On Lindisfarne, they say,
St Cuthbert took a hooded crow,
A jackdaw and a jay,
And on their strident tongues bestowed

The gift of harmony.
No more did ugly croaks and caws
Dispute above the sea,
Or trouble those sequestered shores.

They sang all day, those three;
And as they drew their corvine kin,
The devil wept to see
His shrinking nursery of sin.