THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE, THE NIGHTINGALE,
THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND THE HOOPOE.
SUMMARY.
The kokilas, the nightingale of the Hindoo poets.--The
heron.--Kokas.--Kapingalas.--The partridges.--The Vedas instead of
the enchanted ring.--The partridge as a devil.--The heathcock.--The
partridge and the peasant.--The pigmies ride on partridges.--Talaus
becomes a partridge.--The kapingalas as a cuckoo; Indras as a
kapingalas; Indras as a cuckoo.--Rambhâ becomes a stone.--Zeus as a
cuckoo.--The laughing nightingale instead of the cuckoo.--The myth
of Tereus.--The whoop, or hoopoe, announces, it divines secrets; the
blind whoop and its young ones.--It buries its parents.--The cuckoo
and the hawk.--The cuckoo anyapushtas.--The phallical cuckoo.--The
cuckoo as a good omen for matrimony.--The cuckoo is deceitful and a
derider.--The cuckoo as the messenger of spring, and as the bringer
of summer.--The death of the cuckoo.--_Cocu, coucoul, couquiol,
cucuault, kokküges._--The cuckoo announces rain; the cuckoo as a
funereal bird.--The years of the cuckoo.--The cuckoo, the
nightingale, and the ass.--The learned nightingales.--The
nightingales predict the future.--The monster as a nightingale.--The
wind as a whistler.--The nightingale as the messenger of
Zeus.--Paidoletôr.--The phallical nightingale.--The nightingale as
the singer of the night.--The nightingale as the messenger of
lovers; he now helps them, and now compels them to separate.--The
sun dries the nightingale up; a wedding custom.--The swallow; the
chicken of the Lord.--The seven swallows of the _Edda_.--The swallow
blinds the witch.--The birds of the Madonna; San Francesco and the
swallows.--It is a mortal sin to kill them.--The swallows as guests;
sacred birds.--The swallow beautiful only in spring.--The swans and
the swallows sing.--The swallows as babblers.--It is a bad omen to
dream of swallows.--Chelidôn, the _pudendum muliebre_.--The sparrow
as a phallical bird.--The swallow as a diabolical form.
The kokilas or Indian cuckoo is for the Hindoo poets what the
nightingale is for ours. The choicest epithets are employed to describe
its singing, and the one most frequently applied to it in this reference
is that of ravisher of the heart (hridayagrahin). While I write, I have
not under my eyes, nor can I have, Schlegel's edition of the
_Râmâyanam_; but if my memory does not deceive me, in the introduction,
the poet Vâlmîkis makes the first çlokas, when he hears the lamentation
of a kokilas whose beloved companion has been killed. In the edition of
Gorresio, instead of the kokilas, we have the krâuncas, which is the
heron according to Gorresio, and the bustard (Brachvogel) according to
the Petropolitan Dictionary. Kokas, a synonym of kokilas, is also
mentioned in a Vedic hymn.[361] The Hindoo commentator explains it as
cakravâkas, which must be the equivalent of heron, although the
dictionaries interpret it particularly as the _anas casarca_. In the
forty-second and forty-third hymns of the _Rigvedas_, a bird occurs
which partakes of the nature of both the cuckoo and the heron, or
bustard. Here the bird "proclaims the future, predicts, launches its
voice as the boatman his boat:" it is invoked "that it be of good
augury," that "the hawk may not strike it," nor "the vulture," nor "the
archer armed with darts;" in order that, "having called towards the
funereal western region, it may speak propitiously with good-omened
words," that it may "shout to the eastern side of the houses,
propitious, with good-omened words."[362] In this prophetic bird,
explained by the _Brihaddevatâ_ as kapingalas, the Petropolitan
Dictionary recognises the heathcock (Haselhuhn), of which tittiris or
partridge is also a rendering. A Hindoo brahmanic tradition transforms
into partridges the scholars of Vâiçampayanas to peck at the Vedas of
Yâgnavalkyas. The scholars of Vâiçampayanas are the compilers of the
_Tâittiriya-Veda_, or Veda of the partridges, or else black Veda. The
Vedas sometimes occupies in Eastern tradition the place of the enchanted
ring. In Western tradition, the devil, or black monster, becomes a cock
in order to peck at the pearl or ring of the young hero who has become
wise. In St Jerome's and St Augustine's writings, we also read that the
devil often assumes the form of a partridge.[363] The Indian tittiris
occurs again in the Russian tieteriev (the heathcock). In a story of the
second book of _Afanassieff_, the Tzar gives to a peasant a golden
heathcock for a dish of kissél, made of a grain of oats found in a
dunghill (a variety of the well-known fable of the chicken and the
pearl). The heathcock finds the grain. In another story of the fifth
book of _Afanassieff_, a heathcock sits upon the oak-tree that is to
carry the peasant-hero into heaven; it falls down, struck by the bullet
of a gun that goes off of itself, because a spark, coming out of the
tree, fell upon the powder of the gun and made the charge explode. The
partridge and the peasant often occur in connection with each other in
popular traditions. The shoes that the peasant took for partridges are
proverbial. Odoricus Forojuliensis speaks in his _Itinerarium_ of a man
at Trebizonde who conducted four thousand partridges; as he walked on
the ground, the partridges flew through the air; when he stopped to
sleep, the partridges also came down. According to the _Ornithologus_,
the pigmies, in the war against the cranes, rode upon partridges. An
extraordinary degree of intelligence and prophetic virtue is ascribed to
these birds. Aldrovandi asserts, in his Ornithology, that tame
partridges cry out loudly when poison is being prepared in the house.
