to encompass in a satisfying way not only the variety of views and topics covered in the poem but also its tone is that developed by Kathryn Hume in the last chapters of her book The Owl and the Nightingale.⁵ She looks upon the poem as a burlesque satire on human contentiousness, a theme stated early on in the poem in the lines:

“Ac lete we awei þos cheste,
Vor suiche wordes boþ unwerste
& fo we on mid riȝte dome,
Mid faire worde & mid ysome.
þeȝ we ne bo at one acorde
We muȝe bet mid fayre worde,
Witute cheste & bute fiȝte,
Plaidi mid foȝe & mid riȝte;
& mai hure eiþer wat hi wile
Mid riȝte segge & mid sckile.”

(11. 177-86)

“But let us cast off this strife, for words such as these are of no avail, and let us begin with rightful judgment with gracious and peacable words. Although we are not in agreement we shall be able better, with gracious words and without strife or conflict, to plead with propriety and justness. And let each of us do what she wishes with truthful speech and with reason.”

This theme is consistently borne out to the poem's inconclusive end.⁶

In presenting this theme through talking creatures the poet had not only the natural qualities of these two familiar birds to call on to provide the basis of the characters but also the traditional lore explaining the habits and significance of each. Indeed, he could not ignore this lore. He either had to allude to and build on the known connotations of the birds or to counteract them before he could have the freedom to establish a new identity for each. This animal lore comprised a set of assumptions, beliefs, and interpretations, sometimes conflicting, derived from different sources. These sources can be classified roughly as bestiaries, beast fables, encyclopaedic works on natural history, together with Isidore of Seville's book of etymologies, and certain classical writings, in particular Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The traditions of the nightingale were predominantly favourable; those of the owl on the whole unfavourable; but there were several different traditions for each bird.⁷ The nightingale, according to the courtly love tradition, was a bird who sang of joy and of the spring. The contrary idea, deriving ultimately from the story of the rape of Philomena, that the nightingale's song was one of lament and even death, is not alluded to in The Owl and the Nightingale. In lyrics the nightingale is the bird who sings of love in the spring. The notion of the nightingale as a symbol of the amorous kind of courtly love was taken further, probably owing to the fable of the nightingale whose song formed the link between a man and his married lover (alluded to in lines 1049-62), whereby the nightingale became, in some contexts, a symbol of adultery. The beauty of her song, surpassing all musical instruments, along with Isidore's etymology of the nightingale's name luscinia as the “singer heralding the light of dawn”, made the way open for a more spiritual view of the bird. In a tenth-century Latin beast epic, Escape of a Certain Captive, the nightingale sings of Christ's passion and the joys of eternal bliss.⁸ Just later than the date of The Owl and the Nightingale, in two Anglo-Latin poems of the mid-thirteenth century, the nightingale sings of mystical love and joy and is portrayed as a type of the devout human soul.⁹ Except for the lament tradition the author of The Owl and the Nightingale draws on all the assumptions about the nightingale familiar from its lore, of lust, love, joy, and spiritual longing.

The owl was by reputation a more ignoble bird. In one classical tradition she was a bird of darkness with a hateful voice, haunting sepulchres, a sign of woe and death. The owl was also an attribute of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, from which the Christian fathers reinterpreted the bird as a symbol of idolatry representing the useless wisdom of the heathen faith. Most bestiaries took the owl to be a symbol of the Jews dwelling in darkness and avoiding the true faith, while the small birds who mobbed the owl represented Christian souls. A more favourable view of the owl to be found in some bestiaries looks on the bird as Christ seeking out man's soul in the darkness of his sin. For the owl, just as for the nightingale, the author of The Owl and the Nightingale appears to call upon all the traditions, omitting only the one specific link with the Jews.

On beginning the poem, then, the medieval reader or listener would have come with assumptions about the nightingale that were favourable and, since the pejorative view predominated, expectations of meeting an evil owl. Yet, from the outset, we see that these clear-cut expectations will not be fulfilled. Both birds are bursting with rage and malice, and the nightingale in particular, perched as she is in the green and flowering thicket, singing more beautifully than musical instruments, jars with this conventionally delightful setting when she begins to berate the owl with such rancour. Later we will see the nightingale laying claim to her traditional role of bringer of joy, hope, love, and mystical yearning. But her behaviour on first acquaintance belies her good reputation. The beautiful song turns out to be a vicious verbal assault on the owl which, while it may help to define our approach to the owl, at the same time reflects on the character of the nightingale. What the nightingale has to say about the owl's habits, appearance, and ugly voice confirms at a very superficial level our expectations about that bird's evil nature. But however appropriately used of the owl the word “foul” coming four times in the lines (11. 31-40), and another seven times not far on (11. 87-104), and in two further lines again (11. 124 and 130), interspersed with “loth / loathly” in 11. 32, 71, 72, 91, and 115, from the nightingale's mouth cannot but detract from the nightingale herself, depicting her as more a bird of hate than a bird of love.

