Giles Watson's poetry and prose
A Cuckoo's Timeline
This is a timeline on the history and folklore of the cuckoo, and of British wildflowers with folk-names and traditions associated with the bird. Anyone who has any other ideas for timeline entries is invited to post them here. If you do so, you will find a place reserved for you on the acknowledgements page of The Cuckoo and her Flowers, the book I am currently researching and writing for Troy Books.
A Cuckoo’s Timeline
1st Century AD: The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder claims that when sufficiently grown, the young cuckoo bites off the heads of its foster parents. He also states that cuckoos transform into birds of prey in the autumn. The latter myth will survive into the twentieth century, when cuckoos are still persecuted by gamekeepers convinced that they will transform into sparrowhawks.
512: A manuscript presented to Juliana Anicia of Constantinople includes a recognisable illustration of Arum maculatum, the poisonous lily also known as Lords and Ladies and Cuckoo Pint.
13th Century: The summer celebration song, ‘Lhude sing cuccu’ is written down by a monk of Reading Abbey.
14th Century: The Welsh poet and harpist Dafydd ap Gwilym makes regular punning references to the cuckoo and its skill in cuckolding others, and takes the cuckoo’s side.
c. 1381: Chaucer, in the Parlement of Fowles, describes the ‘cokkow’ as ‘Mortherere of the heysoge’ (murderer of the dunnock or hedge-sparrow).
1601: John Lyly’s play, Love’s Metamorphosis, includes the lines: “They have eaten so much of wake robin [Arum maculatum], that they cannot sleep for love”.
c. 1603-1606: The Fool in King Lear says that “The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long/ That it had its head bit off by its young.”
17th Century: Johann Staden composes a song dialogue between the cuckoo and the nightingale. Johann Kerll writes a cuckoo capriccio, and Bernardo Pasquini also writes music inspired by the cuckoo.
1660: George Rogers publishes The Horn exalted or Roome for cuckolds. Being a treatise concerning the reason and original of the word cuckold, and why such are said to wear horns. Very proper for these times, when men are butting, and pushing, and goring, and horning one another. Also an appendix concerning women and jealousie. It discourses on cuckoo-lore before embarking on a lengthy and fantastic disquisition on the cuckold’s horns.
18th Century: The music of George Frederick Handel makes frequent reference to the song of the cuckoo.
c. 1730: The first cuckoo clock is built in the Black Forest of Germany, possibly by Franz Anton Ketterer.
c. 1765: Michael Bruce (or perhaps his benefactor, John Logan) writes the lyric ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
February 19th 1770: Gilbert White describes the cuckoo’s habit of brood parasitism as “a monstrous outrage on maternal affection”.
1788: Edward Jenner describes the manner in which a newly hatched cuckoo expels its foster parents’ own eggs and nestlings from the nest by means of a special hollow in its back. He is elected to the Royal Society for his work on the cuckoo, before his discovery of vaccination.
1797: Mrs Jane Gibbs of Portland receives thirty guineas from the Royal Society of Arts for discovering that “arrowroot” can be made from Arum maculatum, despite its poisonous properties.
Early Nineteenth Century: Wedgwood pottery develops the Harlequin Cuckoo design.
1801: William Wordsworth modernises Chaucer’s ‘The Cuckoo and the Nightingale’, but the poem is not published until 1841.
1802: William Wordsworth reflects on the elusiveness of the cuckoo, and the resonance of its voice, in his ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
1805: William Wordsworth prefers the singing voice of his ‘Solitary Reaper’ to that of the cuckoo,
1827: William Wordsworth affirms that the cuckoo’s voice can penetrate prison walls, and that it will outlive the lion’s roar, in another ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
1837: In ‘The Cuckoo at Laverna’, William Wordsworth affirms that ‘flower after flower has blown’, but the cuckoo’s voice endures.
1842: William Wordsworth publishes a poetic meditation on ‘The Cuckoo-Clock’.
1845: “Portland Sago”, a starchy flour made from the root of Arum maculatum, is distributed in Ireland during the potato blight.
1808: Despite his deafness, Ludwig van Beethoven replicates the notes of the cuckoo in D and B flat at the end of the second movement of his Sixth (‘Pastoral’) Symphony. Cuckoos reproduce the same notes to this day: testimony to the constancy of birds, and to the veracity of Beethoven’s auditory memory.
