78 FRESH FIELDS 



don't hear the nightingale after the cuckoo is gone, 

 sir. " 



(The country people in this part of England sir 

 one at the end of every sentence, and talk with an 

 indescribable drawl.) 



But I had heard a cuckoo that very afternoon, 

 and I took heart from the fact. I afterward learned 

 that the country people everywhere associate these 

 two birds in this way; you will not hear the one 

 after the other has ceased. But I heard the cuckoo 

 almost daily till the middle of July. Matthew 

 Arnold reflects the popular opinion when in one of 

 his poems (" Thyrsis ") he makes the cuckoo say in 

 early June, — 



" The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I ! " 



The explanation is to be found in Shakespeare, who 



says, — 



" The cuckoo is in June 

 Heard, not regarded," 



as the bird really does not go till August. I got 

 out my Gilbert White, as I should have done at an 

 earlier day, and was still more disturbed to find 

 that he limited the singing of the nightingale to 

 June 15. But seasons differ, I thought, and it 

 can't be possible that any class of feathered song- 

 sters all stop on a given day. There is a tradition 

 that when George I. died the nightingales all ceased 

 singing for the year out of grief at the sad event; 

 but his majesty did not die till June 21. This 

 would give me a margin of several days. Then, 

 when I looked further in White, and found that he 



