He retired from active work in 1858, and died on the 13th of October 1861 at his house on Clapham Common, London. His son, Joseph Cubitt (1811–1872), was trained under him, and was engineer of various railways, including the Great Northern, London, Chatham & Dover, and part of the London & South-Western.
CUCHULINN (Cūchúlinn; pronounced “Coohoollin”), the
chief warrior in the Conchobar-Cuchulinn or older heroic (Ulster)
cycle of Ireland. The story of his origin is very obscure. The
god Lug is represented as having been swallowed in a draught
of wine by his mother Dechtire, sister of Conchobar, who was
king of Ulster. But it is not unlikely that this story was invented
to supersede the account of the incestuous union of Conchobar
with his sister, which seems to be hinted at on various occasions.
Usually, however, he is styled son of Sualdam, an Ulster warrior
who plays a very inferior part in the cycle. His earliest name
was Setanta, and he was brought up at Dun Imbrith (Louth).
When he was six years of age he announced his intention of
going to Conchobar’s court at Emain Macha (Navan Rath near
Armagh) to play with the boys there. He defeats all the boys
in marvellous fashion and is received as one of their number.
Shortly after he kills Culann, the smith’s hound, a huge watch-dog.
The smith laments that all his property is of no value now that
his watchman is slain, whereupon the young hero offers to guard
his domains until a whelp of the hound’s has grown. From this
the boy received the name of Cū Chulinn or Culann’s Hound.
The next year Cuchulinn receives arms, makes his first foray,
and slays the three sons of Necht, redoubtable hereditary foes
of the Ulstermen, in the plain of Meath. The men of Ulster
decide that Cuchulinn must marry, as all the women of Ireland
are in love with him. Chosen envoys fail to find a bride worthy
of him after a year’s search, but the hero goes straight to Emer,
the daughter of Forgall the Wily, at Lusk (county Dublin).
The lady is promised to him if he will go to learn chivalry of
Domnall the Soldierly and the amazon Scathach in Alba. After
enduring great hardships he goes through the course and leaves
a son Connlaech behind in Scotland by another amazon, Aife.
On his return he carries off and weds Emer. He is represented
as living at Dun Delgan (Dundalk). The greatest of all the hero’s
achievements was the defence of the frontier of Ulster against
the forces of Medb, queen of Connaught, who had come to carry
off the famous Brown Bull of Cualnge (Cooley). The men of
Ulster were all suffering from a strange debility, and Cuchulinn
had to undertake the defence single-handed from November
to February. This was when he was seventeen years of age.
The cycle contains a large number of episodes, such as the
gaining of the champion’s portion and the tragical death by the
warrior’s hand of his own son Connlaech. When he was twenty-seven
he met with his end at the hands of Lugaid, son of Cūrōi
MacDaire, the famous Munster warrior, and the children of
Calatīn Dāna, in revenge for their father’s death (see Celt: Irish Literature).
Medieval Christian synchronists make Cuchulinn’s death take place about the beginning of the Christian era. It is not necessary to regard Cuchulinn as a form of the solar hero, as some writers have done. Most, if not all, of his wonderful attributes may be ascribed to the Irish predilection for the grotesque. It is true that Cuchulinn seems to stand in a special relation to the Tuatha De Danann leader, the god Lug, but in primitive societies there is always a tendency to ascribe a divine parentage to men who stand out pre-eminently in prowess beyond their fellows.
See A. Nutt, Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles (London, 1900); E. Hull, The Cuchullin Saga (London, 1898). (E. C. Q.)
CUCKOO, or Cuckow, as the word was formerly spelt, the common name of a well-known and often-heard bird, the Cuculus canorus of Linnaeus. In some parts of the United Kingdom it is more frequently called gowk, and it is the Gr. κόκκυξ, the Ital. cuculo or cucco, the Fr. coucou, the Ger. Kuckuk, the Dutch koekkoek, the Dan. kukker or gjög, and the Swed. gök. The oldest English spelling of the name seems to have been cuccu.
