August 1947 The Queensland Naturalist 
71 
In 1650 in Kill’s Naturall and Artificial Conclusions 
appears the following useful hint: “A very easie and 
merrie conceit to keep off fleas from your beds or chambers 
— Plinie reporteth that if when you first hear the cuckow, 
you mark where your right foot standeth, and take up 
that earth, the fleas will by no means breed either in your 
house or chamber where any of the same earth is thrown 
or scattered. ” 
In the East the cuckoo is accorded more dignity and in 
Hindoo and Mohammedan tradition is sacred; in the 
former it is the suttee revisiting earth, and in the latter is 
one of ten animals permitted to enter the paradise of 
Mahomet. 
Many quaint superstitions attached to the call of the 
cuckoo in England. If on hearing the first cuckoo sing a 
woman take off her left shoe, she will find therein one of 
her future husband’s hairs. For good luck during the 
year the cuckoo must not be heard before the nightingale: 
“ It was a common tale 
That it were gode to here the nightingale 
Moche rathir than the lewde cuckowe singe. ” 
In a poem of Carew’s entitled Spring, the linos 
‘‘The warme sunne wakes .... 
in hollow tree, the drowsie cuckoo" 
are illustrative of the fact that many people believed that 
the cuckoo hibernated during the English winter. The 
ancients thought that in winter the cuckoo changed into a 
hawk, reappearing in the spring in its own form but with 
an altered voice. 
In Germany the cuckoo is connected with the devil, 
and people say “The cuckoo only knows” very much as we 
say “the devil only knows.” 1 can find no record of their 
use of the expression, “Oh, go to the cuckoo”— perhaps 
under those circumstances a stronger word is required! 
So from the cuckoo to the nightingale, the Philomel 
of our poets, Spencer, refers to the nightingale as 
“That blessed bvrd that spendes her time of sleepe 
In songes and plaintive pleas, the more t augment 
The memorie of his misdeede that bred her woe 
and this is the story. Tcreus, the King of Thrace, was to 
escort his wife’s sister. Philomela, to Thrace. On the way 
he offered her violence, then cut off her tongue and con- 
fined her in a lonely castle, journeying on to Thrace, 
where he told his wife that her sister had died on the way. 
Philomela described her misfortunes on a piece of tapestry 
