Crake

How still ! how very still it is, So silent it appears, E'en from its intensity, To tingle in mine ears. I hear the sheep-bell far away In the calm breathless night; The corncrake begins to crake . Crake, crake, with all its might.

'How very disagreeable!' said Annie; 'perhaps the birds took it in turn to crake.'

Of course, a corncrake, as its name suggests, likes to crake among the corn and hayfields, so that in fact you are unlikely ever to confuse it with the spotted crake, a bird to which dry land is almost anathema.

I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate.

Each man may crake of that which was his own.

With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.

And he that thus doth shal have smal pleasure in his awn rightwysnes, nor no gret lust to crake of his awn deserts or meryts.