Sir,—Will Mr. Hussey take a suggestion for a half-answer to his query? It may possibly put him on the track of the origin of the lines that he quotes:—
In “Hamlet,” Ophelia says: “The owl was a baker’s daughter.” The ideas floating through her mind are connected with St. Valentine’s Day.
Grimm gives a story that “the cuckoo was a baker’s (or miller’s) man, and that is why he wears a dingy meal-sprinkled coat. In a dear season he robbed the poor of their flour, and when God was blessing the dough in the oven, he would take it out, and pull lumps out of it, crying every time, ‘Guk-guk,’ look, look; therefore the Lord punished him by changing him into a bird of prey, which incessantly repeats that cry.” This story, Grimm says, is doubtless very ancient, and was once told very differently. “That ‘dear season’ may have to do with the belief that when the Cuckoo’s call continues to be heard after midsummer, it betokens dearth.”
Again Grimm alludes to one of the many superstitions concerning the cuckoo in spring, and says that in some districts a rhyme runs thus:
“Kukuk beckenknecht
Sag mir recht,
Wie viel jar (jahr) ich leben soll.”
Here the idea of the baker is brought in.
Grimm gives a story of the woodpecker, which has also to do with the baking element. A combination of the Scandinavian with the saint-legendary element.
In Norway the red-hooded blackpecker is called Gertrude’s fowl, and the origin is thus explained. The story will be found in Mr. Stallybrass’ translation of Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” (see vol. ii. p. 673), together with much curious information concerning rhymes and charms, which may possibly be of some help to Mr. Hussey in his researches for origins of curious old rhymes and verses.
J. G.
AN ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.