ONCE upon a time there was a man who lived in a small house with a large
garden. He made his living by gardening, while his wife looked after the
house. They were better off than most of their neighbours, but they were
an envious couple who looked sourly over the hedge at all who passed by,
and took no man's advice about anything.
At the end of the garden stood a large pear-tree: and one day the man
was working in the shade beneath it, when a cuckoo came and perched
itself on the topmost branch, crying "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"
The man looked up with a frown on his face, and cried, "Get out of my
tree, you noisy thing!" But the cuckoo only sat and stared at the
landscape, going up and down on its two notes like a musical see-saw.
The man stooped down, and took up a clod of earth and cast it at the
cuckoo, which immediately flew away.
A neighbour who was passing at the time saw him, and said, "It's
ill-luck to drive away cuckoos: you would be better not to do it again."
"Do it again?" cried the man. "If it comes into my tree again I'll kill
it!" "Nobody dares kill a cuckoo;" replied the neighbour, "it's against
Providence." "I'll not only kill it, if it returns," exclaimed the man
in a fury, "but I'll eat it too!" "No, no," cried his neighbour, "you
will think better of it. Even the parson daren't kill a cuckoo." "Wait
and see if I don't better the parson, then!" growled the man, as he
turned to go on with his work; "just wait and see!"
All the day he heard the cuckoo crying about in the field, now here, now
there, but always somewhere close at hand. It seemed to be making a mock
of him, for it always kept within sound, but never returned to the tree.
When he left off work for the day, he went into the house and grumbled
to his wife about that everlasting cuckoo. "Did you see what a big one
it was?" said his wife. "I saw it as it sat in our tree this morning."
"It will make all the bigger pie then," said the man, "if it comes
again."
The next morning he had hardly begun to work, when the bird came and
settled on the pear-tree over his head, and shouted "Cuckoo!"
Then the man took up a great stone, which he had by him ready, and aimed
with all his might; his aim was so true, that the stone hit the bird on
the side of the head, so that it fell down out of the tree into the
grass in front of his feet.
"Wife," he shouted, "I've killed the cuckoo! Come and carry it in, and
cook it for my dinner." "Oh, what a great fat one!" cried his wife, as
she ran and picked it up by the neck; "and heavy! It feels as heavy as a
turkey!"
She laid it in her apron, and went and sat in the doorway, and began
plucking it, while her husband went on with his work. Presently she
called to him, "Just look here at all these feathers! I never saw
anything like it; there are enough to stuff a feather-bed!" He looked
round, and saw the ground all covered with a great heap of feathers that
had been plucked from the bird: enough, as she said, for a feather-bed.
"This is a new discovery," cried he, "that a cuckoo holds so many
feathers. We can make our fortunes in this way, wife--I going about
killing cuckoos, and you plucking them into feather-beds."
Then his wife carried the cuckoo indoors, and set it down to roast. But
directly the spit began to turn, the cat jumped up from before the front
of the fire, and ran away screaming.
The smell of the roast came out to the man as he worked in his garden.
"How good it smells!" said he. "Don't _you_ touch it, wife! You mustn't
have a bit!" "I don't care if I don't," she replied: for she had watched
it as it went turning on the spit; and up and down, up and down, it kept
moving its wings!
When dinner-time came the man sat down, and his wife dished up the bird,
and set it upon the table before him. He ate it so greedily that he ate
it all--the bones, and the back, and the head, and the wings, and the
legs down to the last claw.
Then he pushed back his plate, and cried, "So there's an end of him!"
But just as he was about saying that, a voice from inside of him called,
"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
"Oh my heart and liver!" cried the man. "What's that!"
Then his wife began laughing and jiggering at him. "It's because you
were so greedy. If you had given me half of that cuckoo this wouldn't
have happened. Now you see you are paid."
"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" cried the voice again from within.
"What have I done to myself?" cried the man, in an agony of terror.
"What a poisonous noise to come from a man's belly! I shall die of it, I
know I shall!"