CUCULUS CANORUS. 523 



head." In Denmark the fabulous reason for non-building is, 

 that when first heard, every village girl kisses her hand and 

 asks of the cuckoo, " When shall I be married ?" and the old 

 wives cry, " When shall I be relieved of marriage ?" and so the 

 poor bird is so perplexed with answering she has no time to 

 build, and has to put her eggs in other birds' nests. In 

 Bohemia they mix up the old miraculous fables of the Church, 

 for they say the Festival of the Annunciation of Christ, in 

 memory of the Angel's salutation of the Blessed Virgin on 

 March 25th, used to be held sacred, even by the birds, so all 

 left off building their nests except the cuckoo, and for this 

 want of respect to Holy Mother Church, she, like many a poor 

 human heretic, was cursed, and deprived of her husband, and 

 had to lay her eggs in the nests of other birds. Indeed, some 

 authors say, as a scientific fact, that cuckoos do not pair, but 

 live in promiscuous concubinage, leaving others to rear their 

 natural offspring, which, after all, may be true, as it agrees with 

 natural begot children everywhere. Job alludes to the ostrich 

 as unnatural in leaving her eggs to be hatched by the sun 

 amongst sand, saying, " She is hardened against her young 

 ones as though they were not hers." " Because God hath 

 deprived her of wisdom" — as the cuckoo does in the nests of 

 little birds — only the little birds must provide for the young 

 cuckoos, while the young ostriches provide for themselves. 

 The fables regarding this singular bird are endless. Brown, in 

 his " Pastorals," makes it a companion to the sleepy dormouse in 

 winter ; for, like White with the swallows, he thought it 

 slept through the winter instead of migrated. 



" For, in his hollow trunk and perish'd graine 

 The cuckowe now had many a winter laine, 

 And, thriving pismires laide their eggs in store, 

 The dormouse slept there, and a many more." 



And Willoughby says, "The servants having heated a stove in 

 winter with some decayed logs of willow, were surprised to hear 

 the cry of ' cuckoo' from the fire, three times repeated. The 

 affrighted serving-man drew out the logs, and, seeing something 

 move in one log, opened it with a hatchet, and drew out a 

 quantity of feathers, and finally a cuckoo, brisk and lively, but 

 whi illy denuded of covering, and without any winter provision 

 in its hole. The boys kept the bird alive for two years in the 

 stove." So runs the story, but we all know the equally 

 fabulous religious fable of the phoenix rising from the flames 

 and ashes of another bird ; and humanity has too sadly known 



