BIRD (My).  Fanny Forester (Emily Chubbuck Judson) thus addressed her baby daughter (1848).

There’s not in Ind a lovelier bird: 
Broad earth owns not a happier nest. 
Oh, God!  Thou hast a fountain stirred
Whose waters never more shall rest.

         * * * * *
  The pulse first caught its tiny stroke. 
  The blood its crimson hue from mine;
  The life which I have dared invoke
  Henceforth is parallel with THINE!

Bird (The Little Green), of the frozen regions, which could reveal every secret and impart information of events past, present, or to come.  Prince Chery went in search of it, so did his two cousins, Brightsun and Felix; last of all Fairstar, who succeeded in obtaining it, and liberating the princes who had failed in their attempts.—­Comtesse D’Aunoy, Fairy Tales ("Princess Chery,” 1682).

This tale is a mere reproduction of “The Two Sisters,” the last tale of the Arabian Nights, in which the bird is called “Bulbulhezar, the talking bird.”

BIRD SINGING TO A MONK.  The monk was Felix.—­Longfellow, Golden Legend, ii.

BIRE’NO, the lover and subsequent husband of Olympia queen of Holland.  He was taken prisoner by Cymosco king of Friza, but was released by Orlando.  Bireno, having forsaken Olympia, was put to death by Oberto king of Ireland, who married the young widow.—­Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iv. v. (1516).

Bire’no (Duke), heir to the crown of Lombardy.  It is the king’s wish that he should marry Sophia, his only child, but the princess loves Pal’adore (3 syl.), a Briton.  Bireno has a mistress named Alin’da, whom he induces to personate the princess, and in Paladore’s presence she casts down a rope-ladder for the duke to climb up by.  Bireno has Alinda murdered to prevent the deception being known, and accuses the princess of unchastity—­a crime in Lombardy punished by death.  As the princess is led to execution, Paladore challenges the duke, and kills him.  The villainy is fully revealed, and the princess is married to the man of her choice, who had twice saved her life.—­Robert Jephson, The Law of Lombardy (1779).

BIRMINGHAM POET (The), John Freeth, the wit, poet, and publican, who wrote his own songs; set them to music, and sang them (1730-1808).

BIRON, a merry mad-cap young lord, in attendance on Ferdinand king of Navarre.  Biron promises to spend three years with the king in study, during which time no woman is to approach his court; but no sooner has he signed the compact, than he falls in love with Rosaline.  Rosaline defers his suit for twelve months and a day, saying, “If you my favor mean to get, for twelve months seek the weary beds of people sick.”

  A merrier man,
  Within the limit of becoming mirth,
  I never spent an hour’s talk withal. 
  His eye begets occasion for his wit: 
  For every object that the one doth catch,
  The other turns to a mirth-moving jest;
  Which his fair tongue (conceit’s expositor)
  Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
  That aged ears play truant at his tales,
  And younger hearings are quite ravished.