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Updated: June 7, 2025
I have never succeeded in making a dead grasshopper fiddle, but I have long known how to make a dead katydid say "ka." Quite recently I have added to my accomplishment in this respect and can make it say "katy." The "did" part of the song still lies beyond my power. The crickets produce their sharp notes in much the same fashion as the katydids.
They are musicians that play fast or slow, strong or feeble, just as the heat of the season waxes or wanes; and they play as long as life lasts: when their music ceases, they are dead. The katydids begin in August, and cry with great vigor and spirit, "Katy-did," "Katydid," or "Katy-did n't."
Maria did not look up. Her eyes seemed fixed on a fringe of wood across the track in which some katydids were calling, late as it was. That wood, with its persistent voices of unseen things, served to turn her thought from herself, just as the cry of the child had done. "Miss Edgham," said Wollaston, in a strained voice.
He paused before her door listening to see if she was asleep, but there was only the sound of the katydids in the branches outside her window, and the distant tree-toads singing a fugue in an orchard not far away. He tiptoed to his room but he did not light his candle, therefore there was no light in the back room of the Spafford house that night for any watching eyes to ponder over.
The wind sighed mournfully in the cypresses, the belated crickets and katydids droned in the hedge, but no sweet voice of sympathy soothed Margie's strained ear. For, wrought up as she was, she almost listened to hear some response from the lips which death had made mute forever. The village clock struck half-past eight, warning Margie that it was almost time for the ceremony to take place.
She leaned her bare head against the trunk of a pine, listened to the katydids gossiping in a distant oak that shaded the "branch," to the quavering strident song of a locust; and she intended, after resting for a few moments, to return to the station-house; but unexpected drowsiness overpowered her.
They could hear Uncle Tad leading the elephant cow, as they called her, through the bushes, and hear him talking to her. "Come bossy! Come on now. That's a good cow!" The cow seemed to lead along easily enough, and pretty soon no more noises could be heard in camp except the chirping of the crickets or the songs of the katydids and katydidn'ts.
The pleasant night-sounds are begun; the hylas are uttering their shrill peep from the meadows, mingled soon with hoarser toads, who take to the water at this season to deposit their spawn. The tree-toads soon join them; but one listens in vain for bullfrogs, or katydids, or grasshoppers, or whippoorwills, or crickets: we must wait for them until the delicious June.
"I'm glad you roused me," he said, "though generally I hate to have my sleep broken. But just now I was having a nightmare. I was dreaming that a monstrous Katydid was chasing me. And if you hadn't called to me I don't know what would have happened.... I think," he added, "I must have dined too heartily on Katydids last night." The Hermit couldn't help looking a bit shocked.
In the attic of this lone cabin Jake Benton was regularly lulled to sleep by the evening lullabies of the katydids as they sang in the tops of the postoak trees with which the cabin was surrounded. One August afternoon when Jake returned from his regular roundup of the cattle, he found, seated on a log near the spring, two men. At the sight of the men Jake's heart leaped into his mouth.
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