“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it had its head bit off by its young.”
Again, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 1), Worcester says:
“And being fed by us you used us so
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird,
Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest;
Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk
That even our love durst not come near your sight
For fear of swallowing.”
Once more, the opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, is mentioned in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 6):
“Thou dost o’er-count me of my father’s house;
But, since the cuckoo builds not for himself,
Remain in’t as thou may’st.”
It has been remarked,[195] however, in reference to the common idea that the young cuckoo ill-treats its foster-mother, that if we watch the movements of the two birds, when the younger is being fed, we cannot much wonder at this piece of folk-lore. When the cuckoo opens its great mouth, the diminutive nurse places her own head so far within its precincts that it has the exact appearance of a voluntary surrender to decapitation.
The notion[196] “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. 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 applied the name of the bird in whose nest the cuckoo’s eggs were usually deposited—‘carruca’—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.” In further allusion to this bird, we may quote the following from “All’s Well That Ends Well” (i. 3):
“For I the ballad will repeat,
Which men full true shall find,
Your marriage comes by destiny,
Your cuckoo sings by kind.”
The cuckoo has generally been regarded as the harbinger of spring, and, according to a Gloucester rhyme:
“The cuckoo comes in April,
Sings a song in May;
Then in June another tune,
And then she flies away.”