minor scale, the origin of which has puzzled so many; the cuckoo's couplet being the minor third sung downwards. Kircher, however,* gives it thus :-

In Gardiner's "Music of Nature" it is rendered as follows:

A friend of Gilbert White's found upon trial that the note of the cuckoo varies in different individuals. About Selborne Wood he found they were mostly in D. He heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, which made a very disagreeable duet. He afterwards heard one in D sharp, and about Wolmer Forest some in C.

Gungl, in his "Cuckoo Galop," gives the note of the cuckoo as B natural and G sharp. Dr. Arne, in his music to the cuckoo's song in Love's Labour's Lost, gives it as C natural and G.

And now "will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo.

I.

"When daisies pied,* and violets blue,

And lady-smocks† all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight ;
The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo, O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

* Pied, that is parti-coloured, of different hues. So in The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 3

"

'That all the yeanlings (i.e. young lambs) which were streaked and pied." And in The Tempest, Caliban, alluding to the parti-coloured dress which Trinculo, as a jester, wore, says :

Milton, in

"What a pied ninny's this."

L'allegro," speaks of "meadows trim with daisies pied."

↑ "Lady-smocks" (Cardamine pratensis), a common meadow plant appearing early in the spring, and bearing white flowers. Sir J. E. Smith says they cover the meadows as with linen bleaching, whence the name of "ladysmocks" is supposed to come. Some authors say it first flowers about Ladytide, or the Feast of the Annunciation, hence its name.

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Botanists are not agreed as to the particular plant intended by "cuckoo-buds." Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary," says the flower here alluded to is the Ranunculus bulbosus. One commentator on this passage has mistaken the Lychnis flos cuculi, or cuckoo-flower" for "" cuckoo-buds." Another writer says, "cuckoo-flower" must be wrong, and believes "cowslip-buds" the true reading, but this is clearly a mistake. Walley, the editor of Ben Jonson's Works, proposes to read " crocus-buds," which is likewise incorrect. Sidney Beisley, the author of "Shakespeare's Garden," thinks that Shakespeare referred to the lesser celandine, or pilewort (Ranunculus ficaria), as this flower appears early in Spring, and is in bloom at the same time as the other flowers named in the song.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks;
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws;

And maidens bleach their summer smocks;

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo ;

Cuckoo, cuckoo, O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear."

In the old copies the four first lines of the first stanza are arranged in couplets thus:

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,

Do paint the meadows with delight."

But, as in all the other stanzas the rhymes are alternate, this was most probably an error of the compositor. The transposition now generally adopted was first made by Theobald.

The notion 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. We are not aware that it existed originally

amongst the Teutonic race, and we have doubtless received it from the Normans. The opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, which brought up the young cuckoo to the detriment of its own offspring, was well-known to the ancients, and is mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny.

So in Antony and Cleopatra (Act ii. Sc. 6) :—

"Thou dost o'ercount me of my father's house;
But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,

Remain in 't as thou may'st."

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 gave the name of the bird in whose nest the cuckoo's eggs were usually deposited

-“ curruca”—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 allusion to this are the following lines of Shakespeare:

"For I the ballad will repeat,

Which men full true will find;

Your marriage comes by destiny,

Your cuckoo sings by kind."

All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. Sc. 3.

*See Chambers's "Book of Days," i. 531.

This would appear to be only a new version of an old proverb, for in "Grange's Garden," 4to, 1577, we have

"Content yourself as well as I,

Let reason rule your minde,
As cuckoldes come by destinie,

So cuckowes sing by kinde."

If Shakespeare is to be believed, marriage is not the only thing that goes by destiny :—

"The ancient saying is no heresy,

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny."

Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 9.

King Henry IV., alluding to his predecessor, says:

"So when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded."

Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 2.

For in June the cuckoo has been in song for a month, and is therefore less noticed than on its first arrival in April, when listened to as the harbinger of Spring.

Apropos of the cuckoo's song, the following ballad is considered to be the earliest in the English language now extant. Its date is about the latter part of the reign of Henry III., and it affords a curious example of the alterations which our language has undergone since that time;