Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

676 TREES AND ANIMALS.
chides him, shepherds declare that he is drowned or kidnapped.
There is a remarkable line :
Tempus adest veris ; cuculus, modo rumpe soporem. 1
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 : gedcas 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 :
Jcukuk vam haven,
wo lange sail 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 (Schutze s Hoist, idiot. 2, 363). In some
districts 2 the rhyme runs :
Jcukuk beckenknecht,
sag mir recht,
wie viel jar ich leben soil ? 3
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 ; there
fore the Lord punished him by changing him into a bird of prey,
1 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 Frank!, ed. (1610) of
Ovid s Amatoria, p. 190. Meanwhile Oudiu (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 9th century) ; and the second poem De morte
l
cuculi stands in Mabillon s Anal. 1, 369 as Alcuini versus de cuculo. Anyhow they
fall into the 8th or 9th century ; in shortening the penultima of cuculus they
agree with Eeinardus 3, 528. Hoffm, Horae belg. 6, 236 has also revived the
Conflictus.
2
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
Schinipf und ernst c. 391.
3 So in Mod. Greek : KOVKO pov, KQVKO.KL /mov, KI apyvpoKovKcua /j,ov, Trdvovs XP^ OU?