A similar rebound effect is achieved at a later point with the owl. The owl's portrayal as a repulsive bad-tempered creature does not contradict expectations in the same way as the nightingale's portrayal does, but as the debate goes on the owl pretends to sterner moral stuff than the nightingale. She strongly condemns the springtime sexual activities of both men and animals, naming specifically the nightingale. Yet, the terms in which she denounces lechery in no less than thirty-six lines (11. 487-522) despite her sanctimonious posture, betray a distinctly prurient mind, which reveals itself again in her remarks about the privy (11. 591-96).

So the reader comes to the poem with expectations based on the bird lore which at the very start have to be adjusted, and throughout the poem reassessed. The debate begins, though, by dealing with much more mundane and realistically bird-like qualities than any ideas which the owl or the nightingale might symbolise. This in itself dispels any lofty notions about the birds which their lore might suggest. The birds open their dispute with attacks on one another's appearance and habits, which as debating points are paltry quibbles, and which the low level of argument does nothing to redeem. At this stage the charges made by the birds are so subjective and emotional as almost to preclude rational argument. Charges such as the nightingale makes against the owl of unnaturalness, ugliness, uncleanness, and the so-called vices of large size, strength, and shunning the light would in any case be hard to refute by logic. Nevertheless the birds profess to be arguing with reason and genuinely seeking the truth.

In structure the debate moves from the trivial to the serious. The birds attack one another first about the superficial qualities of their appearance, habits, and song. This clash leads to claims by the birds about their practical worth, that is to say their usefulness, and then to arguments about their moral worth, and finally to assertions about their spiritual value to man. All this sounds very important, and one would expect that the weightier the subject taken up the deeper the treatment would become. But the conduct of the argument, in which character defamation takes precedence over logical reasoning and the contestants want to win at all costs rather than to seek the truth as they claim to be doing, continually debases the affair, however sound some of the points the birds make may be. For instance, the owl betrays a greater interest in vengeance than in truth when she says Ich wille bon of þe awreke; / & lust hu ich con me bitelle / Mid riȝte soþe witute spelle (11. 262-64): “I will be avenged on you; and listen to how I can defend myself with straightforward truth without circumlocution.” Although many cogent points are made in the course of the debate relating to rival views about central issues of the day, as when the nightingale maintains that man should look heavenward with joy while the owl urges that he should weep for his sins, the birds themselves as champions of one or other view do nothing but undermine their own position.

Their masquerade as bold warriors is a case in point. The illustrations the birds hope to impress us with are either inappropriate or they misfire. Can we take seriously a nightingale who, from her safe thicket, thinks she has courage enough to face a wild boar (11. 407-08)? Is the owl who follows soldiers on their campaigns not more of an image of death than of valour (11. 385-90)? She hardly cuts a heroic figure, either, by comparing herself to a hare (11. 373-84). Moreover her choice of the hare, which is a familiar symbol of fecundity and lust, does little to advance her cause against the nightingale whom she castigates later for inciting amorous love.

There are several debating strategies which the birds use in conducting their verbal battle, and the way they handle these strategies is riddled with flaws. Sometimes a point is acknowledged and poorly answered; a fault may be tacitly defended through an attack on its contrary; a weakness may be acclaimed as a virtue; a point may be denied without argument; or the defender may denounce the identical vice in the other bird.

A point acknowledged by the owl is her night flying. But she presents a very weak case for its defence. She professes to be safeguarding from her talons the small birds who would mob her in the day (11. 265-308). For one thing this is clearly not true. As the poet later reveals (11. 1707-09) she is, in fact, afraid. For another, the owl is now using as a defence one of the very points for which she disparaged the nightingale (11. 150-51), that she would not fly out of her protective cover.

Turning the tables on the opponent with an attack on the contrary quality we see in the owl's response to the charge of size and strength. The owl scoffs at the nightingale for her puny frame with … þu nart strong, / Ne þu nart þicke, ne þu nart long (11. 579-80): “You are not strong, you are not stout, you are not tall.”

