[369] I, for instance, kept for some time a young cuckoo which had been found in the nest of a little granivorous singing bird, which is very common in Tuscany, and is called scoperina or scopina.
[370] Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, sixième éd. p. 493.
[371] The old English popular song celebrates it as the bringer of summer—
"Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu."
The old Anglo-Saxon song of St Guthlak makes the cuckoo the announcer of the year (geacas gear budon). The ancient song of May in Germany welcomes it with the words—
"The cuckoo with its song makes every one gay."
The popular Scotch song caresses it thus—
"The cuckoo's a fine bird, he sings as he flies;
He brings us good tidings, he tells us no lies.
He sucks little bird's eggs to make his voice clear,
And when he sings 'cuckoo,' the summer is near."
In Shakspeare (Love's Labour Lost, v. 2), the owl represents winter, and the cuckoo spring—"This side is Hiems, winter, this Ver, the spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo."
In a mediæval Latin eclogue recorded in the third volume of Uhland's Schriften (Abhandlung über die deutschen Volkslieder), the death of the cuckoo is wept over—