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THE JOURNAL OF
AMERICAN FOLK-LORE
VOLUME XXVIII
lb
LANCASTER, PA., and NFAV YORK
^u&!i;efl)cD bp Wm American f oihr^jllorc Sorictp
G. E. STECHERT & CO., Agents
NEW YORK: 151-155 Wkst 25T11 Street PARIS: i6 kue de CoNofi
LONDON: DAVID NUTT. 57. 59 Long Acre
LEIPZIG: OTTO HARRASSOWIT7. r terstiiasse. 14
MDCCCCXV
Copyright, 191 5 andJiQi^
By the AMERICAN FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
All rights reserved
^
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTINO COMPANY
LANCASTER l-A.
vj
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXVIII
ARTICLES
PAGE
Some Types of American Folk-Song John A. Lomax I
The Relation of Folk-Lore to Anthropology Pliny Earle Goddard l8
Batanga Tales R. H. Nassau 24
Penobscot Tales F. G. Speck 52
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island F. G. Speck 59
Some Naskapi Myths from Little Whale River F. G. Speck 70
Certain West-Indian Superstitions pertaining to Celts. .Theodoor de Booy 78
Wyandot Tales, including Foreign Elements C. M. Barbeau 83
Eskimo Songs Eleanor Hague 96
Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Folk-Lore Society 99
The Story of the Pinna and the Syrian Lamb Berthold Laufer 103
Songs and Rhymes from the South E. C. Perrow 129
Signs and Omens of the Eighteenth Century G. L. Kitlredge 191
The Magic Boat Phillips Barry 195
The Traditional Ballad in the South during 1914 Reed Smith 199
New-Mexican Spanish Folk-Lore: VI. Addenda Aurelio M. Espinosa 204
Shasta and Athapascan Myths from Oregon (Collected by
Livingston Farrand) Leo J. Frachtenberg 207
A Malecite Talc: Adventures of Bukschinskwesk Harley Stamp 243
Loucheux Myths (Collected b>' Charles CamscU) C. M. Barbeau. 249
The Menomini Word " Hawatflk" Alanson Skinner 258
Some Play-Party Games of the Middle West Edwin F. Piper 262
Notes on Folk-Lore of Texas W. Prescott Webb 290
The Ballad of the Cruel Brother Phillips Barry 300
Frederic Ward Putnam Charles Peabody 302
New-Mexican Spanish Folk-Lore. IX. Riddles Aurelio M. Espinosa 319
Some Animal Fables of the Chuh Indians /. Kunst 353
South-American Popular Poetry Rudolph Schuller 358
Native Poetry of Northern Brazil Rudolph Schuller 365
Two Songs of Mexican Cowboys from the Rio Grande Border. . . John A. Lomax 376
P'ive Mexican Dances Eleanor Hague 379
Five Danzas from Mexico Eleanor Hague 382
Folk-Tales from Oaxaca (edited by Aurelio M. Espinosa) Paul Radin 390
LOCAL MEETING
Texas Folk-Lore Society Stith Thompson 307
iii
iv Contents of Volume XXVIII
NOTES AND QUERIES
Second Pan-American Scientific Congress, Section of Anthropology', 308. Seneca Tales and Beliefs, R. J. Weillaner, 309. The Water- Fairies, Harley Stamp, 310. The English Folk-Dance Society and its Work, Charles Peabody, 316. La Muti- laci6n Operatoria del Caballo Recelo en la America Latina, Robert Lehmann- Nitsche, 412. Clasificacion de las Adivinanzas Rioplatenses, Robert Lehmann- Nitsche, 416.
Officers and Members of the American Folk-Lore Society, 417.
Index to Volume XXVIII, 427-
THE JOURNAL OF
AMERICAN FOLK-LORE
Vol. XXVin. — JANUARY-MARCH, 191 5.— No. CVIL
SOME TYPES OF AMERICAN FOLK-SONG.'
BY JOHN A. LOMAX.
A BALLAD has been defined by Professor Kittredge as a story told in song, or a song that tells a story. This general definition of a ballad has been made more specific by various limitations. For instance, it is said that a genuine ballad has no one author; that, instead, some community or some group of people is its author. It is therefore the expression of no one mind : it is the product of the folk. Furthermore, the ballad has no date. No one knows just when the most treasured of the English and Scottish ballads were composed. For generations before Percy made his first collection of them — and no one knows just how many generations — they were handed down by word of mouth, as is the Masonic Ritual. A ballad, finally, is impersonal in tone; that is, it is the expression of no individual opinion. It might have been written by any one. A ballad, then, is a story in song, written no one knows when, no one knows where, no one knows by whom, and perhaps, some may think, no one knows "for why." Notwith- standing, as the spontaneous poetic expression of the primitive emotions of a people, ballads always have had and always will have the power to move mankind.
Have we any American ballads? Let us frankly confess, that, according to the definitions of the best critics of the ballad, wc have none at all. There has, however, sprung up in America a ct)nsidcrable body of folk-song, called by courtesy "ballads," which in their author- ship, in the social conditions under which they were produced, in the spirit that gives them life, resemble the genuine ballads sung by our English and Scottish grandmothers long before there was an American people. We recognize and love the new ballad, just as we love the old, because the real ballad, perhaps as much as any other form of expression, appeals to our deepest, most intimate, and most elemental
' Address of the retiring President, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Foik-Lorc Society, held in New York, N.V.. December, 1913. VOL. XXVIIL — NO. 107. — I I
2 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
associations. Our primitive instincts yet influence us. You and I, living in the heyday of civilization under the conventions of cultured people, are yet, after all, not so far removed from a time and from a folk that spoke out their emotions simply and directly. A ballad is such a fresh, direct, and simple expression, — not of an individual, but of a people, — upon a subject that has a common interest and a common appeal, because of its common association to all of that people; and the emotions it expresses are the abiding experiences of the human heart. I contend that American ballads that have caught the spirit of the old ballads, however they may be lacking in impersonality, in form and in finish do exist and are being made to-day.
