"A shepherd maiden, one fine day,
Two lambs to pasture led,
To verdant fields where daisies grew,
And bloomed the clover red;
There spied she in a hedge close by
A cuckoo, call with merry cry,
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"
After chasing the immortal bird from tree to tree to have her question, "Shall I soon be married?" answered, the song concludes with this taunting refrain—
"Two hundred then she counted o'er,
The cuckoo still cried as before,
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"
In our earliest published song, words and music composed by John of Forsete, monk of Reading Abbey, date 1225, and entitled "Sumer is icumen in," the cuckoo is also extolled—
"Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing, cuckoo;
Groweth the seed, bloweth the mead, and springeth wood anew.
Sing, cuckoo! Merry sing, cuckoo,
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"
The peasantry of Russia, India, and Germany contribute to the collection of cuckoo-lore. Grimm mentions a Cuckoo Hill in Gauchsberg. The cuckoo and not the hill may have had the mystic sense.
Identical with this Cuckoo Hill, in its solemn significance, there occurs a passage in the game of Hot Cockles, played formerly at Yorkshire funerals.
"Where is the poor man to go?"
the friends whine, and the mutes who are in readiness to follow the coffin beat their knees with open hands and reply—