NIGHTINGALE AS POLITICIAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 19

NIGHTINGALE AS POLITICIAN

The great election joke reported from Milton, Seattle, where the Republicans were manoeuvred into voting for a mule as precinct committee* man, is said to have provided a state of things unmatched since the legendary consulship of Caligula's horse; but while, no doubt, very few animals have been elected to political office, the "Percy Anecdotes" supply a case in which birds, if not actually elected, became keen politicians, says the "Manchester Guardian." The tale is told, on the authority of Gesner, who said that he had it "from a person of credit," of two nightingales belonging to an innkeeper at Ratisbon "having been so infected by the sort of conversation indulged in by some officers or deputies of the Diet who frequented the tavern, nay, so wonderfully edified by it, that they used to spend the whole night in discoursing on the political interests of Europe" (in times, let us hope, more suited to the mellifluous accents of the nightingale than those of today).

Probably, however, the tale owed something to Pliny,who recorded that the two sons of the Emperor Claudius gave some nightingales so classical an education that they could speak Latin and Greek fluently "and every day invent some new expressions of their own."