I hope you will pardon me for taking this occasion to tell you that I have long cherished an earnest purpose — a purpose which has been kindly and earnestly encouraged by some of my friends in the English Faculty at Harvard — to collect for the use of students a large body of this, to me, very interesting form of American literature. I am glad, furthermore, to report to this Society that a number of other individuals in different parts of the United States are at work on the same project; and while all of us combined have not more than well begun the enterprise, in my judgment another decade will see the greater portion of this material put into available shape for use in the libraries of all the universities that care for it. Already I have for presentatation to Harvard University, which first made it possible for me to enter upon the work of collecting, and for my own university (the University of Texas), more than one thousand typewritten sheets of almost that number of American folk-songs. Much of this material, when compared with existing collections, will doubtless be found worth- less or already in print. A considerable portion of it, however, I believe to be for the first time reduced to writing.
More than half of my collection has been taken down from oral recitation; and practically all of the songs in the collection, even if they have existed heretofore in the printed page, have for years been transmitted orally from one person to another in the localities where the songs were found. In other words, much of what I present has been for some time the property of the folk, if I may use a technical term, transmitted orally to me or to some one acting for me. If one says the folk did not create any or all of these songs, then I reply, the folk adopted them, set them to tunes, and yet transmit them through the voice and not by means of the written page. A further fact, par- ticularly noteworthy to those interested in the ballad, is that the pre- vailing types of songs thus transmitted embody in some particulars the characteristics of the Scottish and English ballads.
I shall mention, even if I do not have time to discuss and illustrate them, seven typesof the so-called "American ballads" that have come
Some Types oj American Folk-Song. 3
into my net since I began this work five or six years ago, — the ballads of the miner, particularly of the days of '49; the ballads of lumbermen; the ballads of the inland sailor, dealing principally with life on the Great Lakes; the ballads of the soldier; the ballads of the railroader; the ballads of the negro ; and the ballads of the cowboy. Another type, of which I should like to give examples, includes the songs of the down-and-out classes, — the outcast girl, the dope fiend, the convict, the jail-bird, and the tramp.
The tales of adventure, of love, of pathos, of tragedy, in these dif- ferent types of ballads, make them all similar in content. The line of cleavage between the types is therefore not made on subject-matter, except in so far as this subject-matter is descriptive of the community life among the particular types. The songs assigned definitely to the cowboy, to the gold-digger, to the canal-boatman, etc., are those popular and current among these classes of people, and, so far as one is able to judge, originating with them. The ideal ballad of each type, of course, contains descriptive matter that affords internal evidence that it belongs to that particular type. One general characteristic possessed by these seven type-examples of the ballads found in America I wish to call to your especial attention. The life of every calling represented was spent in the open, and, furthermore, the occupation of each calling demanded supreme physical endeavor. The songs were made by men in most cases away from home and far removed from the restraining influences of polite society. They were created by men of vigorous action for an audience of men around the camp-fire, in the forecastle, in the cotton-fields, about the bivouacs of the soldier, during a storm at night when the cattle were restless and milling. Should one be surprised, then, that the verse is rough in construction, often coarse in conception, and that its humor is robust and Rabelaian? Many of the songs, as you can well imagine, are totally unfit for public reading. I believe the suggestion I have made in the foregoing sentences, together with the fact that our American ballads have not existed long enough to receive the polish they would get by repetition through two or three centuries, — I repeat, I believe these two facts offer partial explanation of the great difference between the subject-matter and the treatment of American ballads when compared with the English and Scottish ballads.
Frankly, my own interest in American ballads is largely because they are human documents that reveal the mode of thinking, the character of life, and the point of view, of the vigorous, red-blooded, restless Americans, who could no more live contented shut in by four walls than could Beowulf and his clan, who sailed the seas around the coasts of Norway and Sweden.
Who make and preserve these songs? I do not know, except in a
4 Journal of American Folk-Lorc.
very few instances, the name of any author. Surely they are not the "spinsters and knitters in the sun;" rather they are the victims of Wanderlust, the rovers, who find solace in the wide, silent places of the earth. They are well described in a song found among the cow- boys and miners of Arizona, said to be sung to the tune of "Little Joe the Wrangler."
I've beat my way wherever any winds have blown; I've bummed along from Portland down to San Antone, From Sandy Hook to Frisco over gulch and hill, For, once you git the habit, why, you can't keep still.
I settles down quite frequent; and I says, says I,
"I'll never wander further till I comes to die."
But the wind it sorta chuckles, "Why o' course you will,"
An', sure enough, I does it, 'cause I can't keep still.
I've seed a lot of places where I'd like to stay, But I gets a-feelin' restless an' I'm on my way; I was never meant for settin' on my own door sill, An', once you get the habit, why, you can't keep still.
I've been in rich men's houses and I've been in jail, But when it's time for leavin' I jes hits the trail; I'm a human bird of passage, and the song I trill Is, "Once you git the habit, why, you can't keep still."
The sun is sorta coaxin' an' the road is clear, An' the wind is singin' ballads that I got to hear; It ain't no use to argue when you feel the thrill. For, once you git the habit, why, you can't keep still.
These folk-songs originate and are yet current, as I have said, wher- ever people live isolated lives, — isolated lives under conditions more or less primitive; and particularly do such songs come from those people whose mode of living makes necessary extreme physical en- deavor. From the mining-camps of California ; from the lumber-camps of Maine and Michigan; from the railroad-camps of the far West and Northwest; from the forecastle of every ship that sailed the sea; from the freight-boats of the Great Lakes, and the tow-paths of the Erie Canal; from the bivouacs of the soldiers in the Civil War; from the big cotton-plantations of the river-bottoms of the South; and from the cow- boys who, during the past fifty years, ran the cattle-ranches of the Southwest, — from all these sources have come to us songs vitalizing and vivifying the community life of these groups of men. Some of the songs I read are familiar to a portion, at least, of this audience; some I believe arc for the first time brought together in the form I give them. My choice has been determined not so much by a desire to prove the correctness of the comments of this part of my paper as
Some Types of American Folk-Song. 5
to present something that I trust will illustrate fairly a few of the types of American folk-songs.
