“If not, resolve before we go
That you and I must pull a crow.”
The crow has been regarded as the emblem of darkness, which has not escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, in “Pericles” (iv. introd.), speaking of the white dove, says:
“With the dove of Paphos might the crow
Vie feathers white.”[191]
Cuckoo. Many superstitions have clustered round the cuckoo, and both in this country and abroad it is looked upon as a mysterious bird, being supposed to possess the gift of second-sight, a notion referred to in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
“Cuckoo, cuckoo:[192] O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.”
And again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), Bottom sings:
“The plain-song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.”
It is still a common idea that the cuckoo, if asked, will tell any one, by the repetition of its cries, how long he has to live. The country lasses in Sweden count the cuckoo’s call to ascertain how many years they have to remain unmarried, but they generally shut their ears and run away on hearing it a few times.[193] Among the Germans the notes of the cuckoo, when heard in spring for the first time, are considered a good omen. Cæsarius (1222) tells us of a convertite who was about to become a monk, but changed his mind on hearing the cuckoo’s call, and counting twenty-two repetitions of it. “Come,” said he, “I have certainly twenty-two years still to live, and why should I mortify myself during all that time? I will go back to the world, enjoy its delights for twenty years, and devote the remaining two to penitence.”[194] In England the peasantry salute the cuckoo with the following invocation:
“Cuckoo, cherry-tree,
Good bird, tell me,
How many years have I to live”—
the allusion to the cherry-tree having probably originated in the popular fancy that before the cuckoo ceases its song it must eat three good meals of cherries. Pliny mentions the belief that when the cuckoo came to maturity it devoured the bird which had reared it, a superstition several times alluded to by Shakespeare. Thus, in “King Lear” (i. 4), the Fool remarks: