Cecil Sharp's Note 35 (1916)

No. 35. The Cuckoo

For other versions with tunes, see Folk Songs from Dorset (No. 11); Butterworth’s Folk Songs from Sussex (No. 6); A Garland of Country Song (No. 1 ); and Barrett’s English Folk Song (No. 42).

I have taken down fifteen different versions of this song, but the tune given in the text is the only one that is modal (Æolian). This particular tune is usually associated with the words of High Germany. Halliwell, in his Nursery Rhymes (p. 99), prints a couple of verses in dialect, as follows:

⁠The cuckoo’s a vine bird, ⁠A zengs as a vlies; ⁠A brengs us good tidin’s. ⁠And tells us no lies.

⁠A zucks th’ smael birds’ eggs, ⁠To make his voice clear; ⁠And the mwore a cries “cuckoo!” ⁠The zummer draws near.

The words in the text are similar to those given in A Glasgow Garland, “The Sailor's Return.”