Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/225

Rh which in various ways imitate his crowing; in Yoruba he is called koklo, in Ibo okoko, akoka, in Zulu kuku, in Finnish kukko, in Sanskrit kukkuta, and so on. He is mentioned in the Zend-Avesta in a very curious way, by a name which elaborately imitates his cry, but which the ancient Persians seem to have held disrespectful to their holy bird, who rouses men from sleep to good thought, word, and work: —

'The bird who bears the name of Parôdars, O holy Zarathustra; Upon whom evil-speaking men impose the name Kabrkataç.'

The crowing of the cock (Malay kâluruk, kukuk) serves to mark a point of time, cockcrow. Other words originally derived from such imitation of crowing have passed into other curiously transformed meanings: Old French cocart 'vain;' modern French coquet 'strutting like a cock, coquetting, a coxcomb;' cocarde 'a cockade'  (from its likeness to a cock's comb); one of the best instances is coquelicot, a name given for the same reason to the wild poppy, and even more distinctly in Languedoc, where cacaracá means both the crowing and the flower. The hen in some languages has a name corresponding to that of the cock, as in Kussa kukuduna 'cock,' kukukasi 'hen;' Ewe koklo-tsu 'cock,' koklo-no 'hen;' and her cackle (whence she has in Switzerland the name of gugel, güggel) has passed into language as a term for idle gossip and chatter of women, caquet, caqueter, gackern, much as the noise of a very different creature seems to have given rise not only to its name, Italian cicala, but to a group of words represented by cicalar 'to chirp, chatter, talk sillily.' The pigeon is a good example of this kind, both for sound and sense. It is Latin pipio, Italian pippione, piccione, pigione, modern Greek , French pipion (old), pigeon; its derivation is from the young bird's peep, Latin pipire, Italian pipiare, pigiolare, modern Greek , to chirp; by an easy metaphor, a pigeon comes to mean 'a silly young fellow