The proud adoption as a virtue of the quality attacked we find in the nightingale's answer to the charge of physical weakness. With ingenious sophistry she takes “strength” to include mental powers. Her “strength”, she says, is cunning, which can always conquer brute force (11. 755-60).

A point denied by the owl is having an ugly song. In trying to counter this attack in all ways at once the owl succeeds in none. Her voice, she retorts, is melodious. It is loud and strong like the great hunting horn. But we can hardly accept this as emitting such mellifluous notes as the harp or pipe, instruments rivalled by the nightingale's song. Then, from her doubtful premise, the owl resoundingly concludes Ich singe bet þan þu dest (1. 321): “I sing better than you do.” Yet, as if aware of her weak position in calling the nightingale's song “thin chatter” she quickly shifts ground. However beautiful the nightingale's voice might be, she says, it palls through excess.

The method of attacking the same quality as the indictment, like a game of tit for tat, is used with particular ineptitude by the owl over the matter of uncleanness. She censures the nightingale for uncleanness too, and defends herself against the charge in two incompatible ways, by both justifying and denying it. She accuses the nightingale of choosing an unclean site for her nest, which is, of course a habitat natural to the bird. At the same time she claims that the uncleanness of her own young in fouling their nest is perfectly natural and right. But then, with brazen inconsistency, she explains that the shape of her nest ensures that it is not fouled at all.

Another way of imputing the same fault to the other bird is to call it by a different name, using a euphemism, as the nightingale does for deception. The tricks of the owl she calls “treachery”, those of herself “clever cunning”.

When the dispute moves on from natural qualities to include philosophical and religious topics the birds' debating incompetence persists. They shift ground, they change definitions, they make contradictory points, and they tell lies, all in an attempt to gain supremacy at all costs. The nightingale may be more slippery and the owl more blunt in keeping with their physical powers, but for scant clarity of thought and poor command of logic there is little to choose between them. This does not mean that the discussions want interest, or that they lack valid points. They certainly present various views current about important topics for the reader's appraisal, but not in a way which reveals the author as partisan on any of the subjects, and still less as siding with one or other bird. When the nightingale thinks that the owl has won the round of uncleanliness and would now have to fight “against truth and justice” (1. 668), we cannot agree with her. Nor can we concur with the way the owl judges the nightingale's long speech with “she spoke well at first, and came to grief at the end” (11. 1512-14), when in fact it begins with a defence of love and ends with a condemnation of adultery.

The styles of argument conducted by the birds and their characters are established in the context of their natural qualities. Compared with animals in bestiaries and most beast fables these two birds are very naturalistic. They are unmistakably an owl and a nightingale. One cannot forget that they live in the wood on the periphery of the human world, that they nest, hatch eggs, catch prey, sing, and fly. Their normal animal characteristics do not square with their inflated notions of their worth, and this incongruity at once diminishes their stature and displays the birds as objects of satire. It also gave the poet scope to make original use of the bird lore as an important contribution to his treatment of his theme of human contentiousness.

As the poem develops the bird lore which regards the birds as signs to men or symbols, comes more and more into focus and provides the impetus for much of the dispute. Neither bird simply tries to uphold the in bono meaning for itself and the in malo meaning for the other, but, as is typical of their immature notion of debate, they try to accommodate every quality to their own posture of virtue.

Take the question of love. The owl selects the most unfavourable aspect of the lore of the nightingale and accuses her of inciting women to lust and encouraging general wantonness. The nightingale, while denying the specific charge of causing lechery, is nevertheless prepared to excuse the vice in maidens and her own role in arousing it. She also lays claim to incompatible traditions of her song of love, asserting that she sings of both secular and mystical love. On secular love she is equally contradictory for her song, she says, reflects the joyous love of a virtuous wife for her husband, and at the same time, by its brevity, it teaches young girls how transitory love is. This is at odds again with her assertion that by its beauty her song reminds man of things eternal. For the owl there was no lore of love, but her gloom and doom reputation makes her condemn the joys and speak only of unhappy wives with cruel husbands. As a corollary to this she goes on to condone adultery by ill-treated wives, a view which undermines her pompous moral stand on lust. Even stranger, she appears to hope for the tyrant's death, as the remark An for heom bidde Cristis ore, / þa þe lauedi sone aredde / An hire sende betere ibedde (11. 1568-70), “And for them I pray for Christ's mercy that he will soon rescue the lady and send her a better bed-fellow”, seems to imply. This is a somewhat questionable remedy, eroding still further the owl's self-righteous pose.

