BIRD HISTORIES.* 

 " KUKA VITZA "—THE CUCKOO. 



WITHIN an ancient country called 

 Servia, watered by the great 

 Danube, and which is now a part of the 

 Turkish Empire, where the people are very 

 fond of quaint legends, the European cuc- 

 koo is called Kukavitza; and, as we al- 

 most might guess, this word, more Russian 

 than Turkish, is the name of a young girl. 

 The legend declares that long ago a young 

 maiden of this name was so sorrowful ow- 

 ing to the death of a brother whom she 

 fondly loved, and mourned so long that 

 she became a bird of the cuckoo kind, a 

 " kukavitza." 



In Bohemia several stories of the cuc- 

 koo's ancestry are preserved in legendary 

 lore. One seems to be not older than the 

 Christian religion, but there is something of 

 Pagan mythology in its imagery. It says : 

 " One day Jesus of Nazareth was passing a 

 baker's shop, and directed one of his 

 disciples to go in and ask for some new 

 bread. The baker refused to give it; then 

 his wife and their six daughters proved 

 themselves to be charitable by secretly 

 conveying some bread to the hands of the 

 followers of Christ. In reward for this be- 

 nevolent deception, those seven women 

 were placed in a group among the starry 

 constellations, and named the Pleiades (we 

 must not ask how soon after the bread was 

 given were the women elevated so high). 

 The penurious father was, at the same time 

 we suppose, turned into a cuckoo. Apart 

 from this story it has long been said that 

 the voice of the cuckoo is heard in rural 

 places as long as the Pleiades, the " Seven 

 Stars," are visible in the sky above the 

 horizon. The saying must have come from 

 this legend, or else the legend was woven 



* Our young readers are informed that this series 

 of legendary "histories" in a few words, are not 

 designed particularly to relate the Natural History 

 of the birds mentioned. 



into the astronomy of these famous bright 

 "sister stars," as poets have named them. 

 In Bohemia at this day the cuckoo is re- 

 garded as a sort of apparition of a baker. 

 And there among the young maidens an- 

 other story is told of this bird, as follows : 

 The cuckoo once wore a crown of feathers, 

 until at a wedding of two birds, the bride- 

 groom being a hoopoe, the crown was 

 loaned to some other bird and was never 

 returned to cuckoo, who ever since cries 

 k/ukii, which signifies "you rascal !" 



An Albanian tale of olden days says : 

 There were once two brothers and a sister. 

 The sister somehow by accident pierced 

 one brother's heart with her scissors, and 

 he died. She and the living brother 

 grieved long, until they were transformed 

 into cuckoo birds whose plaintive note ku- 

 ku, ku-ku, means "where are you?" 



In Slavonic mythology, Zywiec was the 

 ruler of the universe. This god of Paga- 

 nism, like Zeus, the supreme among the 

 Greeks, the Jupiter among the Romans, 

 used to change himself into a cuckoo in 

 order to tell men how many years they 

 were to live on earth. 



Even now, in Poland and other Slavonic 

 regions, it is commonly believed that a per- 

 son, young or old, is to live only so many 

 years as a cuckoo's note is heard repeated 

 for the first time in spring. At one period 

 the killing of a cuckoo in Poland was a 

 capital crime. 



In the writings of an early monk, it is 

 related that a certain brother recluse be- 

 came weary of his monastic life of seclusion, 

 and solemnly asked a cuckoo to tell him 

 the number of years he was yet to live. 

 The bird answered twenty-tivo. The monk 

 thought this number would allow him a 

 season of the world's pleasures, and after- 

 ward time enough to think of the heavenly 

 state, and so he became again a worlding. 