Mid 19th Century: Controversy over the manner in which the female cuckoo deposits her eggs in other birds’ nests reaches fever pitch in the British Ornithologists Club, until the subject is banned at meetings, due to fears that the arguments will culminate in bloodshed.
Mid 19th Century: John Clare asks “Why... the cuckoo’s melody [is] preferred” to those of commoner, non-migratory birds such as the robin and the wren.
1912: Frederick Delius writes 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring', which begins with a slow three-bar sequence of cuckoo calls for oboe and strings.
1922: Edgar Chance proves that female cuckoos lay their eggs directly into the nests of other birds, and captures the process on film for the first time.
Mid 20th Century: Dylan Thomas writes his poem, ‘Hold hard these ancient minutes in the cuckoo’s month’.
c. 1945: The widespread decrease in the cuckoo population begins. The increased use of pesticides and the widespread destruction of hedgerows are likely reasons.
1950: The last of the great parson-naturalists, Charles Raven, publishes a first-hand account of a cuckoo nestling’s behaviour in ‘An Infant Assassin’, a chapter of his book, In Praise of Birds.
1953: Miriam Rothschild, a millionaire who took a tame quail to bed with her as a child, and grew up to be a campaigner for the rights of homosexuals, advocate for German Jews during the Second World War, Bletchley Park code-breaker, founder of the Schizophrenia Research Fund and expert on the jumping-mechanism of fleas, publishes her most important work, Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos: a wide-ranging study of parasitism, culminating in an authoritative study of the habits of the cuckoo.
1958: Geoffrey Grigson’s An Englishman’s Flora identifies at least 25 species of English plants as having vernacular cuckoo names.
1974: Cuckoos are filmed laying eggs directly into the nests of reed warblers, and the footage is used in the BBC film The Private Life of the Cuckoo.
Late 20th Century: The National Trust revives a Cuckoo Festival at Marsden in West Yorkshire, taking place in the last week of April.
The illustration is adapted from F.O. Morris's Book of British Birds.
A Cuckoo's Timeline
This is a timeline on the history and folklore of the cuckoo, and of British wildflowers with folk-names and traditions associated with the bird. Anyone who has any other ideas for timeline entries is invited to post them here. If you do so, you will find a place reserved for you on the acknowledgements page of The Cuckoo and her Flowers, the book I am currently researching and writing for Troy Books.
A Cuckoo’s Timeline
1st Century AD: The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder claims that when sufficiently grown, the young cuckoo bites off the heads of its foster parents. He also states that cuckoos transform into birds of prey in the autumn. The latter myth will survive into the twentieth century, when cuckoos are still persecuted by gamekeepers convinced that they will transform into sparrowhawks.
512: A manuscript presented to Juliana Anicia of Constantinople includes a recognisable illustration of Arum maculatum, the poisonous lily also known as Lords and Ladies and Cuckoo Pint.
13th Century: The summer celebration song, ‘Lhude sing cuccu’ is written down by a monk of Reading Abbey.
14th Century: The Welsh poet and harpist Dafydd ap Gwilym makes regular punning references to the cuckoo and its skill in cuckolding others, and takes the cuckoo’s side.
c. 1381: Chaucer, in the Parlement of Fowles, describes the ‘cokkow’ as ‘Mortherere of the heysoge’ (murderer of the dunnock or hedge-sparrow).
1601: John Lyly’s play, Love’s Metamorphosis, includes the lines: “They have eaten so much of wake robin [Arum maculatum], that they cannot sleep for love”.
c. 1603-1606: The Fool in King Lear says that “The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long/ That it had its head bit off by its young.”
17th Century: Johann Staden composes a song dialogue between the cuckoo and the nightingale. Johann Kerll writes a cuckoo capriccio, and Bernardo Pasquini also writes music inspired by the cuckoo.
1660: George Rogers publishes The Horn exalted or Roome for cuckolds. Being a treatise concerning the reason and original of the word cuckold, and why such are said to wear horns. Very proper for these times, when men are butting, and pushing, and goring, and horning one another. Also an appendix concerning women and jealousie. It discourses on cuckoo-lore before embarking on a lengthy and fantastic disquisition on the cuckold’s horns.