Several years ago a correspondent of mine in Idaho sent me a song called "Joe Bowers," which he said he had heard sung over and over again by a thousand miners after a hard day's work, as they loitered about the mouth of a mine before separating for the night. Four years ago I read this ballad in Ithaca at a smoker of the Modern Language Association. Later in the evening a member of this Asso- ciation came to me and said that he had seen the same song written on the walls of an old tavern not many miles from Ithaca. Since that time I have discovered that "Joe Bowers" was one of the popular songs among the Confederate soldiers of the Civil War. I have run upon men who knew it in Wyoming, in California, in Arizona, in Oklahoma, and in other States. Its history is in dispute, and there has been a voluminous newspaper controversy in Missouri concerning its authorship. Let me add that there is a Pike County, Missouri, and in my judgment there was a real Joe Bowers who suffered some guch fate as is described in the song.
JOE BOWERS.
My name is Joe Bowers,
I have a brother Ike, I came here from Missouri,
Yes, all the way from Pike. I'll tell you why I left there
And how I came to roam. And leave my poor old mammy,
So far away from home.
I used to love a gal there.
Her name was Sallie Black, I asked her for to marry me.
She said it was a whack. She says to me, "Joe Bowers,
Before you hitch for life, You ought to have a little home
To keep your little wife."
Says I, "My dearest Sallie,
O Sallie! for your sake I'll go to California,
And try to raise a stake." Says she to me, "Joe Bowers,
You arc the chap to win, Give me a kiss to seal the bargain,"
And I throwed a dozen in.
I'll never forget my feelings When I bid adieu to all.
Journal of American Folk-Lore.
Sal, she cotched me round the neck
And I began to bawl. When I begun, they all commenced;
You never heard the like. How they all took on and cried
That day I left old Pike.
When I got to this here country
I hadn't nary a red, I had such wolfish feelings
I wished myself most dead. At last I went to mining,
Put in my biggest licks, Came down upon the bowlders
Just like a thousand bricks.
I worked both late and early
In rain and sun and snow, But I was working for my Sallie,
So 'twas all the same to Joe. I made a very lucky strike,
As the gold itself did tell, For I was working for my Sallie,
The girl I loved so well.
But one day I got a letter
From my dear brother Ike; It came from old Missouri,
Yes, all the way from Pike. It told me the goldarndest news
That ever you did hear. My heart it is a-bustin'.
So please excuse this tear.
I'll tell you what it was, boys,
You'll bust your sides, I know; For when I read that letter.
You ought to seen jioor Joe. My knees gave way beneath me,
And I pulled out half my hair; And if you ever tell this now.
You bet you'll hear me swear.
It said my Sallie was fickle. Her love for me had fled. That she had married a cowboy
Whose hair was awful red. It told me more than that,
It's enough to make me swear, — It said that Sallie had a baby, And the baby had red hair.
Some Types of American Folk-Song.
Now I've told you all that I can tell
About this sad affair, — 'Bout Sallie marrying the cowboy
And the baby had red hair. But whether it was a boy or girl
The letter never said, It only said its cussed hair
Was inclined to be red.
From such social conditions as are hinted at in this song, there sprang up another song, doubtless more widely popular. It, too, has an interesting story, which I will not go into here.
THE DAYS OF FORTY-NINE.
We are gazing now on old Tom Moore,
A relic of bygone days; 'Tis a bummer, too, they call me now.
But what cares I for praise? It's oft, says I, for the days gone by.
It's oft do I repine For the days of old when we dug out the gold
In those days of Forty-Nine.
My comrades they all loved me well,
The jolly, saucy crew; A few hard cases, I will admit.
Though they were brave and true. Whatever the pinch, they ne'er would flinch,
They never would fret nor whine; Like good old bricks they stood the kicks
In the days of Forty-Nine.
There's old "Aunt Jess," that hard old cuss,
Who never would repent; He never missed a single meal.
Nor never paid a cent. But old "Aunt Jess," like all the rest.
At death he did resign. And in his bloom went up the flume
In the days of Forty- Nine.
There is Ragshag Jim, the roaring man,
Who could out-roar a bulTalo, you bet; He roared all day and he roared all night.
And I guess he is roaring yet. One night Jim fell in a prospect hole, —
It was a roaring bad design, — And in that hole Jim roared out his soul
In the days of Forty-Nine.
t Journal of American Folk-Lore.
There is Wylie Bill, the funny man,
Who was full of funny tricks; And when he was in a poker game
He was always hard as bricks. He would ante you at stud, he would play you at draw.
He'd go you a hateful blind, — In a struggle with death Bill lost his breath
In the days of Forty-Nine.
There was New York Jake, the butcher boy.
Who was fond of getting tight; And every time he got on a spree
He was spoiling for a fight. One night Jake rampaged against a knife
In the hands of old Bob Sine, And over Jake they held a wake
In the days of Forty-Nine.
There was Monte Pete, I'll never forget
The luck he always had; He would deal for you both day and night
Or as long as he had a scad. It was a pistol-shot that lay Pete out,
It was his last resign, And it caught Pete dead shore in the door
In the days of Forty-Nine.
Of all the comrades that I've had
There's none that's left to boast. And I am left alone in my misery.
Like some poor wandering ghost. And as I pass from town to town.
They call me the rambling sign. Since the days of old and the days of gold
And the days of Forty-Nine.
As a type of the lumberman's shanty, I shall read "Silver Jack," which was sent to me by Professor Edwin F. Gay, Dean of the Gradu- ate School of Business Administration of Harvard University. He says that he got it from a lumber-camp in northern Michigan, and that it is probably not an original lumber-jack ballad. It is, however, very popular among lumbermen. And Silver Jack, the hero of the poem, was a real person who lived near Saginaw, Mich., and was well known among the camp and lumbermen as a hard case. About the same time that Professor Gay sent me this song, I received practically the identical song from Bay City, Tex. Thus one copy has come to me from lumbermen near Canada, and another from the canal-diggers close to the line of Old Mexico. As you will sec, this particular ballad has a suspicious resemblance to newspaper verse.
Some Types of American Folk- Song.
SILVER JACK.
I was on the Drive in eighty,
Working under Silver Jack, Which the same was now in Jackson
And ain't soon expected back. And there was a fellow 'mongst us
By the name of Robert Waite Kind of cute and smart and tonguey,
Guess he was a graduate.
