There are many tales of the origin of the red breast, all involving acts of kindness by the robin. It was said that, when Jesus was on his way to be crucified, a robin picked one of the thorns from his crown out of his forehead. In one version, the bird was splattered with Christ's blood, while in another it accidentally pierced its own breast. Other stories claim that the bird's breast was singed while taking water to sinners in hell, or while fanning a fire to warm the baby Jesus at Christmas.

Robins and the dead

The oddest belief about the robin was that if it found a dead body, it would cover it with leaves or moss. So in his play, The White Devil (c.1608), John Webster wrote:

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.

There is also the folktale of the "babes in the wood", in which two infants are abandoned to wander in a lonely wood. Thomas Percy, in a poem of 1765, described the robin's role in the story's tragic ending:

Thus wandered these poor innocents,
   Till death did end their grief;
In one another's arms they died,
   As wanting due relief;
No burial this pretty pair
   Of any man receives,
Till Robin Redbreast piously
   Did cover them with leaves.

Weather forecasters

There are many superstitions about the robin. Its position when singing was believed to forecast the weather. If it sang on top of a bush the weather would be warm, while if it sang from within the branches then rain was on the way. It was also thought to be extremely unlucky to kill the bird. According to one superstition, if you killed a robin your hands would not stop shaking, while anyone who broke its eggs would have something valuable of their own broken. So in the rhyme, Who Killed Cock Robin?, the killing of a robin (the unlikely victim of a sparrow!) is mourned by all the birds:

All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing
When they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin

Robins at Christmas

Today we associate robins with Christmas, and the bird always appears on Christmas cards. A common explanation is that the Victorian postmen who delivered Christmas cards wore red uniforms, and were nicknamed "robin redbreasts". So people associated receiving their cards with robins. The truth is probably much simpler, for the robin is most visible at Christmas, when its bright red breast, which the bird puffs out to keep warm, brings colour to drab surroundings, and the male begins to sing loudly to attract a mate. It is also in the depths of winter, when insect food is scarce, that robins are most tame. So robins have always been as much a part of the Christmas scene as snow and holly.

In his poem, Winter, James Thomson (1726-1744) described the tameness of robins at Christmas:

The redbreast sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then brisk alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is-
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet.