But, as in all the other stanzas the rhymes are alternate, this was most probably an error of the compositor. The transposition now generally adopted was first made by Theobald.
The notion 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. We are not aware that it existed originally
amongst the Teutonic race, and we have doubtless received it from the Normans. The opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, which brought up the young cuckoo to the detriment of its own offspring, was well-known to the ancients, and is mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny.
So in Antony and Cleopatra (Act ii. Sc. 6):—
“Thou dost o’ercount me of my father’s house;
But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,
Remain in ’t as thou may’st.”
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 gave the name of the bird in whose nest the cuckoo’s eggs were usually deposited—“curruca”—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.[85] In allusion to this are the following lines of Shakespeare:—
“For I the ballad will repeat,
Which men full true will find;