Author's note: Yes, I know that Hans Christian Andersen wasn't British, but the same principle applies; most Americans, I'm fairly sure, wouldn't readily identify a "dunnock" as a kind of songbird, and so I said "hedge-sparrow" in the original. Here, accordingly, is the same drabble as the European me would have written it.


"Do you mean to say," said a female dunnock, "that some swan laid her egg in a duck's nest, and then just swam away and let her think it was her own?"

"So it seems," said her cuckoo neighbour.

The dunnock peeped censoriously. "Such dissolute times we live in," she said. "Really, what sort of irresponsible scoundrel would think of deceiving a fellow hen that way?"

"Shameful," the cuckoo agreed solemnly. "Incidentally, how is your own brood coming along?"

"Oh, wonderfully," said the dunnock. "The centre egg, especially; it's nearly twice as big now as any I've ever laid."

"Splendid."