FAMILY Cuculld*. 



But probably one of the best things thai ha* -v.-r I,.-. -n 

 written with the Cuckoo's song for the theme is the 

 nursery melody by Joseph S. Moorat, an F,n-li.>h nni>i- 

 cian, which appears on the opposite page. Theodora 

 Marzials says of it : " If you want a breath of fn-h air 

 straight from the heart of the hills, play over 'Cuckoo, 

 Cherry-tree' . . . it 's as good as :n\ hour <>n the 

 moor-side." But we have not yet gauged the popularity 

 of the Cuckoo. Go as far back as the time of 

 Elizabeth, and he already appears an acknowledged 

 musician, for Shakespeare writes, 



" The finch, the sparrow, and the lark. 

 The plain-song cuckoo gray." 



The estimate of the great poet is close to the truth, for 

 the song, a drop of the minor third, is one of the corn- 



aionest occurrences in old-time plain-song versicles and 

 responses, and was actually introduced by Marbecke 

 into the closing sentences of the Lord's Prayer. 



When one pursues a study of the simple forms of 

 melody, it is indeed remarkable to note how exactly 

 similar these are to the songs -of the birds. In our 

 American Black-billed Cuckoo, we have not only a 

 musician capable of giving us an interval of a third or 

 fourth, like his English cousin, but one who appreciates 

 the value of measured silence such as that which char- 

 acterizes the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Sym- 

 phony. We also possess a bird of more character too, 

 for the female builds her own nest and hatches her own 

 eggs, which is more than can be said of her foreign 

 relative 1 



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