FABLE AND FOLKLORE 225 



should happen to rain three days in succession when the 

 cuckoo sings among the oak-trees, then late sowing will 

 be as good as early sowing" — doubtless good agricultural 

 counsel. Not more than a century ago English farmers 

 thought it necessary to sow barley when the earliest note 

 of the cuckoo was heard in order to insure a full crop. 

 Mr. Friend 11 reasons thus about this: "As the cuckoo 

 only returns to our shores at a certain time, it has been 

 customary to predict from his appearance what kind of 

 season will follow; and farmers have in all ages placed 

 great reliance on omens of weather and crops drawn from 

 this source. ... In Berwickshire those oats which are 

 sown after the first of April are called 'gowk's' [cuckoo's] 

 oats . . . 



Cuckoo oats and wood cock hay 



Make a farmer run away. 



If the spring is so backward that the oats cannot be sown 

 until the cuckoo is heard, or the autumn so wet that the 

 hay cannot be gathered in until the woodcocks come over, 

 the farmer is sure to suffer great loss." 



So much for these old maxims; and when British or 

 Italian immigrants became colonists in America, and 

 found cuckoos here, they continued the sayings, regard- 

 less of difference in climate and other circumstances. Our 

 species are not early migrants in spring, are poor guides 

 for planters, and seem to have no prophetic gift, yet they 

 are rain-birds because their ancestral relatives in India 

 were such 3,000 years ago. 