He could talk on any subject,
From the Bible down to Hoyle, And his words flowed out so easy,
Just as smooth and slick as oil. He was what they call a sceptic,
And he loved to sit and weave Hifalutin words together
Telling what he didn't believe.
One day we all were sittin' round
Waiting for a flood, smoking Nigger-head tobacco. And hearing Bob expound.
Hell, he said, was all a humbug. And he made it plain as day
That the Bible was a fable; And we 'lowed it looked that way.
Miracles and such like Were too rank for him to stand;
And as for him they called the Savior, He was just a common man.
" You're a liar!" some one shouted,
"And you've got to take it back." Then everybody started —
'Twas the words of Silver Jack. And he cracked his fists together
And he stacked his duds and cried, " Twas in that thar religion
That my mother lived and died; And though I haven't always
Used the Lord exactly right, Yet when I hear a chump abuse him
He must eat his words or fight."
Now, this Bob he weren't no coward.
And he answered bold and free, "Stack your duds and cut your capers.
For there ain't no flies on me." And they fit for forty minutes,
And the crowd would whoop and cheer When Jack spit up a tooth or two.
Or when Bobby lost an ear.
lo Journal of American Folk-Lore.
But at last Jack got him under
And he slugged him onct or twist, And straightway Bob admitted
The divinity of Christ. But Jack kept reasoning with him
Till the poor cuss gave a yell, And 'lowed he'd been mistaken
In his views concerning hell.
Then the fierce encounter ended
And they riz up from the ground. And some one brought a bottle out
And kindly passed it round. And we drank to Bob's religion
In a cheerful sort o'way, But the spread of infidelity
Was checked in camp that day.
Among the most spirited songs in my collection are some that come from the Great Lakes. A fragment begins, —
It was the steamer Reynolds that sailed the breezy sea; And she sailed from old BufTalo, and the wind was blowed a-lea. Oh, the skipper was an Irishman, as you may understand, And every port the skipper struck he was sure to rush the can. Oh, the mate he was a rusher, and so was the captain too, And he paid the deck ...
And then the song suddenly stops, because the singer became too drunk to go further. Here is another fragment: —
We left Duluth bout half-past four, A-loaded down with the red iron ore; The wind was high and the stream was low, And forty-two was the number of the tow.
Another excellent example swings off, —
Come, all you jolly sailor boys that love to hear a song, Attention pay to what I say, I'll not detain you long. In Milwaukee last October I chanced to get a sight On the timber schooner "Bigelow," belonging to Detroit.
Chorus. So watch her, catch her, jump up in a juba-ju!
Give her the sheet and let her rip, we're the boys can put her through. You'd ought to have seen her howling, the wind a-blowing free, On our passage down to BufTalo from Milwaukee.
The wind came up that night, my boys, and blew both stout and strong; And down through Lake Michigan the "Bigelow" ploughed along, While far before her foaming bows, dashing waves she'd fling With every stitch of canvas set, she's sailing wing and wing.
Some Types of American Folk-Song. ii
We passed "Skillagles" and "VVable-Shanks" at the entrance of the
Straits; We might have passed the fleet ahead, if they'd hove to and wait; But we swept them all before us, the neatest ever you saw, Clear out into Lake Huron from the Straits of Mackinaw.
From Thunder Bay Island to Sable Point we held her full and by, We held her to the breeze, boys, as close as she could lie. The captain ordered a sharp lookout, the night it being dark. Our course was steering south-southeast, for the light on Point Au Barques.
Now we're off of Point Au Barques, on Michigan's east shore, We're booming toward the River as we'd often done before. When opposite Port Huron light our anchor we let go. And the sweepstakes came along and took the "Bigelow" in tow.
She took nine of us in tow, we all were fore and aft.
She towed us down to Lake St. Clair and stuck us on the flats.
We parted the "Hunter's" tow-line in giving us relief,
And the timber Schooner "Bigelow" ran into the "Maple-Leaf."
Now, the "Sweepstakes" left us outside the river light, Lake Erie's blustering winds and stormy waves to fight. We laid to at the Hen and Chicken, the wind it blew a gale; We had to lay till morning, for we could not carry sail.
We made the O^ and passed Long Point, the wind it being fresh and free, We're bowling along the Canadian shore. Port Colborne on our lee, Oh, what is that ahead of us, shines like a glittering star? 'Tis the light upon the "Dummy," we are nigh to Buffalo pier.
Now the "Bigelow" she's arrived at Buffalo port at last. And under Reade's elevator, the "Bigelow" she's made fast, And in some lager-beer saloon we'll take a social glass. We'll all be jolly shipmates, and we'll let the bottle pass.
Each of our wars has produced its own songs, and some remain yet unprinted. Probably from the Civil War has come those for which we feel the greatest interest. On the whole, I believe the Rebel war-songs that belong properly to the class I am seeking are superior to the Yankee songs. Here are the sentiments of an unreconstructed in- dividual:
Oh, I'm a good old rebel, that's what I am, And for this land of freedom I don't care a damn; I'm glad I fought agin her, I only wish we'd won, And I don't ax any pardon for anything I've done.
I served with old Bob Lee for three years thereabout; Got wounded in four places and starved at Point Lookout;
» Rondeau, called the "O" or "Eau."
12 Journal oj American Folk-Lore.
I caught the rheumatism a-campin' in the snow,
But I killed a chance o' Yankees, and I wish I'd killed some mo'.
Three hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust; We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us; They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot; I wish there was three million instead of what we got.
I hate the constitooshin, this great republic, too;
I hate the nasty eagle and the uniform so blue;
I hate their glorious banner and all their flags and fuss;
These lyin', thevin' Yankees, I hate 'em wuss and wuss.
I hate the Yankee nation and everything they do; I hate the Declaration of Independence, too; I hate the glorious union, 'tis dripping with our blood; I hate the striped banner, I fought it all I could.
I can't take up my musket and fight them now no mo', But I'm not going to love them, and that is certain sho'; And I don't want no pardon for what I was or am; I won't be reconstructed, and I don't care a damn.
