English

Noun

nightertale ‎(plural not attested)

1. (obsolete) The period of night; nighttime.
   • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

     "So hoote he lovede, that by nyghtertale / He slepte namoore than dooth a nyghtyngale."

   • 1867, The Pictoral Works of Shakspere: Histories — Volume II (ed. Charles Knight), George Routledge & Sons (1867), pages 21-22:

     A person (as their books make her) raised up by power divine, only for succour to the French estate, then deeply in distress, in whom, for planting a credit the rather, first the company that towards the Dauphin did conduct her, through all dangerous, as held by the English, where she never was afore, all the way and by nightertale safely did she lead; […]

   • 1926, Arthur Machen, Notes and Queries, Spurr & Swift (1926), page 14:

     All through the nightertale I longed for thee, […]

   • 1975, Georgette Heyer, My Lord John, Arrow Books (2011), ISBN 0099476428, page 44:

     And since Thomas of Gloucester was Arundel's friend, and only God and His Saints knew which way the redeless King would jump, the future was so dangerful that Edmund of York could neither relish his meat nor sleep sound at nightertale.

   • 2011, Arthur D Bardswell, The Poor Preachers: The Adventures of the First Lollards, WestBow Press (2011), ISBN 9781449729530, page 288:

     'Did I offend thee in my japishness, my son? Or did slumber forsake thee a nightertale last?'

References

• nightertale in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913