“ Wise Men of Gotham ” 
207 
The attempt of the “ wise men of Gotham ” to keep 
perpetual spring by setting a hedge round a cuckoo is 
often referred to by poets and dramatists. It may not be 
out of place to give the origin of the allusion, though it 
can hardly be said to come under the title of natural 
history. The story, as given in T. Blount's Ancient Tenures 
of Land, runs thus :— 
“King John, passing through the village of Gotham towards 
Nottingham, intending to go over the meadows, was prevented by the 
villagers, they apprehending that the ground over which a king 
passed was for ever after to become a public road. The king, incensed 
at their proceedings, sent from his court soon after some of his servants, 
to inquire of them the reason of their incivility and ill-treatment, that 
he might punish them by way of fine, or some other way he might 
judge most proper. The villagers, hearing of the approach of the king’s 
servants, thought of an expedient to turn away his majesty’s displeasure 
from them: when the messengers arrived at Gotham, they found some 
of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool 
of water; some were employed in dragging carts upon a large barn, 
to shade the wood from the sun; others were tumbling their cheeses 
down a hill, that they might find their way to Nottingham for sale; 
and some were employed in hedging in a cuckoo which had perched 
upon an old bush which stood where the present one now stands ; 
Avhich convinced the king’s servants that it was a village of fools; 
whence arose the old adage f the wise men 5 or ‘the fools of Gotham. 5 ” 
(Page 133, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874.) 
Michael Drayton was a close observer of nature, and 
better acquainted with the habits of birds than 
most of his contemporaries. In one of the 
picturesque descriptions of the marshy district in which 
he delighted, this poet paints the commotion that results 
from the rapid swimming of a swan through the water :•—• 
“ The jealous swan, there swimming in his pride, 
With his arch’d breast the waters did divide, 
His saily -wings him forward strongly pushing, 
Against the billows with such fury rushing, 
As from the same, a foam so white arose, 
As seem’d to mock the breast that them oppose: 
