Editing Common linnet (section)

==Cultural references==
The bird was a popular pet in the late [[Victorian era|Victorian]] and [[Edwardian era]]s. [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]] mentions "the linnet born within the cage" in Canto 27 of his 1849 poem "[[In Memoriam A.H.H.]]", the same section that contains the famous lines "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." A linnet features in the classic British [[music hall]] song "[[Don't Dilly Dally on the Way]]" (1919) which is subtitled "The Cock Linnet Song". It is a character in [[Oscar Wilde]]'s children's story [[The Happy Prince and Other Tales#"The Devoted Friend"|"The Devoted Friend"]] (1888) and Wilde also mentions how the call of the linnet awakens [[The Happy Prince and Other Tales#"The Selfish Giant"|"The Selfish Giant"]] to the one tree where it is springtime in his garden. [[William Butler Yeats]] evokes the image of the common linnet in "[[The Lake Isle of Innisfree]]" (1890) : "And evening full of the linnet's wings." and also mentions the bird in his poem "[[A Prayer for My Daughter]]" (1919): "May she become a flourishing hidden tree That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound." In the 1840 novel ''[[The Old Curiosity Shop]]'' by [[Charles Dickens]], the heroine Nell keeps "only a poor linnet" in a cage, which she leaves for Kit as a sign of her gratefulness to him.

The English Baroque composer [[John Blow]] composed an ode on the occasion of the death of his colleague [[Henry Purcell]], "An Ode on the Death of Mr. Purcell" set to the poem "Mark how the lark and linnet sing" by the poet [[John Dryden]].

"The Linnets" has become the nickname of [[King's Lynn F.C.|King's Lynn Football Club]], [[Burscough F.C.|Burscough Football Club]] and [[Runcorn Linnets F.C.|Runcorn Linnets Football Club]] (formerly known as 'Runcorn F.C.' and Runcorn F.C. Halton). [[Barry Town F.C.]], the South Wales-based football team, also used to be nicknamed 'The Linnets'.

[[Robert Burns]]'s 1788 poem "A Mother's Lament for the Death of Her Son" also tells of a linnet bird bewailing her ravished young.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.robertburns.org/works/232.shtml|title=Robert Burns Country: A Mother's Lament for the Death of Her Son.}}</ref>

[[William Blake]] invokes "the linnet's song" in one of the poems entitled "Song" in his ''Poetical Sketches''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bartleby.com/337/856.html|title = William Blake (1757-1827). Extracts from Poetical Sketches: Song: 'Memory, hither come'. T. H. Ward, ed. 1880-1918. The English Poets}}</ref>

[[Walter de la Mare]]'s poem "The Linnet", published in 1918 in the collection ''Motley and Other Poems'', has been set to music by a number of composers including Cecil [[Armstrong Gibbs]], [[Kenneth Leighton]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=34146 |title=The LiederNet Archive |date=2008-01-11 |access-date=2016-03-26}}</ref> and [[Jack Gibbons]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIX3x-TA9mY |title=Gibbons: 'The Linnet', Op.25 |publisher=YouTube |date=2010-12-06 |access-date=2016-03-26}}{{cbignore}}{{Dead Youtube links|date=February 2022}}</ref>

The [[Eurovision Song Contest 2014]] entry for the Netherlands "[[The Common Linnets]]" is a direct reference to the bird.

[[William Wordsworth]] argued that the song of the common linnet provides more wisdom than books in the third verse of "The Tables Turned":
<blockquote><poem>Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.</poem></blockquote>

But the fellow English poet [[Robert Bridges]] used the common linnet instead to express the limitations of poetry—concentrating on the difficulty in poetry of conveying the beauty of a bird's song. He wrote in the first verse:
<blockquote><poem>I heard a linnet courting
His lady in the spring:
His mates were idly sporting,
Nor stayed to hear him sing
His song of love.—
I fear my speech distorting
His tender love.</poem></blockquote>

The musical [[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (musical)|Sweeney Todd]] features the song "Green Finch and Linnet Bird", in which a young lady confined to her room wonders why caged birds sing:
<blockquote><poem>Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate,
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?</poem></blockquote>

In [[Emily Dickinson]]'s poem "Morns like these—we parted—" the last line is: "And this linnet flew!"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3224/morns-like-thesewe-parted/|title=Morns like these—we parted by Emily Dickinson}}</ref>