The partridge was also called _dædala_ in antiquity, both because of its
intelligence, and because of the fable in which Talaus, the nephew of
Dædalus, the inventor of rhyme, thrown from the citadel of Athênê, by
the envoy of Dædalus, was changed into a partridge by the pitying gods.
But to return to the point we started from, that is, to the Hindoo
kapingalas, we must notice that Professor Kuhn,[364] has recognised in
it the cuckoo rather than the heathcock. A legend of the _Brihaddevatâ_
informs us that Indras, desirous of being sung to, and having become
kapingalas, placed himself at the right hand of the wise man that
desired (by the merit of his praises) to rise into heaven; then the wise
man having, with the eye of a sage, recognised the god in the bird, sang
for psalms those two Vedic hymns of which one begins with the word
_kanikradat_."[365] The god Indras is found again in the form of a
cuckoo (kokilas) in the _Râmâyanam_,[366] where Indras sends the nymph
Rambhâ to seduce the ascetic Viçvâmitras, and in order to increase her
attractions, he places himself near her in the form of a cuckoo that
sings sweetly. But Viçvâmitras, with the eye of asceticism, perceives
that this is a seduction of Indras, and curses the nymph, condemning her
to become a stone in the forest for ten thousand years.
In the first chapter of the first book we already saw the cuckoo in
connection with the thundering Zeus, and as the indiscreet observer of
and agent in celestial loves. In the _Tuti-Name_,[367] instead of the
cuckoo, we have the nightingale. The nightingale holds the betrayed king
up to ridicule, laughing at him. The king wishes to know what this laugh
of the nightingale means, and Gûlfishân explains the enigma to him, not
so much because he is able, as is supposed, to understand the language
of birds, but because from the tower where he was imprisoned he had been
the spectator of the amours of the queen with her secret lover.
In the Greek myth of Tereus we find united several of the birds
hitherto named, and the swallow besides; the pheasant takes the place
of the partridge, and the whoop or hoopoe that of the cuckoo. Itüs
eaten by his father Tereus, without the latter's knowledge, becomes a
pheasant; Tereus, who follows Prognê, becomes a whoop; Prognê, who
flees from him, is transformed into a swallow; Philomela, the sister
of Prognê, whose tongue had been cut out by Zeus to prevent her from
speaking, took the form of a nightingale, whence Martial--
"Flet Philomela nefas incesti Tereos, et quæ
Muta puella fuit, garrula fertur avis."
With regard to the hoopoe, several beliefs are current analogous to
those known concerning the cuckoo and the swallow. In several parts of
Italy it is called (on account of its crest and appearance in these
months) the little cock of March or the little cock of May. It announces
the spring. By the ancients, its song before the vines ripened was
looked upon as a prediction of a plentiful vintage and good wine. It has
the virtue of divining secrets; when it cackles, it announces that foxes
are hidden in the grass; when it groans, it is a prognostication of
rain; by means of a certain herb, it opens secret places.[368] According
to Cardanus, if a man anoints his temples with the blood of a whoop he
sees marvellous things in his dreams. Albertus Magnus tells us that when
an old whoop becomes blind, its young ones anoint its eyes with the herb
that opens shut places, and they recover their sight. This is in perfect
conformity with a Hindoo story (a variation of the legend of Lear)
narrated by Ælianos, according to which a king of India had several
sons; the youngest was maltreated by his brothers, who ended by
maltreating and expelling their father. The youngest brother alone
remained faithful to his parents, and followed them; but while they were
travelling, they died of weariness; the son opened his own head with his
sword and buried his parents in it; the sun, moved to pity by this
sight, changed the youth into a beautiful bird with a crest. But this
crested bird, instead of the whoop, may also be the lark, concerning
which the Greeks had also a similar legend.
