PROIGNE. Procne was the elder daughter of King Pandion of Athens. She married Tereus, king of Thrace, and went to live in his country. After five years away from home, Procne longed to see her sister Philomela, and Tereus went to Athens to fetch her. Mad lust seized him for Philomela and, upon returning to Thrace, he took her into the woods, raped her, cut out her tongue, and left her shut up in a house in the woods. He arrived home and told Procne that Philomela was already dead when he arrived in Athens. Philomela, however, wove her story in a tapestry in purple on a white background and sent it to her sister by messenger. When the feast of Bacchus came around, which only women celebrated, Procne went into the woods and rescued her sister. Returning home, she exacted cruel vengeance on Tereus. She cut up their little son, cooked him, and served him to Tereus. When he learned that he had eaten his son, Tereus pursued the sisters, but Procne was changed into a swallow and Philomela became a nightingale (Met VI.424-674; OM VI.2217-3684).

The swallow Proigne sings a sorrowful lay, how Tereus has taken her sister, Tr II.64-65. Proigne pretends to go on a pilgrimage to Bacchus's shrine but rescues Philomela from the castle in which she is imprisoned, LGW 2342-2382. Chaucer omits the awful vengeance from his version of the story. There are only two other references to the swallow. Alison's song is as loud and as eager as the swallow's as she sits on a barn, MillT 3257-3258; the swallow, murderer of small bees, appears among the birds in Nature's park, PF 253. [Bachus: Pandion: Philomene: Tereus]

Proigne, a variant of OF Progne, appears medially only, Tr II.64; LGW 2248, 2275, 2346, 2348, 2373, 2380.