
ことわざ (proverb)

What its literal meaning? And what is the grammatical role of か here?

Now it's used as a proverb, but it originated as a haiku poem written by Kikaku Enomoto in the Edo era (http://kotowaza-allguide.com/a/...etokage.html).
As a poem it would be something like:
With that song
Eating lizards
Cuckoo
「か」is often used in haiku to "cut" (切れ) the poem and separate one part from the next like an audible punctuation mark (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%...%87%E3%82%8C).
In prose, it could possibly be translated along the lines of: A cuckoo with a song like that eats lizards?
The implication is that it is hard to imagine a bird with such a beautiful song doing something vulgar like eating a lizard, yet they do. In other words, you can't judge a bird by its song.

Wow. Thanks!
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License: CC BY 2.0 FRLogs
This sentence was initially added as a translation of sentence #322083
license chosen by koyakun, December 7, 2018
added by koyakun, December 7, 2018
linked by koyakun, December 7, 2018