Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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      And once more, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 1):

      The phrase “to pluck a crow” is to complain good-naturedly, but reproachfully, and to threaten retaliation.189 It occurs in “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1): “We’ll pluck a crow together.” Sometimes the word pull is substituted for pluck, as in Butler’s “Hudibras” (part ii. canto 2):

      The crow has been regarded as the emblem of darkness, which has not escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, in “Pericles” (iv. introd.), speaking of the white dove, says:

      Cuckoo. Many superstitions have clustered round the cuckoo, and both in this country and abroad it is looked upon as a mysterious bird, being supposed to possess the gift of second-sight, a notion referred to in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):

      And again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), Bottom sings:

      It is still a common idea that the cuckoo, if asked, will tell any one, by the repetition of its cries, how long he has to live. The country lasses in Sweden count the cuckoo’s call to ascertain how many years they have to remain unmarried, but they generally shut their ears and run away on hearing it a few times.192 Among the Germans the notes of the cuckoo, when heard in spring for the first time, are considered a good omen. Cæsarius (1222) tells us of a convertite who was about to become a monk, but changed his mind on hearing the cuckoo’s call, and counting twenty-two repetitions of it. “Come,” said he, “I have certainly twenty-two years still to live, and why should I mortify myself during all that time? I will go back to the world, enjoy its delights for twenty years, and devote the remaining two to penitence.”193 In England the peasantry salute the cuckoo with the following invocation:

      the allusion to the cherry-tree having probably originated in the popular fancy that before the cuckoo ceases its song it must eat three good meals of cherries. Pliny mentions the belief that when the cuckoo came to maturity it devoured the bird which had reared it, a superstition several times alluded to by Shakespeare. Thus, in “King Lear” (i. 4), the Fool remarks:

      Again, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 1), Worcester says:

      Once more, the opinion that the cuckoo made no nest of its own, but laid its eggs in that of another bird, is mentioned in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 6):

      It has been remarked,194 however, in reference to the common idea that the young cuckoo ill-treats its foster-mother, that if we watch the movements of the two birds, when the younger is being fed, we cannot much wonder at this piece of folk-lore. When the cuckoo opens its great mouth, the diminutive nurse places her own head so far within its precincts that it has the exact appearance of a voluntary surrender to decapitation.

      The notion195 “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. 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 applied the name of the bird in whose nest the cuckoo’s eggs were usually deposited – ‘carruca’ – 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 further allusion to this bird, we may quote the following from “All’s Well That Ends Well” (i. 3):

      The cuckoo has generally been regarded as the harbinger of spring, and, according to a Gloucester rhyme:

      Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 2), the king, alluding to his predecessor, says:

      In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2) spring is maintained by the cuckoo, in those charming sonnets descriptive of the beauties of the country at this season.

      The word cuckoo has, from the earliest times, been used as a term of reproach;196 and Plautus197 has introduced it on more than one occasion. In this sense we find it quoted by Shakespeare in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “O’ horseback, ye cuckoo.” The term cuckold, too, which so frequently occurs throughout Shakespeare’s plays, is generally derived from cuculus,198 from the practice already alluded to of depositing its eggs in other birds’ nests.

      Domestic Fowl. In “The Tempest” (v. 1), the word chick is used as a term of endearment: “My Ariel; chick,” etc.; and in “Macbeth” (iv. 3) Macduff speaks of his children as “all my pretty chickens.” In “Coriolanus” СКАЧАТЬ