The cuckoo is the bird of spring; when it appears, the first claps of
thunder are heard in the sky, announcing the season of heat. According
to Isidorus it is the kite that brings the lazy cuckoo from distant
regions. In the time of Pliny, the cuckoo was supposed to be born of
the sparrow-hawk, and Albertus Magnus, in the Middle Ages, asserted,
"Cuculus quidam componitur ex Columba et Niso sive Sparverio; alius,
ex Columba et Asture, mores etiam habet ex utroque compositos." There
is nothing falser, zoologically speaking; but inasmuch as the
lightning carries the thunder, the mythical hawk may well carry or
produce the mythical cuckoo. Moreover, the habits of the cuckoo are
very singular, and have not anything in common with those of the
falcon and the dove, or indeed any other animal. It is well-known
that, among the Hindoo names of the cuckoo we find anyapushtas and
anyabhritas, which mean nourished by another (the crow is called
anyabhrit, or nourisher of others, because it nurses the eggs of the
cuckoo, which, for the rest, deposits them even in the nests of much
smaller animals[369]). From this singular habit of the cuckoo, it was
natural to conclude that the male cuckoo united itself in adultery
with the strange female bird to which it afterwards confided the eggs,
which would thus be bastard eggs of the female itself that sits on
them. We have just seen Indras as a cuckoo and as a seducer of Rambhâ;
Indras as an adulterer is also very popular in the legend of Ahalyâ,
in which the cock (the morning sun) appears, instead, as the
indiscreet betrayer of the secret amours of Indras (the hidden sun).
In a popular song of Bretagne, the perfidious mother-in-law insinuates
to her son the suspicion that his young wife betrays him, saying,
"préservez votre nid du coucou."[370]
The cuckoo is the sun or solar ray in the darkness, or still oftener the
thunderbolt hidden in the cloud. Dâtyuhas is one of the Indian names of
the cuckoo, and also of the cloud, out of which alone the cuckoo is said
to drink. As a hidden sun, the cuckoo is now an absent husband, a
travelling husband, a husband in the forests, and now an adulterer in
secret amorous intercourse with the wife of another. In any case, it is
often a phallical symbol, and therefore delights in mysteries.
Meanwhile, it sits on the sceptre of Hêrê, the protectress of marriages
and childbirths, whilst Zeus himself, the thunder-striker, the
thunderer, her adulterous brother, is called kokkük or cuckoo, because
he had hidden himself in Hêrê's lap in the shape of a cuckoo, in order
not to be recognised. Hence the song of the cuckoo was considered a good
omen to whoever intended to marry. In the popular song of the Monferrato
sung for the Easter eggs, the landlord is cunningly advised that it is
time to marry his daughters. In Swedish and Danish songs, the cuckoo
carries the wedding-nut to the nuptials. Nor was this because of its
reputation as an adulterer, but because it has a phallical meaning,
because it loves mysteries, and because it appears only in spring, in
the season of loves. For the rest, as an adulterer, it would have been a
bad omen for marriages; in the _Asinaria_ of Plautus, indeed, a woman
calls her husband cuculus, because he sleeps with other women. The
cuckoo is therefore, properly, the deceitful husband, the adulterer,
the hidden lover. The cuckoo is the derider; when children play at hide
and seek, they are accustomed in Germany and in Italy, as well as in
England, to cry out _cuckoo_ to him who is to seek them in vain, as is
hoped. The Latin word _cucu_, with which the pruners of vines who came
late were held up to derision, the corresponding Piedmontese motto and
gesture, mentioned in the first chapter of this work, and the Italian
expression _cuculiare_ for to ridicule, show the cuckoo as a cunning
animal. It is the first, as is said, of the migratory birds to appear,
and the first to disappear. In Germany it is believed that the grapes
ripen with difficulty if the cuckoo continues to sing after St John's
Day. It is the welcome messenger of spring[371] in the country, where it
calls the peasants to their work. Hesiod says that when the cuckoo
sings among the oak-trees, it is time to plough.