No single bird has perhaps so much occupied the attention both of naturalists and of those who are not naturalists, or has had so much written about it, as the common cuckoo, and of no bird perhaps have more idle tales been told. Its strange and, according to the experience of most people, its singular habit of entrusting its offspring to foster-parents is enough to account for much of the interest which has been so long felt in its history; but this habit is shared probably by many of its Old World relatives, as well as in the New World by birds which are not in any degree related to it. The cuckoo is a summer visitant to the whole of Europe, reaching even far within the Arctic circle, and crossing the Mediterranean from its winter quarters in Africa at the end of March or beginning of April. Its arrival is at once proclaimed by the peculiar and in nearly all languages onomatopoeic cry of the cock—a true song in the technical sense of the word, since it is confined to the male sex and to the season of love. In a few days the cock is followed by the hen, and amorous contests between keen and loud-voiced suitors are to be commonly noticed, until the respective pretensions of the rivals are decided. Even by night they are not silent; but as the season advances the song is less frequently heard, and the cuckoo seems rather to avoid observation as much as possible, the more so since whenever it shows itself it is a signal for all the small birds of the neighbourhood to be up in its pursuit, just as though it were a hawk, to which indeed its mode of flight and general appearance give it an undoubted resemblance—a resemblance that misleads some into confounding it with the birds of prey, instead of recognizing it as a harmless if not a beneficial destroyer of hairy caterpillars. Thus pass away some weeks. Towards the middle or end of June its “plain-song” cry alters; it becomes rather hoarser in tone, and its first syllable or note is doubled. Soon after it is no longer heard at all, and by the middle of July an old cuckoo is seldom to be found in the British Islands, though a stray example, or even, but very rarely, two or three in company, may occasionally be seen for a month longer. Of its breeding comparatively few have any personal experience. Yet a diligent search for and peering into the nests of several of the commonest little birds—more especially the pied wagtail (Motacilla lugubris), the titlark (Anthus pratensis), the reed-wren (Acrocephalus streperus), and the hedge-sparrow (Accentor modularis)—will be rewarded by the discovery of the egg of the mysterious stranger which has been surreptitiously introduced, and those who wait till this egg is hatched may be witnesses (as was Edward Jenner in the 18th century) of the murderous eviction of the rightful tenants of the nest by the intruder, who, hoisting them one after another on his broad back, heaves them over to die neglected by their own parents, of whose solicitous care he thus becomes the only object. In this manner he thrives, and, so long as he remains in the country of his birth his wants are anxiously supplied by the victims of his mother’s dupery. The actions of his foster-parents become, when he is full grown, almost ludicrous, for they often have to perch between his shoulders to place in his gaping mouth the delicate morsels he is too indolent or too stupid to take from their bills. Early in September he begins to shift for himself, and then follows the seniors of his kin to more southern climes.
So much caution is used by the hen cuckoo in choosing a nest in which to deposit her egg that the act of insertion has been but seldom witnessed. The nest selected is moreover often so situated, or so built, that it would be an absolute impossibility for a bird of her size to lay her egg therein by sitting upon the fabric as birds commonly do; and there have been a few fortunate observers who have actually seen the deposition of the egg upon the ground by the cuckoo, who, then taking it in her bill, introduces it into the nest. Of these, the earliest in Great Britain seem to have been two Scottish lads, sons of Mr Tripeny, a farmer in Coxmuir, who, as recorded by Macgillivray (Brit. Birds, iii. 130, 131) from information communicated to him by Mr Durham Weir, saw most part of the operation performed, June 24, 1838. But perhaps the most satisfactory evidence on the point is that of Adolf Müller, a forester at Gladenbach in Darmstadt, who says (Zoolog. Garten, 1866, pp. 374, 375) that through a telescope he watched a cuckoo as she laid her egg on a
