or grandiloquent. The birds' dialogue is colloquial, and their insults are scathing. The analogies employed are also rural, equating the Nightingale's song to the barbarous speech of an Irish priest ("Þu chatereſt ſo doþ on Yris preſt" [322]), referring to fox hunts, and commenting on the use and practicality of scarecrows. Genre Medieval debate poetry was popular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and this poem draws on their structure, mimicking legal suits of the time. Each bird charges the other with an accusation, and brings forth evidence to support her claim. Proverbs are cited as a rhetorical argument from authority. However, the birds' rhetorical techniques are highly flawed. The birds' attack strategies rely on belittlement, condescension, and analogising their opponent's habits to unsavoury people or things. The animals' defence is founded on self-praise, as each bird justifies her behaviours and attempts to show the benefits in her own actions. However, the Owl berates the Nightingale for a quality she herself possesses, and the Nightingale's self-defence argument follows the same logic as offered by the Owl. Both use their song as a way to encourage proper religious thought and behaviour. The Nightingale simulates the auditory pleasures of heaven, while the Owl coerces people to repent, and warns them of what awaits them should they sin. References and context Alfred At many points in the poem, the birds cite King Alfred as a source of wise dicta. Although there was a medieval compendium of sayings attributed to Alfred, the birds in the poem are not actually quoting it. These references do acknowledge his wisdom and authority, but are little more than appeals to Alfred's generic image as a wise, just, and learned ruler from England's past. Bestiary The animals' characteristics follow heavily on the tradition of a bestiary, a concise catalogue where animals are listed, and their characteristics are described, along with the symbolic and allegorical associations and morally significant qualities they represent. One of the birds' goals through their debate is to assign meaning and purpose to their own characteristics. According to Genesis 1:26, all creatures were made by God to serve man, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth