The cuckoo is the bird of spring; when it appears, the first claps of thunder are heard in the sky, announcing the season of heat. According to Isidorus it is the kite that brings the lazy cuckoo from distant regions. In the time of Pliny, the cuckoo was supposed to be born of the sparrow-hawk, and Albertus Magnus, in the Middle Ages, asserted, "Cuculus quidam componitur ex Columba et Niso sive Sparverio; alius, ex Columba et Asture, mores etiam habet ex utroque compositos." There is nothing falser, zoologically speaking; but inasmuch as the lightning carries the thunder, the mythical hawk may well carry or produce the mythical cuckoo. Moreover, the habits of the cuckoo are very singular, and have not anything in common with those of the falcon and the dove, or indeed any other animal. It is well-known that, among the Hindoo names of the cuckoo we find anyapushṭas and anyabhṛitas, which mean nourished by another (the crow is called anyabhṛit, or nourisher of others, because it nurses the eggs of the cuckoo, which, for the rest, deposits them even in the nests of much smaller animals[369]). From this singular habit of the cuckoo, it was natural to conclude that the male cuckoo united itself in adultery with the strange female bird to which it afterwards confided the eggs, which would thus be bastard eggs of the female itself that sits on them. We have just seen Indras as a cuckoo and as a seducer of Rambhâ; Indras as an adulterer is also very popular in the legend of Ahalyâ, in which the cock (the morning sun) appears, instead, as the indiscreet betrayer of the secret amours of Indras (the hidden sun). In a popular song of Bretagne, the perfidious mother-in-law insinuates to her son the suspicion that his young wife betrays him, saying, "préservez votre nid du coucou."[370]
The cuckoo is the sun or solar ray in the darkness, or still oftener the thunderbolt hidden in the cloud. Dâtyuhas is one of the Indian names of the cuckoo, and also of the cloud, out of which alone the cuckoo is said to drink. As a hidden sun, the cuckoo is now an absent husband, a travelling husband, a husband in the forests, and now an adulterer in secret amorous intercourse with the wife of another. In any case, it is often a phallical symbol, and therefore delights in mysteries. Meanwhile, it sits on the sceptre of Hêrê, the protectress of marriages and childbirths, whilst Zeus himself, the thunder-striker, the thunderer, her adulterous brother, is called kokkük or cuckoo, because he had hidden himself in Hêrê's lap in the shape of a cuckoo, in order not to be recognised. Hence the song of the cuckoo was considered a good omen to whoever intended to marry. In the popular song of the Monferrato sung for the Easter eggs, the landlord is cunningly advised that it is time to marry his daughters. In Swedish and Danish songs, the cuckoo carries the wedding-nut to the nuptials. Nor was this because of its reputation as an adulterer, but because it has a phallical meaning, because it loves mysteries, and because it appears only in spring, in the season of loves. For the rest, as an adulterer, it would have been a bad omen for marriages; in the Asinaria of Plautus, indeed, a woman calls her husband cuculus, because he sleeps with other women. The cuckoo is therefore, properly, the deceitful husband, the adulterer, the hidden lover. The cuckoo is the derider; when children play at hide and seek, they are accustomed in Germany and in Italy, as well as in England, to cry out cuckoo to him who is to seek them in vain, as is hoped. The Latin word cucu, with which the pruners of vines who came late were held up to derision, the corresponding Piedmontese motto and gesture, mentioned in the first chapter of this work, and the Italian expression cuculiare for to ridicule, show the cuckoo as a cunning animal. It is the first, as is said, of the migratory birds to appear, and the first to disappear. In Germany it is believed that the grapes ripen with difficulty if the cuckoo continues to sing after St John's Day. It is the welcome messenger of spring[371] in the country, where it calls the peasants to their work. Hesiod says that when the cuckoo sings among the oak-trees, it is time to plough.
But inasmuch as the cuckoo seldom shows itself, inasmuch as it represents essentially the sun hidden in the clouds, and as we know that the sun hidden in the clouds has several contradictory aspects, as a wise hero that penetrates everything, as an intrepid hero that defies every danger, as a betrayed hero, as a deceived husband, a traitor, a monster or a demon, so the cuckoo also has an ungrateful and sinister aspect. The adulterer who visits in secret the wife of another, becomes the absent husband that is travelling, the husband in the forest, whilst his wife entertains guests at home; or else the husband that sleeps whilst his wife is only too watchful; whence the verse of Plautus—
"At etiam cubat cuculus, surge, Amator, i domum,"
and the French word cocu, and those registered by Du Cange,[372] coucoul, couquiol, cucuault, to express the husband of an adulterous woman. In Aristophanes, inept and inexperienced men are called kokküges. According to Pliny, a cuckoo bound with a hare's skin induces sleep (that is to say, the sun hides itself, the moon appears, and the world falls asleep). When the cuckoo approaches a city, and especially if it enters it, it bodes rain (that is, the sun hidden in clouds brings rain). In Plutarch (Life of Aratos), the cuckoo asks the other birds why they flee from his sight, inasmuch as he is not ferocious; the birds answer that they fear in him the future sparrow-hawk. The cuckoo that placed itself upon the spear of Luitprand, king of the Longobards, was considered by them as a sinister omen, as if the cuckoo were a funereal bird. In Italy we say "the years of the cuckoo," and in Piedmont "as old as a cuckoo," to indicate great age. A mediæval eclogue ascribes to the cuckoo the years of the sun, "Phœbo comes annus in ævum." As no one sees how the cuckoo disappears (the belief that it is killed by the cicadæ not being generally received), it is supposed that it never dies, that it is always the same cuckoo that sings year after year in the same wood. And, inasmuch as it is immortal, it must have seen everything and must know everything. The subalpine people, the Germans and the Slaves, ask the cuckoo how many years they still have to live. The asker judges how many years of life he may count upon from the number of times that the cuckoo sings; in Sanskrit the varsha or pluvial season determines the new year.
