“And being fed by us, you used us so, As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird, Useth the sparrow; did oppress our nest; Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk, That even our love durst not come near your sight For fear of swallowing.” Those, it was believed, who turned their money over in their pockets when they each year first heard the cuckoo, would have good fortune throughout the rest of the year, and keep their pockets well supplied until the recurring spring necessitated a re-turning of the contents. It was a curious fancy of many of the old writers on such matters, that the peacock, though arrayed in such splendour, was ashamed of his feet, the mortification at the latter being more than a set-off to his pride in his plumage. “The peacock,” says, for instance, one of these ancient authorities, “is a bird well-known and much admired for his daintie coloured feathers, which, when he spreads them against the sunne, have a curious lustre, and look like gemmes. Howbeit his black feet make him ashamed of his fair tail: and therefore when he seeth them, (as angrie with nature, or grieved for that deformitie) he hangeth down his starrie plumes, and walketh slowly in a discontented fit of solitary sadnesse, like one possest with dull melancholy.” The peacock was throughout the Middle Ages the symbol of pride, and doubtless those who started and those who accepted such a story as this saw in it a happy illustration of the haughty spirit that goeth before a fall, and very gladly added it to the great body of moral teaching that the works of creation were required to furnish.