CHAPTER LVI 



THE CUCKOO 



The landscape is like unto a delicate pastel when the cuckoo 

 appears in the Broadlands — soft masses of blue atmosphere, 

 delicate patches of bursting leaves, long sweeps of tender 

 green grass, a pale blue sky overhead, and the music of the 

 warm breezes sighing over the face of the land. Upon such 

 a day you may, on arising, hear the voice of the first cuckoo 

 sounding from a coppice down by the water, and you listen as 

 the echoing voice rings softly from the blue courting cuckoo, 

 " cuckoo, cuckoo," who gives on this occasion two-and-thirty 

 calls ; and if you be Norfolk-born, you will know that you have 

 two-and-thirty years to live — two-and-thirty more springs to 

 hear the soft vibration of the cuckoo's voice. But the passing 

 marshman will tell you you must wait for a purer note, for the 

 bird hasn't sucked enough eggs yet to clear his voice ; for he 

 is said by all the country-folk to be hunting for eggs as he 

 flies low over the marshland with that other Mephistophelian 

 chortling chuckle of his, neither hawk-voice nor night-jar — 

 a wicked, diabolical laugh, oftenest heard at eve and dewy 

 morn, and never to be forgotten when once heard. But woe 

 to you, says the rockstaflf, should the cuckoo alight on a 

 rotten bough, or, flying low, alight on a wall, for 'tis a sign 

 of death, spring though it be ; nor must you shoot him, or 

 you will get upset. 



Soon after the first cuckoo is heard, they are to be seen scat- 

 tered over the marshland on the hedgerows, sitting on heaps 

 of litter, airily perched on a fork-shaft ; for the cuckoo dearly 



loves a pole or marshman's fork-shaft, or sporting on the river 



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