But inasmuch as the cuckoo seldom shows itself, inasmuch as it
represents essentially the sun hidden in the clouds, and as we know that
the sun hidden in the clouds has several contradictory aspects, as a
wise hero that penetrates everything, as an intrepid hero that defies
every danger, as a betrayed hero, as a deceived husband, a traitor, a
monster or a demon, so the cuckoo also has an ungrateful and sinister
aspect. The adulterer who visits in secret the wife of another, becomes
the absent husband that is travelling, the husband in the forest, whilst
his wife entertains guests at home; or else the husband that sleeps
whilst his wife is only too watchful; whence the verse of Plautus--
"At etiam cubat cuculus, surge, Amator, i domum,"
and the French word _cocu_, and those registered by Du Cange,[372]
_coucoul_, _couquiol_, _cucuault_, to express the husband of an
adulterous woman. In Aristophanes, inept and inexperienced men are
called kokküges. According to Pliny, a cuckoo bound with a hare's skin
induces sleep (that is to say, the sun hides itself, the moon appears,
and the world falls asleep). When the cuckoo approaches a city, and
especially if it enters it, it bodes rain (that is, the sun hidden in
clouds brings rain). In _Plutarch_ (Life of Aratos), the cuckoo asks the
other birds why they flee from his sight, inasmuch as he is not
ferocious; the birds answer that they fear in him the future
sparrow-hawk. The cuckoo that placed itself upon the spear of Luitprand,
king of the Longobards, was considered by them as a sinister omen, as if
the cuckoo were a funereal bird. In Italy we say "the years of the
cuckoo," and in Piedmont "as old as a cuckoo," to indicate great age. A
mediæval eclogue ascribes to the cuckoo the years of the sun, "Phoebo
comes annus in ævum." As no one sees how the cuckoo disappears (the
belief that it is killed by the cicadæ not being generally received), it
is supposed that it never dies, that it is always the same cuckoo that
sings year after year in the same wood. And, inasmuch as it is immortal,
it must have seen everything and must know everything. The subalpine
people, the Germans and the Slaves, ask the cuckoo how many years they
still have to live. The asker judges how many years of life he may count
upon from the number of times that the cuckoo sings; in Sanskrit the
varsha or pluvial season determines the new year.
We said at the commencement of this chapter that the kokilas is the
nightingale of Hindoo poets and its equivalent; and we have just noticed
that the cuckoo also represents the phallos. In the chapter on the ass,
we saw that the same rôle is sometimes taken by it. These three animals
are found in conjunction in the well-known apologue of the cuckoo that
disputes for superiority in singing with the nightingale; the ass,
supposed to be the best judge in music on account of his long ears,
being called to decide the question, declares for the cuckoo. (In the
wonderful fable of Kriloff, instead of the cuckoo, the bird preferred by
the ass is the cock; the nightingale is said in it to be the lover and
singer of the aurora.) Then the nightingale appeals from the unjust
sentence to man, singing melodiously.[373]
A German song of the sixteenth century[374] places the nightingale in
opposition to the cuckoo: "it sings, it leaps, it is always gay when
the other little birds are silent."
According to Pliny, the nightingales of the young Cæsars, sons of
Claudius, spoke Greek and Latin, and meditated every day to learn
something new. Thus, the _Ornithologus_ speaks of two nightingales
which, in 1546, at Ratisbon, disputed as to which spoke German best;
in one of these discussions of the nightingale, the war between
Charles V. and the Protestants was predicted. In the forty-sixth story
of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, a nightingale in a cage sings
dolorously; the old man who possesses it says to his son Basil, that
he would give half his substance to know what the nightingale is
predicting by this woful song. The boy, who understands the language
of the bird, announces to his parents a prophecy of the nightingale
that they will one day serve him. The father is indignant; one day
when the boy is asleep, he carries him to a boat and launches it on
the sea. The nightingale immediately leaves the house, and flying
away, perches upon the boy's shoulder. A shipmaster finds the boy and
the nightingale, and takes them; the nightingale predicts tempests and
the approach of pirates. At last they arrive in a city where the
royal palace is assailed by three crows, which no one who attempts it
succeeds in chasing away; the king promises half the kingdom and his
youngest daughter to whoever can expel them, threatening death to
whoever essays the enterprise in vain. The boy, advised by the
nightingale, presents himself, and tells the king that the crow, his
mate, and his young one are there to be judged by him (we have seen a
similar legend in the chapter on the dog); they wish to have it
determined whether the young crow belongs to his father or to his
mother. The king says, "To his father;" then the young crow flies away
with his father, while the female crow moves off in another direction.
