Learn English – How did the informant bird become a “little bird?”

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"A little bird told me…" is defined by Phrase Finder as:

I was told by a private or secret source.

The phrase in this exact form can be found pretty frequently by, for example, perusing online news sources. Here is one recent example from July 2017:

Maybe I’ll miss the camaraderie of the bond desk, but somehow I doubt it. I glance at my boss’s corner office, which looks like a Siberian ice cap on a winter’s evening – darkened, empty and unloved. A little bird told me he’s on his way out too.

Phrase Finder asserts that the origin goes all the way back to the Bible, but the phrasing is vastly different in the example provided:

Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

  • Ecclesiastes 10-20 (King James Version)

OED also provides figurative uses of "bird" in a similar phrasing with a similar meaning from very early writing:

I dyd lately here..By one byrd, that in myne eare was late chauntyng.

  • John Heywood · A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the englishe tongue · 1st edition, 1546.

Accepting that the general figurative idea of a bird acting as a clandestine messenger is very old, how did the phrase arrive in its current form, a little bird told me? Why exactly did the bird become little?

Best Answer

Its modern usage might derive from Wagner's Siegfried as suggested by Wiktionary:

  • In a Norse legend, Sigurd slew the dragon Fafnir and got a bit of dragon's blood on his tongue when he was roasting its heart. This immediately made it possible for Sigurd to understand what the birds were saying, and what they were saying was a warning that Regin would not keep his word, but instead planned to kill Sigurd.

  • This was borrowed by Richard Wagner's Siegfried (Act 2), in which the main character comes to understand that the song of a small bird instructs him to steal a ring and helmet.

Common usage appears to be from the late 19th century according to Ngram about the time the Opera was released.

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