I won't be reconstructed, I'm better now than them; And for a carpet-bagger I don't care a damn; For I'm off for the frontier as soon as I can go; I'll prepare me a weapon and start for Mexico.
A fair example of the product of the soldiers of the Federal army runs, —
White folks, hold your tongues, listen to my ditty:
I'm just from Fort Monroe and bring news to the city.
The rebels they are shaking, they know they'll get a stringing;
For, since McClellan got command, he set them all to singing.
The rebels talk of Bull Run, and say they won the battle; But the Sixty-ninth and Fire boys, they cut up them 'er cattle; And though they knew it was a draw, they say that we were worsted; But they'll have to beat an awful crowd before the Union's bursted.
Jeff Davis is a putty man, there's none at blowing louder;
But the soldiers must not shoot him, for 'twould be a waste of powder.
He ain't as good as another hog, for him there is no curing;
So first we'll hang him up to dry, then sell him for manuring.
Now we've got the rifle cannon, and the patent shot and shell The bully Union volunteers will give the rebels — pison They'll capture General Beauregard, give Floyd a hempen collar. And take the last damn rebel, I'll bet you half a dollar.
As an example of the songs that tell the sad stories of the folk I have roughly designated as the "down-and-out class," I shall read
Some Types of American Folk-Song. 13
you a ballad I heard sung by a wandering singer plying her minstrel trade by the roadside in Fort Worth, during an annual meeting of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association. It is the song of the girl factory- worker, and the singer told me she picked it up in Florida.
No more shall I work in the factory
To greasy up my clothes. No more shall I work in the factory
With splinters in my toes.
Refrain. It's pity me, my darling,
It's pity me, I say. It's pity me, my darling.
And carry me far away.
No more shall I hear the bosses say,
"Boys, you had better daulf." No more shall I hear those bosses say,
"Spinners, you had better clean off."
No more shall I hear the drummer wheels
A-rolling over my head; When factory girls are hard at work
I'll be in my bed.
No more shall I hear the whistle blow
To call me up too soon, No more shall I hear the whistle blow
To call me from my home.
No more shall I see the super come
All dressed up so fine; For I know I'll marry a country boy
Before the year is round.
No more shall I wear the old black dress
Greasy all around; No more shall I wear the old black bonnet
With holes all in the crown.
Refrain.
And it's pity me, my darling,
It's pity me, I say. It's pity me, my darling,
And carry me far away.
Very few of the many work-songs that have had their origin among the men who have done the labor of putting down our great railway- lines have escaped printing in railway publications. The following song is sung along the Chesapeake and Ohio Road in Kentucky and West Virginia.
14 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
When John Henry was a little lad
A-holding of his papa's hand, Says, "If I live until I'm twenty-one,
I'm goin' to make a steel-driving man."
As Johnny said, when he was a man
He made his words come true, He's the best steel-driver on the C «& O Road,
He belongs to the steel-driving crew.
They brought John Henry from the white house.
And took him to the tunnel to drive, He drove so hard he broke his heart,
He laid down his hammer and he died.
I hear the walking boss coming,
Coming down the line; I thought I heard the walking boss say,
"Johnny's in. that tunnel number nine."
John Henry standing on the right-hand side, The steam-drill standing on the left,
He says, "I'll beat that steam-drill down. Or I'll die with my hammer on my breast."
He placed his drill on the top of the rock. The steam-drill standing by his side.
He beat the steam-drill an inch and a half. And he laid down his hammer and he died.
Before he died he said to his boss,
"O bossman! how can it be. The rock is so hard and the steel is so tough,
I can feel my muscle giving way?"
Johnny said just before he died,
"I hope I'll meet you all above. You take my hammer and wrap it in gold,
And give it to the girl I love."
When the people heard of poor Johnny's death They could not stay at their home,
They all come out on the C & O Line, Where steel-driving Johnny used to roam.
If I die a railroad-man
Go bury me under the tie, So I can hear old number four
As she goes rolling by.
If you won't bury mc under the track.
Bury me under the sand, With a pick and shovel under my head
And a nine-pound hammer in my hand.
Some Types of American Folk-Song. 15
I shall not read you examples of cowboy ballads, although I have dis- covered many new ones in the last two years, because this type of ballad is well illustrated in a collection hitherto published. I wish to refer to one interesting fact in connection with the negro "Ballet of the Boll- Weevil." This song we know to have been made by plantation negroes during the last fifteen years, because the boll-weevil immigrated from Mexico into Texas about that number of years ago. Before that time the boll-weevil had never been heard of, even by the oldest inhabitant. The negroes have made a long song about the invasion of the boll-weevil, the destruction it has wrought, and the efforts of the entomologists to subdue it. Just as they sympathize with the weaker and shrewder Brer Rabbit against his stronger opponents Brer Fox and Brer Wolf, so do the negroes in the "Ballet of the Boll- Weevil" sympathize with the puny boll-weevil against the attacks of the white man. There arc perhaps one hundred stanzas to this song, and new ones turn up in every community of negroes I visit. The concluding stanza of this ballad, which is certainly the product of unlettered negroes, runs as follows: —
"If anybody axes you who wuz it writ dis song, Tell 'em it wuz a dark-skinned nigger Wid a pair of blue duckins on A-lookin' fur a home, Jes a-lookin' fur a home."
The ballad "Jesse James," which concerns itself with episodes in the life of a famous Missouri outlaw, and which certainly sprang from illiterate people (Professor Belden thinks it was written by a negro), concludes with this stanza: —
This song was made by Billy Gashade
As soon as the news did arrive;
He said there was no man with the law in his hand
Could take poor Jesse when alive.
One of my correspondents who has a ranch on the Rio Grande River sent to me a few weeks ago a ballad in Spanish which took for its thcMiie the life of that particular ranch in some of its most dramatic aspects. My correspondent got the ballad from a Mexican goat-herd who could neither read nor write. Its final stanza runs, —
El que compuso estos versos, No es pocta ni cs trobador Se clama Chon Zaragoza,
Su deslino fue jjastor. '
' He who wrote these verses Is neither poet nor troubadour; His name is Chon Zaragaza, His calling, a goat pastor.