The boy marries the princess, becomes a great lord, obtains half the
kingdom, travels, and is one night the guest, without their knowledge,
of his own parents, who bring him water to wash himself. Thus the
prediction of the nightingale is accomplished. In the popular Russian
legend of Ilia Muromietz (Elias of Murom), the monster brigand killed
by the hero's dart is called Nightingale (Salavéi). He has placed his
nest upon twelve oak-trees, and kills as many as come in his way by
simply whistling.[375] In the _Edda_ of Sömund, the dwarf Alwis says
of the wind, that it is called wind by men, vagabond by the gods, the
noisy one by the powerful, the weeper by the giants, the bellowing
traveller by the Alfes, and the whistler in the abode of Hel, that is,
in the infernal regions; the Russian demoniacal monster-nightingale
would therefore appear to be the wind in the darkness.
The nightingale, like the cuckoo, is called by Sappho, in _Suidas_, by
the name of messenger of Zeus (now the moon, now the wind, now the
thunder which announces rain). It also assumes a sinister aspect, under
the name of killer of sons (paidoletôr), given it by Euripides. In a
popular song of Bretagne,[376] the nightingale laments that the month of
May has passed by with its flowers. In another song of Bretagne, the
nightingale seems to have the same phallical signification which it has
in the _Tuti-Name_. During the night, a wife is agitated on account of
the nightingale (the moon); her husband has it caught with a net, and
laughs when he has it.[377] The nightingale, as its name shows in the
Germanic tongues, is the singer of the night, and a nocturnal bird.
Hence Shakspeare, in _Romeo and Juliet_,[378] names it, in contrast to
the lark, the announcer of morning:--
"_Jul._ Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
_Rom_. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale."
And it is as a nocturnal animal, and as a bird that sings concealed,
that the nightingale (as the moon does) pleases lovers, who make it
their mysterious and secret messenger in popular superstition and
popular songs in Germany, as in France. In the third story of the
fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the girl Betta makes a cake which has
the form of a handsome youth with golden hair; by the grace of the
goddess of love, the cake-youth speaks and walks, and Betta marries
him; but a queen robs her of him. Betta goes to seek him; an old woman
gives to her three marvellous things, by means of which Betta obtains
from the queen the permission of sleeping during the night with her
youth, who has become the queen's husband; one of these three marvels
is a golden cage containing a bird made of precious stones and gold,
which sings like a nightingale. In popular German songs, lovers seek
to propitiate the nightingale by means of gold, but it answers that it
knows not what to do with it; the nightingale (like the cuckoo, which
is propitious to weddings, although an adulterer) now helps lovers,
and now compels them to separate. In a popular English song,[379] two
lovers go together into the shadowy forest, where the nightingale
sings; the maiden is terrified by the nightingale; but when she has
married her young lover, she no longer fears either the gloomy wood or
the nightingale's warbling. However much poetic imagination may have
adorned similar legends, their phallical origin can always be traced.
A popular German song says that the sun dries the nightingale up.
According to popular wedding customs, it is a great shame if the young
pair let themselves be surprised in bed by the sun after the first
night of their union; hence the practical joke often played upon the
husband by his friends, who shut the outer shutters of the windows, in
order that the rays of the morning sun may not enter the nuptial
chamber. But our subject presses; let us continue.
The swallow has the same mythical meaning as the cuckoo; it is the
joyful herald of spring, emerging from the tenebrific winter. In the
winter season, the swallow is of sinister omen; in the spring-time, on
the contrary, it is propitious.
