ds not for himself,
Remain in't as thou may'st."

It has been remarked,[195] 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.

[195] See Mary Howitt's "Pictorial Calendar of the Seasons," p.
155; Knight's "Pictorial Shakespeare," vol. i. pp. 225, 226.

The notion[196] "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
mediaeval, 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):

"For I the ballad will repeat,
Which men full true shall find,
Your marriage comes by destiny,
Your cuckoo sings by kind."

[196] Chambers's "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 531.

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

"The cuckoo comes in April,
Sings a song in May;
Then in June another tune,
And then she flies away."

Thus, in "1 Henry IV." (iii. 2), the king, 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."

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;[197] and Plautus[198] has introduced it on more than one
occasion. In this sense we find it quoted by Shakespeare in "1 Henry
IV." (ii. 4): "O' ho