Chapter 21

There is no bird to which the gift of prophecy is more universally conceded than the cuckoo, (55) whose clear and measured voice rings in the young foilage of the grove. The Old German law designates spring by the set phrase 'wann der gauch guket' (RA. 36), as in Hesoid's rules of husbandry the cuckoo's song marks the growing rains of spring. Two old poems describe the quarrel of Spring and Winter about the cuckoo, and the shepherds' lamentation for him: Spring praises the bird, 'tarda hiems' chides him, shepherds declare that he is drowned or kidnapped. There is a remarkable line:

Tempus adest veris; cuculus, modo rumpe soporem. (56)
His notes usher in the sweetest season of the year, but his telling men their fortunes is not alluded to. The Cod. Exon. 146, 27 also makes him publish or 'bid' the year: 'geácas gear budon,' cuculi annum nuntiavere. But the superstition is not yet extinct, that the first time you hear the cuckoo in the spring, you can learn of him how many years you have yet to live (Sup. I, 197. K, Swed. 119. Dan. 128. 146). In Switzerland the children call out: 'gugger, wie lang leb i no?' and in Lower Saxony:

kukuk vam häven,

wo lange sall ik leven?
then you must listen, and count how many times the bird repeats his own name after your question, and that is the number of years left you to live (Schütze's Holst. idiot. 2, 363). In some districts (57) the rhyme runs:

kukuk beckenknecht,

sag mir recht,

wie viel jar ich leben soll? (58)
The story is, that the bird 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 (conf. Praetorius's Weltbeschr. 1, 656. 2, 491). No doubt the story, which seems very ancient, and resembles that of the woodpecker (p. 673), was once told very differently; conf. Chap. XXII., Pleiades. 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 (Sup. I, 228).

In Sweden he tells maidens how many years they will remain unmarried:

gök, gök, sitt på quist (on bough),

säg mig vist (tell me true),

hur många år (how many years)

jag o-gift går (I shall un-given go)?
If he calls more than ten times, they declare he has got 'på galen quist' (on the silly bough, i.e. bewitched), and give no heed to his prophecies. And when a good deal depends on the quarter whence you hear your cuckoo first. You must pay strict attention in spring; if you hear him from the north (the unlucky quarter), you will see sorrow that year, from east or west his call betokens luck, and from the south he is the proclaimer of butter: 'östergök är tröstegök, vestergök är bästagök, norrgök ör sorggök, sörgök, är smörgök. (59)

In Goethe's Oracle of Spring the prophetic bird informs a loving pair of their approaching marriage and the number of their children.

It is rather surprising that our song-writers of the 13^th century never bring in the cuckoo as a soothsayer; no doubt the fact or fancy was familiar to all, for even in the Renner 11340 we read:

daz weiz der gouch, der im für wâr

hât gegutzet hundert jâr.
Ceasarius heisterbac. 5, 17: 'Narravit nobis anno praeterito (? 1221) Theobaldus abbas everbacensis, quod quidam conversus, cum nescio quo tenderet, et avem, quae cuculus dicitur a voce nomen habens, crebrius cantantem audiret, vices interruptionis numeravit, et viginti duas inveniens, easque quasi pro omine accipiens, pro annis totidem vices easdem sibi computavit: 'eia' inquit, 'certe viginti duobus annis adhuc vivam, ut quid tanto tempore mortificem me in ordine? redibo ad seculum, et seculo deditus viginti annis fruar deliciis ejus; duobus annis qui supersunt pœnitebo.'---In the Couronnemens Renart, the fox hears the bird's voice, and propounds to him the query:

A cest mot Renart le cucu

entent, si jeta un faus ris,

'jou te conjur' fait il, 'de cris,

215 cucus, que me dies le voir (truth),

quans ans jai a vivre? savoir

le veil.' Cucu, en preu cucu, (60)

et deus cucu, et trois cucu,

quatre cucu, et cinc cucu,

220 et sis cucu, et set cucu,

et uit cucu, et nuef cucu,

et dis cucu, onze cucu,

duze cucu, treize cucu.

Atant se taist, que plus ne fu

225 li oisiaus illuec, ains s'envolle.

Renart carries the joyful news to his wife, that the bird has promised him yet 'treize ans d'aé' (see Suppl.).

Is it the cuckoo that is meant by 'timebird' in Ms. 1, 88ª: 'diu vröide vlogzet (joy flies) gelîch dem zîtvogel in dem neste'? What makes me think so is a passage in Pliny, which anyhow is pertinent here, exhorting the husbandman at the aequinoctium vernum to fetch up all arrears of work: 'dum sciat inde natam exprobrationem foedam putantium vites per imitationem cantus alitis temporarii, quem cuculum vocant. Dedecus enim habetur opprobriumque meritum, falcem ab illa volucre deprehendi, ut ob id petulantiae sales etiam cum primo vere ludantur.'

Delight at the first song of the cuckoo is thus expressed in a Swiss couplet (Tobler 245b):

wenn der gugger chond gegugga ond's merzaföli lacht,

den wött i gad goh lo, 'swit i koh möcht;
they imagine that he never sings before the 3^rd of April, and never after Midsummer:

am dretta Abarella

moss der gugger grüena haber schnella;
but he cannot sing till he has eaten a bird's egg. If you have money in your pouch when you hear him sing the first time, you will be well off all that year, if not, you will be short the whole year (Sup. I, 374); and if you were fasting, you will be hungry all the year. When the cuckoo has eaten his fill of cherries three times, he leaves off singing. As the cuckoo's song falls silent at Midsummer, vulgar opinion holds that from that time he turns into a hawk. Reusch, N. pr. prov. bl. 5, 338-9.




ENDNOTES:

55. Goth. gáuks? OHG. gouh (Hoffm. 5, 6), AS geác, ON. gaukr [[cuckoo]]; MHG. gouch, MS. 2, 132b, also reduplicated (like cuculus) gucgouch, MS. 1, 132ª, guggouch, MS. 1, 166ª; our gukuk, kukuk, Up. G. guggauch, gutzgouch. [Back]

56. Both eclogues in Dornavii Amphith. 456-7, where they are attrib. to Beda; ditto in Leyser p. 207, who says they were first printed in the Frankf. ed. (1610) of Ovid's Amatoria, p. 190. Meanwhile Oudin (De script. eccles. 2, 327-8, ed. Lips. 1722) gives the Conflictus veris et hiemis under the name of 'Milo, sancti Amandi elnonensis monachus' (first half of 9^th century); and the second poem De morte cuculi stands in Mabillon's Anal. 1, 369 as 'Alcuini versus de cuculo.' Anyhow they fall into the 8^th or 9^th centuy; in shortening the penultima of 'cuculus' they agree with Reinardus 3, 528. Hoffm, Horae belg. 6, 236 has also revived the Conflictus. [Back]

57. Aegid. Albertini narrenhatz, Augsb. 1617. p. 95: 'Even as befel that old wife, which asked a guguck how many year she had yet to live, and the guguck beginning five times to sing, she supposed that she had five year more to live, etc.' From 'Schimpf und ernst' c. 391. [Back]

58. So in Mod. Greek: kouko mou, koukaki mou, ki argurokoukaki mou, posouj cronouj qe na zhsw [Back]

59. Arndt's Reise durch Schw. 4, 5-7. The snipe is in Swed. horsajök, ON. hrossagaukr (horse-cuckoo), and she too has the gift of divination, p. 184. [Back]

60. A line seems wanting here, to tell us that Cuckoo, like a sensible cuckoo (en preu cucu, fugl frôðhugaðr), 'began to sing, One cucu.' [Back]