Stupid title. There's no such thing as a cuckoo's nest.

I assumed they meant a cuckoo. They didn't specify.

At least things that fly actually, you know, exist. I can use my imagination to fill in the gap. But a "cuckoo's nest"? What am I supposed to do with that information? You may as well called it a jabberwocky or something dumb.

It's stupid.

From the book:

"Tingle, ting-le, tang-le toes,
she's a good fisherman,
catches hens, puts 'em inna pens...
wire blier, limber lock,
three geese in a flock,
one flew east, one flew west,
one flew over the cuckoo's nest...
O-U-T- spells out...
goose swoops down and plucks you out."

This children's nursery rhyme, with an obvious connection to the title of the book, is remembered by Chief Bromden after a shock treatment. This poem is allegorical to the hospital in the following ways:

1. The Cuckoo's Nest is the hospital.
2. The "good fisherman" is the Big Nurse. She fishes in the patients and "catches hens, puts 'em in pens". This relates back to page 58 when McMurphy described the Group Meetings as a "pecking party", a term for when a flock of hens pecks one to death. She deliberately sets them against one another, rewarding this behavior.
3. McMurphy is the goose that flies over the cuckoo's nest. In the beginning of the book, McMurphy describes himself as the "Bull Goose Loony" (21).
4. Bromden is the one that is plucked out of the cuckoo's nest by the goose (McMurphy) because he escapes at the end of the book into the real world because of McMurphy.

Other connections to Cuckoo birds are made throughout the novel, such as the cuckoo clock, tying them in with the oppression of the patients.

Source: http://allisoneames.weebly.com/the-poem.html

Scariest words in English: We’re from the federal government and we’re here to help. R. Reagan