Thus both birds take a distinctly dubious moral stance on lust and adultery. The nightingale may be right that in condemning wantonness, a sin of the flesh, one might be prompted by the greater sin of pride, a sin of the spirit, but this clearly does not justify the lesser sin or the excuses made for it. The fallacious views of the birds on this question, which is theologically clear-cut, reduce the credibility of all their other ideas and make their pretensions of conferring spiritual benefits on mankind highly suspect.

A more problematic philosophical question, the matter of foreknowledge, gets extensive treatment by these argumentative birds with their unreliable opinions and evasive ways. Here again the poet draws on bird lore and has each bird trying to turn it to her own advantage. The nightingale puts the owl's reputation for prophecy in the worst possible light. The power brings misery by foretelling disaster while being useless in preventing it. It is a kind of witchcraft, the nightingale claims. A hint of the owl's link with pagan practices had been made very early on when the nightingale taunted the owl about her eyes which looked “just as if they were painted with woad” (1.76). And now (11. 1325-30), by comparing the owl with her astrology to an ape, a familiar image of the devil, and frequently put with the owl to pair the worst animal with the worst bird, the nightingale is denouncing the owl not simply as an ordinary ill-doer but as an apostate.

These two major topics in the poem, adultery and prophecy, give rise to the two violent incidents that are thrown up in the debate, the deaths of the birds, which they each try to suggest on their own behalf are some kind of redemptive sacrifice. Some critics take these two deaths as keys to the meaning of the poem, that the owl as a scarecrow is, in fact, here a symbol of Christ crucified, and that the nightingale torn apart by wild horses in the fable (1. 1062) is, in this poem, a symbol of lust. But neither symbolic value can be upheld. Both ideas draw on the bird lore, yet this, as we have seen, can never be taken at its face value in this poem since it is always part of the birds' specious arguing. According to the nightingale the scarecrow owl is pelted with sticks through hatred and fear of her prophecies. Together with the repellent description of the scarecrow (11. 1111-38) this cancels out the owl's presumptuous allusion to Christ's sacrifice. Any possible sparks of divinity which we might want to detect in this ill-tempered bird have already been extinguished by the frequent comparisons of the owl with a worthless, churlish, or wicked man during the course of the poem. Yet the nightingale's presentation of a wholly evil owl cannot be sustained in full either, owing to the owl's undeniable usefulness to man. Equally the nightingale's ludicrously grandiose notion that her death brought some kind of salvation can be discounted. If practical, moral, or spiritual value to man are the criteria, then the nightingale's death was irrelevant, even though it was said to protect the race of nightingales thereafter. The owl, of course, picks on the pejorative connotation of the nightingale's death as being the just deserts of seduction. And again this extreme verdict is redressed by the beneficial effect the nightingale's death had in bringing the jealous knight to justice.

It is clear then that the symbolic values of the deaths deriving from the lore carry no weight in this poem. The quarrelsome nature of the birds, which has already annulled their traditional meaning in relation to other topics, sees to that. Their irrational pugnacity has set the discordant tone throughout, and we can agree with Kathryn Hume that the deaths serve together as an image of the destructive consequences of hate. They are an inevitable and pointless by-product of the quarrel rather than its direct result, for it is not the issues which count here, it is the squabble itself.

As Hume puts it, the deaths show:

… the evil results of quarrelling. The grim spirit of altercation often demands the death of one contestant. Man kills because that is part of quarrelling, even when he gains nothing from the birds' deaths. Disasters are not warded off by crucifying the Owl, or adultery by dismembering the Nightingale. I interpret the birds' slaughter simply as an object lesson on the results of quarrelling, proof of the evils inherent in contentiousness.

(p. 100)

The debate, then, satirises the vice of contentiousness by mocking its stupidity in the bellicose birds and their inability to tackle any of the topics with clarity or sense, and despite the comic effects of the satire the poem does not deny the serious consequences of this vice. Finding ourselves … in one sumere dale; / on one suþe diȝele hale (11. 1.2), “in a summery valley in a very secluded nook”, we are surprised at the discordant tone when we first meet the birds who … aiþer aȝen oþer sval / & let þat voole mod ut al; / & eiþer seide of oþeres custe / þat alre worste þat hi wuste (11. 7-10): “each swelled up in rage at the other and let all these offensive thoughts burst out, and each one said about the other's character the very worst things that she knew.” We are shocked near the end of the poem by the violent deaths described of a nightingale and an owl. After the attacks and counter-attacks, the sophistry and abuse, the task of Nicholas of Guildford will not be to judge the issues nor to decide between the contending parties but to act as keeper of the peace.

