

Common Cuckoo. 273 



devours its young foster-brethren, and finally its most atten- 

 tive foster-parents; hence the Swedish proverb, c en otack- 

 sam gok/ implying 'an ungrateful fellow.'* Even Linnaeus 

 gave credence to this absurd slander, and in our own country 

 Shakespeare utters the same calumny. In the play of ' Henry IV/ 

 he makes that monarch exclaim : 



' And being fed by us, you used us so 

 As that ungentle gull, the Cuckoo's bird, 

 Useth the sparrow : did oppress our nest : 

 Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk 

 That even our love durst not come near your sight 

 For fear of swallowing : but with nimble wing, 

 We were constrained for safety's sake to fly.' 



And again in ' King Lear/ the fool is made to say : 



' The hedge sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long 

 That it had its head bit off by its young.' 



Then, again, we are told that the fate of an individual for the cur- 

 rent year depends on the direction in which he first hears the cry 

 of the Cuckoo in the spring : if it proceeds from the north, for 

 instance, it is a lucky omen ; but if from the south, it portends 

 death.-f- And, again, it is universally considered unlucky to be 

 without money in your pocket on first hearing the welcome notes 

 of this bird.J 



As the story of hedging in the Cuckoo, and so securing the 

 permanence of spring, has been attempted to be affiliated on the 

 moonrakers of Wilts, I must in common honesty quote from the 

 veracious chronicle entitled ' The Merry Tales of the Wise Men of 

 Gotham/ in which the following anecdote occurs : ' On a time the 

 men of Gotham would have pinned in the Cuckoo, whereby she 

 should sing all the year ; and in the midst of the town they had 

 a hedge made, round in compass, and they had got a Cuckow, and 

 put her into it, and said, " Sing here, and you shall lack neither 

 meat nor drink all the year." The Cuckow when she perceived 



Golf, is no other than the old Saxon geac, and the Cuckoo is still often 

 called ' Gowk ' in some parts of England. [Seo Bosworth's 'Anglo-Saxon 

 Dictionary/] 



f Lloyd's ' Scandinavian Adventures/ vol. ii., p. 347. 



| Naturalist for 1852, p. 84. 



18 



