The Cuckoo - the more she sings 'cuckoo' the summer draws near. скачать в хорошем качестве

The Cuckoo - the more she sings 'cuckoo' the summer draws near.

“The Cuckoo” (Roud 413) is one of the most enduring and widely travelled songs in the Englishspeaking folk tradition. Known by many titles — The CooCoo, The Cuckoo Bird, The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird, The Evening Meeting, The Unconstant Lover, Bunclody and Going to Georgia, among others — it appears across England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Though its verses vary enormously from singer to singer, one familiar couplet has echoed for centuries: “The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies; she brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies.” The figure of the cuckoo has been woven into European folklore for more than a millennium. A herald of spring, the bird was long considered a symbol of hope, renewal, and the turning of the seasons — but also, paradoxically, of changeability and infidelity. In some traditions, the cuckoo’s dual reputation made it a fitting emblem for love’s joys, risks, and betrayals. Historically, one of the song’s deep roots stretches back to the early English round “Sumer is Icumen In,” written in the 13th century in a Wessex form of Middle English. This joyful hymn to summer — featuring the cuckoo as the season’s triumphant messenger — survives today in a manuscript first preserved at Reading Abbey and now held in the British Library. Across the centuries that followed, the character of the song evolved as it passed into popular tradition, gradually absorbing new verses, different melodies, and shifting emotional tones. The earliest printed forms of “The Cuckoo” appear in English broadsides issued between approximately 1780 and 1845. These five verse sheets typically opened with a “Come all ye” warning against courting sailors — a reminder of love’s risks familiar to coastal life — before introducing the cuckoo itself in the second verse. Yet even in print, the song seems to have been relatively uncommon, suggesting that its true life was in the oral tradition rather than the marketplace. Collectors of the 19th and 20th centuries found “The Cuckoo” thriving particularly in rural Britain and North America. The Roud Folk Song Index records around 149 collected or recorded versions — with a remarkable 88 from the United States alone, where the song often intertwined with the American ballad “Jack of Diamonds.” Field recordings captured its wide variety: Hobart Smith in Virginia (1942), Jean Ritchie in Kentucky (1949), Willie Mathieson in Aberdeenshire (1952), and numerous Ozark singers in the 1960s, each shaping the song to local life and personal experience. Its adaptability has allowed countless singers to reinterpret its moods, whether sorrowful, hopeful, philosophical, or gently mysterious. For that reason, the song remains as alive today as when it first took flight, carried forward by generations who have found truth in the cuckoo’s ageless call.