We said at the commencement of this chapter that the kokilas is the nightingale of Hindoo poets and its equivalent; and we have just noticed that the cuckoo also represents the phallos. In the chapter on the ass, we saw that the same rôle is sometimes taken by it. These three animals are found in conjunction in the well-known apologue of the cuckoo that disputes for superiority in singing with the nightingale; the ass, supposed to be the best judge in music on account of his long ears, being called to decide the question, declares for the cuckoo. (In the wonderful fable of Kriloff, instead of the cuckoo, the bird preferred by the ass is the cock; the nightingale is said in it to be the lover and singer of the aurora.) Then the nightingale appeals from the unjust sentence to man, singing melodiously.[373]
A German song of the sixteenth century[374] places the nightingale in opposition to the cuckoo: "it sings, it leaps, it is always gay when the other little birds are silent."
According to Pliny, the nightingales of the young Cæsars, sons of Claudius, spoke Greek and Latin, and meditated every day to learn something new. Thus, the Ornithologus speaks of two nightingales which, in 1546, at Ratisbon, disputed as to which spoke German best; in one of these discussions of the nightingale, the war between Charles V. and the Protestants was predicted. In the forty-sixth story of the sixth book of Afanassieff, a nightingale in a cage sings dolorously; the old man who possesses it says to his son Basil, that he would give half his substance to know what the nightingale is predicting by this woful song. The boy, who understands the language of the bird, announces to his parents a prophecy of the nightingale that they will one day serve him. The father is indignant; one day when the boy is asleep, he carries him to a boat and launches it on the sea. The nightingale immediately leaves the house, and flying away, perches upon the boy's shoulder. A shipmaster finds the boy and the nightingale, and takes them; the nightingale predicts tempests and the approach of pirates. At last they arrive in a city where the royal palace is assailed by three crows, which no one who attempts it succeeds in chasing away; the king promises half the kingdom and his youngest daughter to whoever can expel them, threatening death to whoever essays the enterprise in vain. The boy, advised by the nightingale, presents himself, and tells the king that the crow, his mate, and his young one are there to be judged by him (we have seen a similar legend in the chapter on the dog); they wish to have it determined whether the young crow belongs to his father or to his mother. The king says, "To his father;" then the young crow flies away with his father, while the female crow moves off in another direction. The boy marries the princess, becomes a great lord, obtains half the kingdom, travels, and is one night the guest, without their knowledge, of his own parents, who bring him water to wash himself. Thus the prediction of the nightingale is accomplished. In the popular Russian legend of Ilia Muromietz (Elias of Murom), the monster brigand killed by the hero's dart is called Nightingale (Salavéi). He has placed his nest upon twelve oak-trees, and kills as many as come in his way by simply whistling.[375] In the Edda of Sömund, the dwarf Alwis says of the wind, that it is called wind by men, vagabond by the gods, the noisy one by the powerful, the weeper by the giants, the bellowing traveller by the Alfes, and the whistler in the abode of Hel, that is, in the infernal regions; the Russian demoniacal monster-nightingale would therefore appear to be the wind in the darkness.
The nightingale, like the cuckoo, is called by Sappho, in Suidas, by the name of messenger of Zeus (now the moon, now the wind, now the thunder which announces rain). It also assumes a sinister aspect, under the name of killer of sons (paidoletôr), given it by Euripides. In a popular song of Bretagne,[376] the nightingale laments that the month of May has passed by with its flowers. In another song of Bretagne, the nightingale seems to have the same phallical signification which it has in the Tuti-Name. During the night, a wife is agitated on account of the nightingale (the moon); her husband has it caught with a net, and laughs when he has it.[377] The nightingale, as its name shows in the Germanic tongues, is the singer of the night, and a nocturnal bird. Hence Shakspeare, in Romeo and Juliet,[378] names it, in contrast to the lark, the announcer of morning:—