1 6 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
Here we have a Spanish-Indian, a negro whose ancestors are recently from Africa, and an unknown unlettered person from Missouri, ending their songs with the ballad convention, so familiar to us all from classical examples, which sometimes hints at and sometimes reveals the identity of the author.
The real cowboy ballads of which the Old Chisholm Trail is a type are probably America's most distinct contribution to this form of literature. The life on the Old Chisholm Trail that led from near San Antonio, Tex., across the country to Montana, is epitomized in the verses. In its entirety it is an epic of the cattle-trail. It concerns itself with every phase of the adventurous and romantic life of the cowboy, and particularly of the typical incidents to be met in leading ten thousand Texas steers from the Rio Grande River to Montana and the Dakotas. It contains hundreds of stanzas, only very small groups of which were composed by a single person. "It was a dull day," said one of my cowboy correspondents, "when one of the boys did not add a stanza to this song." He would practise it over while he was riding alone during the day, and then submit it to the judgment of his fellows when they met around the chuck-wagon and the camp-fire after supper. The "Ballad of the Boll-Weevil" and the "Ballad of the Old Chisholm Trail," and other songs in my collection similar to these, are absolutely known to have been composed by groups of persons whose community life made their thinking similar, and present valuable corroborative evidence of the theory advanced by Professor Gummere and Professor Kittredge concerning the origin of the ballads from which came those now contained in the great Child collection.
The making of cowboy ballads is at an end. The big ranches of the West are being cut up into small farms. The nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian war-whoop, the free grass of the open plain; even the stinging lizard, the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie-dog, the rattlesnake, are fast disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New Mexico, the old- time round-up is no more; the trails to Kansas and to Montana have become grass-grown or lost in fields of waving grain; the maverick steer, the regal longhorn, has been supplanted by his unpoetic but more beefy and profitable Polled Angus, Durham, and Hereford cousins from across the seas.
The changing and romantic West of the early days lives mainly in story and in song. The last figure to disappear is the cowboy, the animating spirit of the vanishing era. He sits his horse easily as he rides through a wide valley enclosed by mountains, with his face turned steadily down the long, long road, — "the road that the sun goes down." Dauntless, reckless, without the unearthly purity of Sir Galahad, though s gentle to a pure woman as King Arthur, he is
Some Types of American Folk-Song. 17
truly a knight of the twentieth century. A vagrant puff of wind shakes a corner of the crimson handkerchief knotted loosely at his throat; the thud of his pony's feet mingling with the jingle of his spurs is borne back; and as the careless, gracious, lovable figure disappears over the divide, the breeze brings to the ears, faint and far, yet cheery still, the refrain of a cowboy song: —
Refrain. Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies; ^
It's my misfortune and none of your own. Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies;
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.
As I was walking one morning for pleasure,
I spied a cow-puncher all riding along; His hat was throwed back and his spurs was a jinglin'.
As he approached me a-singin' this song.
Refrain. Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies;
It's my misfortune and none of your own. Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies;
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.
Early in the spring we round up the dogies,
Mark them and brand them and bob off their tails;
Drive up our horses, load up the chuck-wagon, Then throw them dogies up on the trail.
Refrain.
It's whooping and yelling and driving them dogies;
Oh, how I wish you would go on! It's whooping and punching and go on little dogies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.
Refrain.
Some boys goes up the trail for pleasure.
But there's where you've got it most awfully wrong;
For you haven't any idea the trouble they give us While we go driving them all along.
Refrain.
Oh, you'll be soup for Uncle Sam's Injuns;
"It's beef, heap beef," I hear them cry. Git along, git along, git along little dogies,
For the Injuns'U eat you by and by.
Refrain. University of Texas,
Austin. Tex.
' Pronounced do-gC-s. VOL. XXVIII. — NO. 107. — 2.
1 8 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
THE RELATION OF FOLK-LORE TO ANTHROPOLOGY.^
BY PLINY EARLE [GODDARD.
It is certain the time will come when the study of folk-lore as a scholastic pursuit will stand by itself. Modern conditions and ten- dencies are sure to bring about such a specialization. There exists already this organization and its journal devoted to folk-lore alone, at least as far as the name and written constitution are concerned. There is lacking, however, any considerable body of men who are devoting themselves solely to the study of folk-lore. When the men are ready, a critical method will develop which will make the study of primitive literature an end in itself, a serious and worthy pursuit.
For most of us at the present time the study of the folk-lore of the North American Indians is a minor consideration or a means to an end. The material which we publish is chiefly a by-product of other work. It receives serious consideration only when a thesis must be prepared for a degree, or a presidential address is due.
Accepting, then, the present situation, let us consider of what extent and of what value is the contribution of folk-lore to anthropology in North America. In the current use of the word in America, "an- thropology" includes archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology. It is generally conceded that the latter two subjects can be successfully pursued only by specialists, who can devote the greater part of their time to the subjects in question. The opinion is growing that archaeology and ethnology must be united, — first, because the study of mere implements, however well constructed and ornamented, can never be a science (they may be classified and de- scribed in technical language, but to give them scientific worth they must be definitely connected with human activity) ; second, ethnology has no historical perspective without the aid of archaeology, which, through the stratification of implements, reveals a definite order of development. Rightly or wrongly, ethnology has come to mean in America a study of culture, and, in its more common use, the study of the cultures of unlettered peoples.
The proposition we are considering, then, is. What does folk-lore contribute to our knowledge of human culture?
Numerous efforts have been made in the past to make folk-lore solve the problems of anthropology. Man has been particularly curious about his past. Having found men in America widely dispersed and manifesting manifold differences in culture, the questions of when and whence have been uppermost. Lacking a written history, it was at
1 Address of the retiring President, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Folk-Lore Society, held in Philadelphia, December, 1914.
