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The Clerk and the Nightingale I and II are two poems preserved from the second half of the 15th century in Cambridge University MS Ff.5.48, fols. 57r-57v and Bodley Library MS Rawlinson Poetry. 34 (Sum. Cat. No. 14528), fols. 5r-5v. Some scholars regard the two fragments as parts of one poem, which is not a bird debate in the strictest sense, as one of the contestants is human. They share, however, the other significant features of the text form.

The Clerk and the Nightingale I is a poem of thirteen quatrains rhyming abab. The Clerk dreams of a Nightingale singing. The Nightingale consoles the mourning Clerk, who suffers from unrequited love, by telling of the vices of women: The Clerk defends women, with the usual contrast of Mary to the misogynistic bird's Eve, but the Nightingale cites woman's avarice, treachery, and general mischievousness. (Utley 1972:723).

The Clerk and the Nightingale II is incomplete; twenty quatrains (abab) and remnants of two other stanzas have come down to us. As the extant stanzas open Philomena is speaking: A familiar woman loves lechery and guile. Clericus defends women. Philomena says they are like an apple, sound without and rotten within; they are whited sepulchres who will be good when they reach the sky with their feet or when God is dead, or when the skirts of the tunic of one of them covers all England. Clericus is made inarticulate by these disturbing "lying-song" remarks. To console him Philomena praises virtuous and courteous women, but warns him against bad ones, and closes the dispute with an air of victory. (Utley 1972:724).