The one redeeming feature possessed by both birds is their willingness to submit to judgment. Even if their preference for legal arbitration to open combat stems from their fear, for as we have seen they are both, in fact, afraid to fight, this does not discredit the value of peace. On the contrary, the fact that they agree to be judged by Nicholas of Guildford is the one stable factor of the poem. The birds remind one another of their pledge (11. 541-55, 1689-96), and the wren, wise king of the birds, urges them to keep it (11. 1733-38). We see that the birds will have to relinquish their quarrel, since it has been shown up as baseless folly, and be reconciled. Their angry feeling will have to give way to the higher demands of truth, reason, and harmony.

As they move off to Portesham the owl and the nightingale emerge at last from cover and meet each other alone in the open. Agreeing about how to present their case they at last display mutual trust:

          “Do we,” þe Niȝtegale seide;
“Ah wa schal unker speche rede,
An telle touore unker deme?”
          “þarof ich schal þe wel icweme,”
Cwaþ þe Houle, “for al, ende of orde,
Telle ich con, word after worde.
An ȝef þe þincþ þat ich misrempe
þu stond aȝein & do me crempe.”
Mid þisse worde forþ hi ferden,
Al bute here & bute uerde,
To Portesham þat heo bicome.

(11. 1781-91)

“Enough” said the Nightingale, “but who shall bring forward our pleas and tell them in front of our judge?” “I will please you in this matter,” said the owl, “since I can tell everything word for word from the beginning to the end. And if you think that I am going astray, you must stand up against me and restrain me.” With these words they went off, without any army and without any troops, to Portesham, and there they arrived.

This conciliatory act and the preferment they hope to accomplish for Nicholas of Guildford are, after the stormy passage of the poem, final affirmations of the value of peace.

Notes

1. For an account of the poem and full bibliography see F. L. Utley, “The Owl and the Nightingale”, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, ed. A. E. Hartung, Vol. III, New Haven, 1972, pp. 716-20, 874-82.

2. Citations throughout are from The Owl and the Nightingale, ed. E. G. Stanley, London, 1960.

3. R.M. Lumiansky, “Concerning The Owl and the Nightingale”, Philological Quarterly, XXXII (1953), 411-17.

4. For a summary of various interpretations see Kathryn Hume, The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poem and its Critics, Toronto, 1975, pp. 10-12.

5. See note 4.

6. A contrary view to the opinion supported and developed in this essay, that the poem is essentially about discord, is put forward by Brian Stone in the introduction to his translation in The Owl and the Nightingale, Cleanness, St. Erkenwald, Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 155-80. He sees it rather as “… a complex interpretation of important contemporary ideas … a whole philosophy of life emerges from the conflict, a charitable, pragmatic and … humanistic system of values superior to that inherent in either of the formal positions taken up by the two birds” (pp. 155-56). According to him the reader is forced “… to concentrate on the intellectual and moral issues raised, in an atmosphere made sane by laughter” (p. 180). While there is clearly something in this view, for the poet does take the ideas seriously, his mockery of the birds has pride of place and must surely be central to any interpretation.

7. For summaries of the bird lore of each bird from classical times to today see B. Rowland, Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism, Tennessee, 1978, pp. 105-11 and 115-20. A more extended account of the nightingale tradition in Christian Latin literature is given by F. J. E. Raby, “Philomena praevia temporis amoeni”, in Mélanges Joseph de Ghellinck, S.J., Tome II, “Moyen Age”, Gembloux, 1951, pp. 435-48. A fuller account of the owl can be found in H. Schwarz and V. Plagemann, s.v. “Eule”, Reallexicon zur Deutschen Kunst-Geschichte, Vol. VI, pp. 267-322.

8. Edwin H. Zeydel, ed. and trans., Ecbasis cuiusdam captivi per tropologiam: Escape of a Certain Captive told in a Figurative Manner, Chapel Hill, 1964.

9. Philomena by John of Howden (d. c. 1278) and Philomena praevia temporis amoeni by John Pecham (d. 1292); see the article by F. J. E. Raby cited in note 7.