The Relatio7i of Folk-Lore to Anthropology. 19
first hoped that the oral traditions of the Indians might furnish an account of the peopling of America. Until fifty years ago the accepted age of the world was six thousand years; and five hundred or a thousand years seemed an ample period for the settling of America and the development of the specialized cultures. It was a favorite belief with the missionaries, our first ethnologists, that whatever existed of religion was a dim and distorted remembrance of the original divine revelation, the perfect account of which is to be found in the Old Testament. Father Morice finds among the Carrier of British Colum- bia a story of the fall of man and an account of the biblical deluge. The story of the actual entering of America has not been discovered. From many tribes migration and origin myths have been recorded which have been generally interpreted as in part at least historical. The possibility of accounts of historical facts persisting for many years cannot be denied. Any great catastrophe, like an inundation, might easily make such an impression on a community that it would be recounted for a very long period of time. What we know does happen is, that such an historical incident attaches to itself a mass of purely mythical material. With out present knowledge and methods, it is impossible to separate with any certainty these historical elements from their mythological settings.
Perhaps the best example known of accurate oral tradition is in the transmission of the Rig Vedas. Here we are dealing with metrical compositions having exact form. Their transmission was the duty of a special class, highly trained and carefully drilled. In America there are some known cases of special attempts to perpetuate com- positions. On the Northwest coast certain myths are family property, and descend in the family as does other property. It is common among many tribes for the rituals to be transmitted by specially- trained persons. "The Navajo Night Chant" is in the keeping of priests, whose number is maintained by initiations. It is probable that the entire ritual is transmitted with considerable fidelity. The material concerned, however, consists of songs and a narrative of undoubted mythical character.
North of Mexico the only efforts to retain historical happenings in proper sequence are those involving some pictorial records, such as the winter counts. These do not carry us farther back than a century, and the information connected with them is of little moment.
We are not to expect, then, that folk-lore in America will directly contribute much of historical importance to the solution of the problems of anthropology.
For the conjecturing of tlie history of primitive people, much has been expected of the comparative method. In language, the expectations have been in part realized. The fact that closely related languages of
20 Journal oj American Folk-Lore.
the Siouan stock were spoken in the Northern Plains and on the South Atlantic coast of North Aincrica tells us that these now far-separated peoples were once in social contact. We know that the various Atha- pascan-speaking peoples of the Southwest were connected somewhere and at some time with the D6n6 of the north. Particularly, we know that the Kiowa Apache were once a part of the southern group and closely associated with the Jicarilla Apache, since they share most of the linguistic peculiarities which distinguish the southern from the northern Athapascan, and have an important phonetic shift common to Jicarilla Apache and Lipan.
Cultural comparisons furnish evidences, if not of an older grouping and of migrations, at least of the direction of cultural transmission.
Folk-lore has also been put to the test. If myths and folk-tales persist in tribes from generation to generation, may not the same recognizable myths be found among tribes now far separated, but once forming a single community? If such should be found among the Blackfoot and Micmac, their former connection, assumed through language, would be corroborated. It is indeed possible to find folk- tale incidents common to the Micmac and the Blackfoot; but these same incidents are also known not only to the intervening Algonkin- speaking peoples, as we might expect, but to many other tribes. Re- cently Professor Boas has demonstrated that some apparently indige- nous tales of North America are found in Africa and the Philippines, whither they have been carried by the Spanish and Portuguese.
The rapidity and thoroughness with which folk-lore is transmitted make it nearly, if not quite, valueless as a means of reconstructing history. This applies to the better-known myths and tales. There may be esoteric myths connected with ceremonies, not so readily transmitted, which may supply good evidence of former grouping and contact. That a comparative study of songs will do so is equally likely. They seem to be readily borrowed, but usually borrowed with their words also, which betray their origin. The greatest lack in our comparative studies is that of music.
There is a third way in which folk-lore as a means may contribute to the study of human culture. Among unlettered peoples, folk-lore takes the place of literature. Like literature, it reflects the life of the people. There is no better example of light thrown upon the culture of a people by literature than that which the Odyssey throws upon the life of the early Greeks. What is more satisfactory for household routine than the description of the family at Ithaca? The women work at spinning and weaving; the men eat, drink, and engage in sports. Telemachus goes to his chamber lighted by his nurse. If you wish light on zooculture, read how the Cyclops tended his flocks and cared for the milk. Are you interested in the social customs, you will find
The Relation of Folk-Lore to Anthropology. 21
them described in the reception tendered Odysseus by the Phocacians. The attitude of the Greeks toward their gods is revealed almost to perfection. In nearly every happening the gods have their share. They are the companions and counsellors of the men. With these intimate pictures of human life of an age long past, compare the archaeological remains, the stone walls of Mycene, the golden cups, the inlaid swords and daggers, — perfect works of art, but very limited in what they can tell us of the people who made and used them.
So in North America there are in the published folk-lore detailed accounts of the manner of living and social customs for the Northwest coast, California, the Southwest, the Plains, and the Eastern Wood- lands. Not only are the religious ceremonies described, but often these accounts of ceremonies are the patterns and the authority for the ceremonies themselves. It may be admitted that the myths are primarily founded on the ceremonies, and yet the myths may have great secondary influence on the ceremonies.
As a method of securing an unbiased account of the culture of a people, the recording of abundant folk-lore has much to be said in its favor. There are two other methods commonly employed. Some- times the chief reliance is upon direct observation, — a method em- ployed for the sun-dance by Dorsey, and for the ceremonies of the Hopi by Voth. Direct observation, if an attempt is made to describe the entire cycle of community life, requires too much time, and furnishes no means of discriminating between the accidental, and the essential or usual happenings. The method, being altogether objective, fails to give us an interpretation of the events observed. The more usual method, of securing a good informant and subjecting him to thorough questioning, produces abundant and fairly satisfactory results. It is open to the defect of suggestion and bias. The informant must of necessity adjust himself more or less to the attitude of mind of the questioner.
Folk-narratives, on the other hand, are not the product of one person under the particular conditions of some definite time and place. In their verbal transmission they have been moulded by many individ- uals, until they conform to the conceptions of the average people forming the community. From thorn wc secure the Indian's own views of his activities and of nature. On the other hand, one nmst make allowances for those features introduced for the sake of art, such as round or ceremonial numbers, conventional forms of narrative, etc. He must expect that many things obvious to tlic Indian are omitted, and that certain phases of life arc passed over in silence because of taboos or a too serious attitude toward them.
