Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The chicks are huge and
crowd out the legitimate birds and grab all the food. The mother apparently
doesn't realize it's not hers. Not so learned, but that's my understanding of
the expression.
Jane
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Learned? I can't vouch for this adjective being applicable to my response;
but of the cuckoo, I believe she means sexual betrayal: to be cuckholded, to
find someone else in your bed with your lover.
As for the viper in the busom, I think this is easily understood; and it
sounds very like Lady Ma
Well, here's one example of how the phrase is currently understood:
"Who has not known the fear of trust betrayed, when a cuckoo is uncovered
in the nest, a viper in the bosom, a snake in the grass?" (Louise Guinness,
reviewing Sophia Watson's novel The Perfect Treasure in Literary Review,
May 199
I greatly enjoyed the exchange about the snake in the grass and its
evolution as described by Peter Bryant:
>So it seems that by the Renaissance ,if not earlier, Virgil's snake
>which in the context of the original poem was merely a dangerous
>reptile, has in its long life as as a Latin tag an