In Piedmont, the swallow is called the chicken of the Lord. In the
_Edda_, the seven swallows, one after another, advise Sigurd, who is
still undecided, to kill the monster that guards the treasures. Sigurd
follows the advice of the swallows, finds and obtains the hidden gold,
and recovers his wife (the sun marries the spring, the flowery and
verdant earth, when the swallows arrive and begin to sing). In the
fifth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the swallow
blinds the witch who had expelled it from its nest (the wintry season
obliges the swallows to depart; the hot and luminous season disperses
the wintry darkness). In Germany the swallows are called the birds of
the Madonna; San Francesco called the swallows his sisters; and in the
Oberinnthal it is believed that they helped the Lord God in building
the sky. In Germany, as well as in Italy, the swallows are considered
to be birds of the best augury; it is a mortal sin to kill them, or to
destroy their nests. In Germany and in Hungary, if a man destroys a
swallow's nest, his cow no longer gives milk, or else gives it mixed
with blood. Hence it is advisable always to have a window open,
because if a swallow enters the house it brings every kind of
happiness with it; in the same way, it is believed that guests bring
luck into a house, and this is a beautiful belief, which is honourable
to mankind, and one of the most signal evidences of man's sociable
nature. In the _Ornithes_ of Aristophanes, the swallows are intrusted
with the building of the city of the birds. Solinus writes that even
birds of prey dare not touch the swallow, which is a sacred bird.
According to Arrianos, a swallow which chirped round the head of
Alexander the Great, whilst he was asleep, wakened him to warn him of
the machinations in his family that were being plotted against him. In
an apologue the swallow warns the hen not to sit upon the eggs of the
serpent. Swallows were anciently used in time of war as messengers.
According to Pliny, again, the head of a swallow that fed in the
morning, was, when cut off at full moon, and tied in linen and hung
up, an excellent remedy for headache.
But in an apologue where the swallow boasts to the crow of its beauty,
the crow answers that he is always equally beautiful, whilst the swallow
is only beautiful in spring. In another apologue, which is found in the
Epistle of St Gregory of Nazianzen to Prince Seleusius, the swallows
boast to the swans of their twittering for the benefit of the public,
whilst the swans sing only for themselves, and that little, and in
solitary places. The swans answer that it is better to sing little and
well to a chosen few than much and badly to all. The Greeks, in a
proverb, advise men not to keep swallows under their roofs, by which
they meant to put them on their guard against babblers. The swallow here
evidently begins to assume, as in the mythical tragedy of Tereus, a
sinister aspect, for which, reason Horace calls it--
"Infelix avis et Cecropiæ domus
Æternum opprobrium."
The swallow, beautiful and propitious in spring, becomes ugly and almost
diabolical in the other seasons. Hence the ancients believed that it was
a bad omen to dream of swallows. According to Xenophon, the appearance
of the swallows preceded the expedition of Cyrus against the Scythians,
and announced it to be unlucky. The same presage is made by the swallows
to Darius when he moves against the Scythians, and to Antiochus, who is
at war with the Parthians. It is also said that Pythagoras would have no
swallows in his house, because they were insectivorous. In _Suidas_, the
_pudendum muliebre_ is called _chelidôn_; and it is perhaps as such that
the swallow is represented in opposition to the sparrow, which is a
well-known phallical symbol, sacred (like the doves) to Venus, whom it
accompanied, according to Apuleius,[380] and to Asklepios. The sparrow
destroys the swallow's nest, as it is said in a popular German song of
Michaelstein:--
"Als ich auszog, auszog,
Hatt' ich Kisten und Kasten voll,
Als ich wiederkam, wiederkam,
Hatt' der Sperling,
Der Dickkopf, der Dickkopf
Alles verzehrt."
The swallow, moreover, is a diabolical, dark form which, by the witch's
enchantment, the beautiful maiden assumes when she finds herself near
the fountain (_i.e._, near the ocean of night, or of winter).[381]
FOOTNOTES:
[361] _Rigv._ vii. 104, 22.
[362] Kanikradag ganusham prabruvâna iyarti vâcam ariteva nâvam
sumañgalaç ca çakune bhavâsi mâ tvâ kâ cid abhibhâ viçvyâvidat. Ma tvâ
çyena ud vadhîn ma suparno mâ tvâ vidad ishumân vîro astâ; pitryâmanu
pradiçam kanikradat sumañgalo bhadrâvâdî vadeha. Ava kranda dakshinato
grihânâm sumañgalo bhadravâdî çakunte; _Rigv._ ii. 42.
[363] St Anthony of Padua said of the partridge: "Avis est dolosa et
immunda et hypocritas habentes, ut dicit Petrus, oculos plenos
adulterii et incessabilis delicti signa."--Partridge's foot (perdikos
pous) meant, in the Greek proverb, a deceitful foot.
[364] _Indische Studien_, i. 117, 118.
