- cuckoo Cuculus canorus. The Scots word gowk meaning 'cuckoo', from Old Norse gaukr, makes an early appearance in Scots literature, in the company of other birds, in William Dunbar's account in the Fenyeit Friar (c.1508) of an unfortunate fraud who attempted to fly with borrowed feathers:
The golk, the gormaw, and the gled,
Beft [beat] him with buffettis quhill [until] he bled.
The timing of the gowk's arrival, to coincide with changeable weather, has given rise to the expression a gowk's storm, meaning one of short duration. This was applied figuratively in a letter from the Earl of Huntly (1594), in which, Patrick Tytler's History of Scotland tells us,
he spoke of the King's rumoured campaign as likely to turn out a gowk's storm.
Gowk is often used to refer to a fool. A diary entry of Alexander Brodie of Brodie (1677) ruefully records:
My woful passion brok out, and I cald him a fool and gouk.
J. K. Annand's poem, The Gowk, illustrates this sense with gentle humour:
I met a gowk frae Penicuik
Wha thocht he was a bird;
The wey he flaffed and cried "Cuckoo",
He lookit fair absurd.
Whit wey he thinks he is a bird,
I haena got a clue;
But tho he's no a feathered gowk,
There's nae dout he's cuckoo.
The link between gowks and the first of April is well documented; from 1840 we have an example in Andrew Henderson's collection, A Few Rare Proverbs:
The first day of April, send the gowk anither mile, and we all have childhood memories of queer, daft-like, wonderful errands that... Gowks were occasionally sent on.
(Kelso Chronicle 3 April 1925)
The practice is widely known as hunt-the-gowk or huntegowk and the degree of Noah's trust in his God is amply shown where Noah sets to work building the ark,
kennin' fine that the Lord wouldna gi'e him a hunty-gowk
(MARSHALL BELL Pickles and Ploys 1932)