Note 56 — THE GIAOUR.
Reading edition
The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.
[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones—
"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing, Thyself the rose and he the bird of spring: Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd. Be gay: too soon the flowers of spring will fade."
"The full style and title of the Persian nightingale (Pycnonotus hæmorrhous) is 'Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán,' usually shortened to 'Hazar' (bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'" (See Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; Supplemental Nights, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's Lalla Rookh—
"Oh! sooner shall the rose of May Mistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.
(Ed. "Chandos Classics," p. 423)
and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (stanza vi.)—
"And David's lips are lockt; but in divine High piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine! Red Wine!'—the Nightingale cries to the Rose That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine."
Rubáiyát, etc., 1899, p. 29, and note, p. 62.
Byron was indebted for his information to a note on a passage in Vathek, by S. Henley (Vathek, 1893, p. 217).]