[365]
Stutim tu punar evéchanam indro bhûtvâ kapingalah
Risher gigamishor âçâm vavâçe prati dakshinâm
Sa tam ârshena samprekshya cakshushâ pakshirûpinam
Parâbhyâm api tushtâva sûktâbhyâm tu kanikradat.
[366] i. 66.
[367] ii. 79.
[368] Cfr. the chapter on the Woodpecker. A whoop, kept by me for some
time with its young ones, had been taken with its nest from the trunk
of a tree which had been cut down, and which it had scooped out in its
higher part in order to build its nest in the lowest and deepest part
of the trunk.
[369] I, for instance, kept for some time a young cuckoo which had
been found in the nest of a little granivorous singing bird, which is
very common in Tuscany, and is called scoperina or scopina.
[370] Villemarqué, _Barzaz Breiz_, sixième éd. p. 493.
[371] The old English popular song celebrates it as the bringer of
summer--
"Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu."
The old Anglo-Saxon song of St Guthlak makes the cuckoo the announcer
of the year (geacas gear budon). The ancient song of May in Germany
welcomes it with the words--
"The cuckoo with its song makes every one gay."
The popular Scotch song caresses it thus--
"The cuckoo's a fine bird, he sings as he flies;
He brings us good tidings, he tells us no lies.
He sucks little bird's eggs to make his voice clear,
And when he sings 'cuckoo,' the summer is near."
In Shakspeare (_Love's Labour Lost_, v. 2), the owl represents winter,
and the cuckoo spring--"This side is Hiems, winter, this Ver, the
spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo."
In a mediæval Latin eclogue recorded in the third volume of Uhland's
_Schriften_ (Abhandlung über die deutschen Volkslieder), the death of
the cuckoo is wept over--
"Heu cuculus nobis fuerat cantare suetus,
Quæ te nunc rapuit hora nefanda tuis?
Omne genus hominum Cuculum complangat ubique!
Perditus est cuculus, heu perit ecce meus.
Non pereat Cuculus, veniet sub tempore veris
Et nobis veniens carmina læta ciet.
Quis scit, si veniat? timeo est submersus in undis,
Vorticibus raptus atque necatus aquis."
A popular German song shows us the cuckoo first wet, and then dried by
the sun--
"Der Kuckuck auf dem Zaune sass,
Kuckuck, kuckuck!
Es regnet sehr und ward nass.
Darnach da kam der Sonnenschein,
Kuckuck, kuckuck!
Der kuckuck der ward hübsch und fein."
--Cfr. also the "Entstehung des Kukuks" in Hahn's _Albanesische
Märchen_, ii. 144, 316.
[372] _s. v. cucullus._
[373] Cfr. the chapter on the Peacock.
[374] Cfr. Uhland's _Schriften_, iii. 25.
[375] Cfr. _Afanassieff_, i. 12.
[376] Villemarqué, _Barzaz Breiz_, sixième éd. p. 392.
[377] "Quand il le tint, se mit à rire de tout son coeur. E il
l'étouffa, et le jeta dans le blanc giron de la pauvre dame. Tenez,
tenez, ma jeune épouse, voici votre joli rossignol; c'est pour vous
que je l'ai attrapé; je suppose, ma belle, qu'il vous fera plaisir;"
Villemarqué, _Barzaz Breiz_, p. 154.
[378] iii. 5.
[379] Dixon, _Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of
England_; cfr. also on the traditions relating to the cuckoo and the
nightingale in Russia, Ralston, _The Songs of the Russian People_.
[380] Currum Deæ prosequentes, gannitu constrepenti lasciviunt
Passeres; _De Asino Aureo_, vi.
[381] A woman of Antignano, near Leghorn, once told me the story of a
beautiful princess who stayed upon a tree till her husband returned,
who had gone in quest of robes for her. Whilst she is waiting, up
comes a negress to wash clothes, and sees in the water the reflection
of the beautiful princess. She induces her to come down by offering to
comb her hair for her, and puts a pin into her head, so that she
becomes a swallow. The negress then takes the maiden's place by her
husband. The swallow, however, finds means of letting herself be
caught by her husband, who, stroking her head, finds the pin, and
draws it out; then the swallow becomes again a beautiful princess. The
same story is narrated more at length in Piedmont, in other parts of
Tuscany, in Calabria, and in other places; but instead of the swallow
we have the dove, as in the _Tuti-Name_.