“To read the winter of any year take the breast-bone of a goose hatched during the preceding spring. The bone is translucent, and it will be found to be colored and spotted. The dark color and heavy spots indicate cold. If the spots are of light shade, and transparent, wet weather, rain or snow, may be looked for.
“If the November goose-bone be thick,
So will the winter weather be;
If the November goose-bone be thin,
So will the winter weather be.”
One need not wonder at the indignant refusal of hard-headed commanders of old who refused to let their strategy or tactics to be interfered with by alarmed priests who reported unfavorable auguries from dissected hens. Eusebius records the legend that a bird was presented to Alexander the Macedonian when on the point of setting out for the Red Sea, in order that he might read the auguries according to custom. Alexander killed the bird by an arrow, saying, “What folly is this? How could a bird that could not foresee its death by this arrow, predict the fortunes of our journey?” The shocked bystanders might have replied, of course, that the poor creature had no such knowledge in itself, but was merely the blank on which divine intelligence was written; but the chances are that they held their tongues! Plutarch mentions many a case in which commanders construed the “omens” in a way contrary to the priestly interpretation, in order to carry out some plan that could not be delayed, and yet conciliate the superstitious soldiers.
It will have been noticed that most of the prophecies learned from birds relate to coming rain or bad weather, and winter rather than summer. In The Strange Metamorphosis of Man (1634), as quoted by Brewer,[[34]] speaking of the goose, we read: “She is no witch or astrologer, ... but she hath a shrewd guesse of rainie weather, being as good as an almanac to some that beleeve in her.” Men generally seem more desirous of ascertaining the evil than the good that may be in store for them. The feeling is, perhaps, that if we knew of dangers ahead we might prepare for them, but that in fair days we can take care of ourselves. Almost every country has some particular “rain-bird” whose cry is supposed to foretell showers. In England it is the green woodpecker, or yaffle; in Malaya a broadbill; in some parts of this country the spotted sandpiper, or tipup; but everywhere some sort of cuckoo is called “rain-bird” or “rain-crow,” although the various cuckoos of America, Europe, and the Orient, differ widely in appearance, habits and voice.
Why should peoples so dissimilar and widely scattered attribute to this very diverse cuckoo family the quality of “rain-birds” more than to another family? I can only believe that it denotes the survival of a very ancient Oriental notion, whose significance was very real in a symbolic way to the primitive people among whom it originated locally, but has now been utterly forgotten.
Plunging into the thickets of comparative mythology, hoping to pluck a few fruity facts for our pains, we find that in Hindoo myths the cuckoo stands as a symbol of the sun when hidden behind clouds, that is, for a rainy condition of the sky; furthermore that this bird has a reputation for possessing exceeding wisdom surpassing that of other birds, all of which are fabled to be supernaturally wise: and that it knew not only things present but things to come. It was, in fact, in the opinion of the ancient Hindoos, a prophetic bird of unrivalled vatic ability. The Greeks thought their own cuckoo had inherited some of these qualities, for they made it one of the birds in the Olympian aviary of Zeus, who, please remember, was the pluvial god.
Plainly this rainy-day character was given to the bird through the circumstance that in southern Asia, as in southern Europe, the cuckoo is one of the earliest and quite the most conspicuous of spring-birds—and the spring is the rainy season. In early days farmers had little knowledge of a calendar. They sowed and reaped when it seemed fitting to do so. The coming of the cuckoo coincided with experience, and came to be their almanac-date for certain operations—a signal convenient in advice to the young, or to a newcomer; and as a rule hoped-for showers followed the bird’s advent. In the same way old-fashioned Pennsylvania farmers used to connect corn-planting time and the first-heard singing of the brown thrasher.