Air, goes north to woo the snow-bound princess The 



. . . what but another lovely metaphor of Cuckoo's 



Spring calling to the North to cover herself 



with the snow-blossom of betrothal and the 



roses and honeysuckles of procreant love . . . 



he orders thus the outbringing of his sleigh : 



" Take the fleetest of my racers, 

 Put the grey steed in the harness, 

 Hitch him to my sledge of magic : 

 Place six cuckoos on the break-board, 

 Seven blue-birds on the crossbow, 

 Thus to charm the northland maidens, 

 Thus to make them look and listen 

 As the cuckoos call and echo." 



The wind, that grey steed, fleetest of racers, 

 the calling of cuckoos, the northland maidens 

 charmed to silence among awakening fields or 

 amid the first green stirring of grass-blades 

 and pointed leaf: is not Ilmarinen, son of 

 Wondersmith and the Air, the veritable 

 cuckoo-god ? 



If ever the cuckoo-myth find its historian 

 one will learn how widespread and basic it is. 

 We follow it from Orpheus himself to the 

 myth of Saturn and Rhea, to that of Faunus 

 and Fauna, to Siegfried in the north, to 

 Cuchulain in the west — for the famous hero 

 of the Gaels is, for all the bardic legends as 

 to Setanta being Cu-chulain, the hound of 



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