Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk,
That even our love durst not come near your sight,
For fear of swallowing.”
Henry IV. Part I. Act v. Sc. 1.
The ingratitude of the young cuckoo, which is said to turn out the young of its foster parent as soon as it is sufficiently strong, has given rise in France to the proverb “Ingrat comme un coucou.”
The word “gull” above mentioned is usually applied to the person “gulled,” i.e. beguiled. Here it must either mean the “guller,” or it must have a special application to the voracity of the cuckoo, as the sea-gull is supposed to be so called from gulo—ōnis.
We gather from Decker’s “English Villanies” that formerly the sharpers termed their gang a warren, and their simple victims rabbit-suckers, or conies. At other times their confederates were called bird-catchers, and their prey gulls; and hence it was common to say of any person who had been swindled or hoaxed, that he was coney-catched or gulled.
“Why, ’tis a gull, a fool!”—Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 6.
In a subsequent chapter we shall have occasion to refer to various other passages in which the word gull is thus employed. But to return to the cuckoo, and its foster parent the hedge-sparrow:—
“Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud,