After chasing the immortal bird from tree to tree to have her question, "Shall I soon be married?" answered, the song concludes with this taunting refrain-- "Two hundred then she counted o'er, The cuckoo still cried as before, Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" In our earliest published song, words and music composed by John of Forsete, monk of Reading Abbey, date 1225, and entitled "Sumer is icumen in," the cuckoo is also extolled-- "Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing, cuckoo; Groweth the seed, bloweth the mead, and springeth wood anew. Sing, cuckoo! Merry sing, cuckoo, Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" The peasantry of Russia, India, and Germany contribute to the collection of cuckoo-lore. Grimm mentions a Cuckoo Hill in Gauchsberg. The cuckoo and not the hill may have had the mystic sense. Identical with this Cuckoo Hill, in its solemn significance, there occurs a passage in the game of Hot Cockles, played formerly at Yorkshire funerals. "Where is the poor man to go?" the friends whine, and the mutes who are in readiness to follow the coffin beat their knees with open hands and reply-- "Over the Cuckoo Hill, I oh!" The association of ideas about the prophetic notes of the cuckoo's mocking voice--in matters of marriage and death--are pretty general, and there are still further many points of identity in the tales told by the children of India and Southern Russia. Like the Phœnix idea amongst the people of Egypt, Persia, and India, these traditions allegorise the soul's immortality. A WORD ON INDIAN LORE. The old prose editions of the sacred books of India--the law codes of the Aryans--were suitably arranged in verse to enable the contents to be committed to memory by the students. In these rules the ritual of the simplest rites is set forth. New and full moon offerings are given, and regulations minutely describing as to the way salutation shall be made. Much after the fashion of the grandees or the Red Indian moon worshipper of North America, it is told how a Brâhmana must salute stretching forth his right hand level with his ear, a Kshalriza holding it level with the breast, a Sûdra holding it low--all caste observances and relics of a sign-language. "A householder shall worship gods, manes, men, goblins, and rishis," remains of ancestral worship. "Adoration must be given to him who wears the moon on his forehead," the oldest known form of worship, possibly, of the Drift-man's period, "and he shall offer libations of water, oblations of clarified butter, and worship the moon." The butter oblation was practised by the Celts! They have a lunar penance, "he shall fast on the day of the new moon."