18th Century: The music of George Frederick Handel makes frequent reference to the song of the cuckoo.
c. 1730: The first cuckoo clock is built in the Black Forest of Germany, possibly by Franz Anton Ketterer.
c. 1765: Michael Bruce (or perhaps his benefactor, John Logan) writes the lyric ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
February 19th 1770: Gilbert White describes the cuckoo’s habit of brood parasitism as “a monstrous outrage on maternal affection”.
1788: Edward Jenner describes the manner in which a newly hatched cuckoo expels its foster parents’ own eggs and nestlings from the nest by means of a special hollow in its back. He is elected to the Royal Society for his work on the cuckoo, before his discovery of vaccination.
1797: Mrs Jane Gibbs of Portland receives thirty guineas from the Royal Society of Arts for discovering that “arrowroot” can be made from Arum maculatum, despite its poisonous properties.
Early Nineteenth Century: Wedgwood pottery develops the Harlequin Cuckoo design.
1801: William Wordsworth modernises Chaucer’s ‘The Cuckoo and the Nightingale’, but the poem is not published until 1841.
1802: William Wordsworth reflects on the elusiveness of the cuckoo, and the resonance of its voice, in his ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
1805: William Wordsworth prefers the singing voice of his ‘Solitary Reaper’ to that of the cuckoo,
1827: William Wordsworth affirms that the cuckoo’s voice can penetrate prison walls, and that it will outlive the lion’s roar, in another ode ‘To the Cuckoo’.
1837: In ‘The Cuckoo at Laverna’, William Wordsworth affirms that ‘flower after flower has blown’, but the cuckoo’s voice endures.
1842: William Wordsworth publishes a poetic meditation on ‘The Cuckoo-Clock’.
1845: “Portland Sago”, a starchy flour made from the root of Arum maculatum, is distributed in Ireland during the potato blight.
1808: Despite his deafness, Ludwig van Beethoven replicates the notes of the cuckoo in D and B flat at the end of the second movement of his Sixth (‘Pastoral’) Symphony. Cuckoos reproduce the same notes to this day: testimony to the constancy of birds, and to the veracity of Beethoven’s auditory memory.
Mid 19th Century: Controversy over the manner in which the female cuckoo deposits her eggs in other birds’ nests reaches fever pitch in the British Ornithologists Club, until the subject is banned at meetings, due to fears that the arguments will culminate in bloodshed.
Mid 19th Century: John Clare asks “Why... the cuckoo’s melody [is] preferred” to those of commoner, non-migratory birds such as the robin and the wren.
1912: Frederick Delius writes 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring', which begins with a slow three-bar sequence of cuckoo calls for oboe and strings.
1922: Edgar Chance proves that female cuckoos lay their eggs directly into the nests of other birds, and captures the process on film for the first time.
Mid 20th Century: Dylan Thomas writes his poem, ‘Hold hard these ancient minutes in the cuckoo’s month’.
c. 1945: The widespread decrease in the cuckoo population begins. The increased use of pesticides and the widespread destruction of hedgerows are likely reasons.
1950: The last of the great parson-naturalists, Charles Raven, publishes a first-hand account of a cuckoo nestling’s behaviour in ‘An Infant Assassin’, a chapter of his book, In Praise of Birds.
1953: Miriam Rothschild, a millionaire who took a tame quail to bed with her as a child, and grew up to be a campaigner for the rights of homosexuals, advocate for German Jews during the Second World War, Bletchley Park code-breaker, founder of the Schizophrenia Research Fund and expert on the jumping-mechanism of fleas, publishes her most important work, Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos: a wide-ranging study of parasitism, culminating in an authoritative study of the habits of the cuckoo.
1958: Geoffrey Grigson’s An Englishman’s Flora identifies at least 25 species of English plants as having vernacular cuckoo names.
1974: Cuckoos are filmed laying eggs directly into the nests of reed warblers, and the footage is used in the BBC film The Private Life of the Cuckoo.
Late 20th Century: The National Trust revives a Cuckoo Festival at Marsden in West Yorkshire, taking place in the last week of April.
The illustration is adapted from F.O. Morris's Book of British Birds.