Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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rel="nofollow" href="#n190" type="note">190

      Cuckoo. Many superstitions have clustered round the cuckoo, and both in this country and abroad it is looked upon as a mysterious bird, being supposed to possess the gift of second-sight, a notion referred to in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):

      “Cuckoo, cuckoo:191 O word of fear,

      Unpleasing to a married ear.”

      And again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), Bottom sings:

      “The plain-song cuckoo gray,

      Whose note full many a man doth mark,

      And dares not answer nay.”

      It is still a common idea that the cuckoo, if asked, will tell any one, by the repetition of its cries, how long he has to live. The country lasses in Sweden count the cuckoo’s call to ascertain how many years they have to remain unmarried, but they generally shut their ears and run away on hearing it a few times.192 Among the Germans the notes of the cuckoo, when heard in spring for the first time, are considered a good omen. Cæsarius (1222) tells us of a convertite who was about to become a monk, but changed his mind on hearing the cuckoo’s call, and counting twenty-two repetitions of it. “Come,” said he, “I have certainly twenty-two years still to live, and why should I mortify myself during all that time? I will go back to the world, enjoy its delights for twenty years, and devote the remaining two to penitence.”193 In England the peasantry salute the cuckoo with the following invocation:

      “Cuckoo, cherry-tree,

      Good bird, tell me,

      How many years have I to live” —

      the allusion to the cherry-tree having probably originated in the popular fancy that before the cuckoo ceases its song it must eat three good meals of cherries. Pliny mentions the belief that when the cuckoo came to maturity it devoured the bird which had reared it, a superstition several times alluded to by Shakespeare. Thus, in “King Lear” (i. 4), the Fool remarks:

      “The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

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

      Again, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 1), Worcester says:

      “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.”

      Once more, the opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, is mentioned in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 6):

      “Thou dost o’er-count me of my father’s house;

      But, since the cuckoo builds not for himself,

      Remain in’t as thou may’st.”

      It has been remarked,194 however, in reference to the common idea that the young cuckoo ill-treats its foster-mother, that if we watch the movements of the two birds, when the younger is being fed, we cannot much wonder at this piece of folk-lore. When the cuckoo opens its great mouth, the diminutive nurse places her own head so far within its precincts that it has the exact appearance of a voluntary surrender to decapitation.

      The notion195 “which couples the name of the cuckoo with the character of the man whose wife is unfaithful to him appears to have been derived from the Romans, and is first found in the Middle Ages in France, and in the countries of which the modern language is derived from the Latin. But the ancients more correctly gave the name of the bird, not to the husband of the faithless wife, but to her paramour, who might justly be supposed to be acting the part of the cuckoo. They applied the name of the bird in whose nest the cuckoo’s eggs were usually deposited – ‘carruca’ – to the husband. It is not quite clear how, in the passage from classic to mediæval, the application of the term was transferred to the husband.” In further allusion to this bird, we may quote the following from “All’s Well That Ends Well” (i. 3):

      “For I the ballad will repeat,

      Which men full true shall find,

      Your marriage comes by destiny,

      Your cuckoo sings by kind.”

      The cuckoo has generally been regarded as the harbinger of spring, and, according to a Gloucester rhyme:

      “The cuckoo comes in April,

      Sings a song in May;

      Then in June another tune,

      And then she flies away.”

      Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 2), the king, alluding to his predecessor, says:

      “So, when he had occasion to be seen,

      He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

      Heard, not regarded.”

      In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2) spring is maintained by the cuckoo, in those charming sonnets descriptive of the beauties of the country at this season.

      The word cuckoo has, from the earliest times, been used as a term of reproach;196 and Plautus197 has introduced it on more than one occasion. In this sense we find it quoted by Shakespeare in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “O’ horseback, ye cuckoo.” The term cuckold, too, which so frequently occurs throughout Shakespeare’s plays, is generally derived from cuculus,198 from the practice already alluded to of depositing its eggs in other birds’ nests.

      Domestic Fowl. In “The Tempest” (v. 1), the word chick is used as a term of endearment: “My Ariel; chick,” etc.; and in “Macbeth” (iv. 3) Macduff speaks of his children as “all my pretty chickens.” In “Coriolanus” (v. 3), hen is applied to a woman: “poor hen, fond of no second brood;” and in “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Petruchio says: “so Kate will be my hen;” and, once more, “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), Falstaff says, “How now, Dame Partlet the hen?” In “Othello” (i. 3) Iago applies the term “guinea-hen” to Desdemona, a cant phrase in Shakespeare’s day for a fast woman.

       Dove. Among the many beautiful allusions to this bird we may mention one in “Hamlet” (v. 1), where Shakespeare speaks of the dove only laying two eggs:199

      “as patient as the female dove

      When that her golden couplets are disclosed.”

      The young nestlings, when first disclosed, are only covered with a yellow down, and the mother rarely leaves the nest, in consequence of the tenderness of her young; hence the dove has been made an emblem of patience. In “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), it is spoken of as the symbol of peace:

      “The dove and very blessed spirit of peace.”

      Its love, too, is several times referred to, as in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 1), “Pronounce but – love and dove;” and in “1 Henry VI.” (ii. 2), Burgundy says:

      “Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves,

      That could not live asunder, day or night.”

      This bird has also been regarded as the emblem of fidelity, as in the following graphic passage in “Troilus and Cressida”

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