THE CUCKOO

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 18

THE CUCKOO

CURIOUS OLD LEGENDS Summer is come in, Loud sing Cuckoo! Grows the seed, and blooms the mead, And sprouts tho wood now; Sing, Cuckoo! The owe bleats after the lamb; The cow lows after the calf, Merrily sing Cuckoo, Cuckoo! Cuckoo 1 Many are the curious old legends and superstitions which surround the coming of this bird, so indissolubly linked" with the “ inerrie month of Slay.” For then, in very truth, as the old folks will tell yoiy summer is all but come, notwithstanding the biting blasts and chilly days which so often characterise May, as we know her hero in Scotland. They, like those who went before them, would little dream of questioning tho accuracy of the old rhyme above quoted, which has been handed down to us from the now dini and distant thirteenth century. Of tho summer’s approach—of the presence of spring, For ever, sweet cuckoo, continue to sing. Oh, who then, dear bird, could ere wish thee away, Who hears thee, not pleas’d, at the threshold of May?

Among the older superstitions regarding the cuckoo obtaining still in many parts of the country is that which holds that an unmarried person is certain to remain single as many years as the cuckoo, when first heard, utters its call. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo! When shall I be married?” the - pretty maiden blushingly inquires when, having run out into the fields early in the morning in order to hear its first note, she removes her left shoo, in tho_ full certainty that there she will discover a hair of the same color as his who is to be her future mate.

Very different is the question put to it by the older folk, those wearied of life and tho exceeding length of tho way, who whisper: “Cuckoo! Cuckoo! When shall I bo released from tin's world’s cares?”—the bird’s note in this case sounding out tho number of their remaining* years. In this connection a rather quaint old story falls to be recorded of a monk who, walking in a grove one spring dawning, hoard for tho first time the cuckoo and learnt that he was to bo vouchsafed twenty-two years still upon this earth. “An!” moralised the holy man, “ if I am yet to have twentytwo years more, why should I mortify myself all this long time in a monastery? I will return to tho world and give myself up to the enjoyment of its pleasures fox; twenty years, and then 1 snail have two years to repent in.” “So ho returned to the world,” adds the narrator, somewhat regretfully. “ and lived joyously two years, and then died, losing so much out of lus reckoning.”

In April the cuckoo shows his bill, In May he sings night and day, In June he changes his tune, In July away he fly, In August fly he must!

Thus runs the old Norfolk proverb concerning this bird, whose chiefest peculiarity would seem to consist in building no nest, but in depositing her solitary egg in the nest of another nird. It was behoved that the gods sometimes assumed the form of the cuckoo, and that hence it. was a crime to kill it.

The 21st of April was the date commonly accepted for its first appearance, and this in rural districts was the occasion for _ work being deserted and high holiday being kept, to tli? accompanying drinking of what was known as “ cuckoo ale.” Unlucky, above all, was it to have no money in one’s pocket when its note first sounded forth; but whether because of the abstinencf which must then perforce bo practised, or for some other cause, is uot in those same old annals stated.—M. E. Jamieson, in the ‘Weekly Scotsman.’- ‘