Aristotle was aware of the old tale that cuckoos turned into hawks in winter. The tale was an explanation for their absence outside the summer season, later accepted by
Pliny the Elder in his
Natural History. Aristotle rejected the claim, observing in his
History of Animals that cuckoos do not have the predators' talons or hooked bills. These
Classical era accounts were known to the
Early Modern English naturalist,
William Turner. ;Middle English Svmer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu Groweþ sed and bloweþ med and springþ þe wde nu Sing cuccu ;Modern English Summer has arrived, Sing loudly, cuckoo! The seed is growing And the meadow is blooming, And the wood is coming into leaf now, Sing, cuckoo! In England,
William Shakespeare alludes to the common cuckoo's association with spring, and with
cuckoldry, in the courtly springtime song in his play ''
Love's Labours Lost'': :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! In Europe, hearing the call of the common cuckoo is regarded as the first harbinger of spring. Many local legends and traditions are based on this. In
Scotland,
gowk stanes (cuckoo stones) sometimes associated with the arrival of the first cuckoo of spring.
Gowk is an old name for the common cuckoo in northern
England. The well-known
cuckoo clock features a mechanical bird and is fitted with bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the common cuckoo. Cuckoos feature in traditional rhymes, such as '"In April the cuckoo comes, In May she'll stay, In June she changes her tune, In July she prepares to fly, Come August, go she must,"' quoted Peggy. 'But you haven't said it all,' put in Bobby. '"And if the cuckoo stays till September, It's as much as the oldest man can remember."'
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is a
symphonic poem from Norway composed for orchestra by
Frederick Delius. Two English folk songs feature cuckoos. One usually called
The Cuckoo starts: The cuckoo is a fine bird and she sings as she flies, She brings us good tidings, she tells us no lies. She sucks little birds' eggs to make her voice clear, And never sings cuckoo till the summer draws near The second, "The Cuckoo's Nest" is a song about a courtship, with the eponymous (and of course, non-existent) nest serving as a metaphor for the
vulva and its tangled "nest" of
pubic hair. Some like a girl who is pretty in the face and some like a girl who is slender in the waist But give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist At the bottom of the belly lies the cuckoo's nest... ...Me darling, says she, I can do no such thing For me mother often told me it was committing sin Me maidenhead to lose and me sex to be abused So have no more to do with me cuckoo's nest One of the tales of the
Wise Men of Gotham tells how they built a hedge round a tree in order to trap a cuckoo so that it would always be summer. The theme music for film comedians
Laurel and Hardy, titled "
Dance of The Cuckoos" and composed by
Marvin Hatley, was based on the call of the common cuckoo. ==References==