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.