As a means of securing an unbiased view of [)rimitive life from the native standpoint, the recording of folk-lore is amply justified. It
22 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
needs, to be sure, to be co-ordinated with direct observation and wise questioning.
But folk-lore is of itself an important part of the culture of a primi- tive community, and as such is an end, not merely a means, of anthro- pological research. It represents and expresses the Indian's philos- ophy of life and his beliefs about the natural and supernatural world.
The material side of culture is transmitted from generation to generation and from tribe to tribe by the unconscious imitation and more conscious acquiring of the habits involved in mechanical processes required in producing those articles necessary to man's life and happiness. In like manner the tastes in art and ideals of beauty pass by the mere observation of the forms and the colors of the dec- orations. The more subtle elements of life, — moral standards, rules of conduct, beliefs concerning the ultimate origins and ends of things, evaluations of men, animals, and supernatural beings — are transmitted by these fairly well formulated and persistent myths. They serve as a means of education in these particulars.
Into the composition of these folk-products has gone considerable of art. In a purely formal way, to be sure, art is noticeably lacking in North American folk-literature. Rhythm and rhyme do not appear outside of the songs; but in the nature and order of the events nar- rated we frequently find repetition, contrast, balance, and symmetry. Embodied in these stories there is frequently much of humor and pathos. Among the greater number of the tribes, story-telling during the long hours of winter darkness was a common social diversion.
As a phase of human culture, folk-lore, like material culture, ceremonies, and language, should be collected for its own worth and made available by publication. The accumulated material should be classified; and the geographical areas over which definite types, as well as specific tales and incidents, extend should be de- termined. Notwithstanding what has been said above, about the ease with which folk-tales are disseminated, it is true that areas can be determined within which very definite characteristics appear. Regardless of the distribution of a tale otherwheres, when found on the Northwest coast it will be so modified as to reflect the sea, rivers, mountains, and forest, and the native life peculiar to that region. It is also true that certain stories have not passed out of the region in which they would seem to have originated.
This comparative study of folk-lore, if the first to be undertaken, is probably the least in ultimate importance. The compositions should be subjected to analysis; the elements of art should be isolated, com- pared, and evaluated. The philosophy expressed needs sympathetic study and interpretation, that our knowledge may be enriched.
For this intensive work, specialists in folk-lore will be needed; and,
The Relation of Folk-Lore to Anthropology. 23
when a degree of interest has been aroused, they will appear. We shall then have the condition fulfilled to which attention was called at the beginning of this address as being still necessary to make folk- lore an independent scholastic pursuit, — a considerable body of spe- cialists and a developed method.
American Museum of Natural History, New York.
24 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
BATANGA TALES.i
BY R. H. NASSAU.
The special region from which these observations are derived is the equatorial portion of West Africa, more locally a tract three hundred miles square, the field of work on which I was engaged in the service of the Presbyterian church (north) , its only mission on the entire African Continent.
Beginning near the line of the equator, my travels extended a hundred miles south of it, to and below Cape Lopez. In this district were many small streams entering the South Atlantic, and two large ones, — the Gabun ^ and the Ogowe.^ The latter enters the ocean by four mouths, — to the northward, the Nazareth, into Nazareth Bay; Ogowe proper, at Cape Lopez; and, south of that cape, the Mexias and the Fernan Vaz. The first two enclose a delta, whose apex is a hundred and thirty miles up the course of the river.
Exactly one degree north of the equator is the island of Corisco, a microcosm of five miles in length by three miles in width, with perfect little imitations of hills, prairies, lakes, and rivers. It stands almost in the centre of Corisco Bay, from fifteen to twenty miles distant from the shore-line. Into the bay empty two rivers of good size, — the Muni^ and the Munda.
Fifty miles north of Corisco (on the way passing some smaller streams) there is the large river Eyo (native) or Bonito (Spanish). Forty miles farther north is the Campo; forty more, the Lobi; five more, the Kribi; and eighty more, the Camaraofi (Portuguese) or Kamerun (German). Between the Ogowe and the Kamerun there is a coast-line of four hundred miles. That quadrangle of four hundred miles square is inhabited by scores of tribes, whose languages are dialectic varieties of the Bantu.
I. THE FAVORED DAUGHTER.^
(Mpongwe.)
Ra-Mborakinda lived in his town with his women and sons, and daughters and servants. Among his women were Ngwekonde (his
* This collection of tales shows, even more markedly than that of E. Chatelain, the influence of Portuguese.
* MakwSngf.
* Variously spelled Ogobai and Ogoouc.
■• Rio d' Angra ("River Danger") of commerce.
' For comparative notes see Johannes Bolte und Georg Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmarchen der Briider Grimm, 1913, p. 461.
Batanga Tales, 25
chief wife) and Ngwe-lSg^, whom he neglected. But the latter had a beautiful daughter named Ilambe, much beloved by him. Ra- Mborakinda prized this daughter so much, that he left everything to her direction.
One day he wished to start on a journey, intending to stay a long time. He had, in his anxiety for her safety, a rule that she should not go out of her house to walk far, lest she get into trouble. When he was arranging to go, he gave all the keys and directions of everything into her hands. He said to her, "As I shall be away a long time, I leave all cloth and other goods for you to give out as you may see the people need." Ilambe consented to do this work, and Ra-Mborakinda went away. After he had been away for quite a while, and she thought it time to give out cloth and whatever was required for the women, she was very careful not to show partiality to her friends, not even to give more to her mother. So, if she gave, for instance, two cloths to her mother, she would give as many as five to Ngwekonde, and to all the others what she thought they needed. Yet Ngwekonde was not satis- fied ; even though she had been given more than others, her heart was planning mischief to Ilambe. So Ngwekonde made up her mind, "I will know what I shall do some day;" for she was jealous that the petted daughter had been put into authority over her.
One day the people saw Ilambe walking on the premises, and they remembered that she was going out of the bounds her father had assigned her. They called, "Ilambe, Ilambe! where are you going?" She replied, "I'm going for a walk." Soon they all seemed to forget to observe where she had gone; for Ngwekonde by her sorcery had caused Ilambe's head to be confused, and had made the people forget to watch her.
Soon after Ilambe had gone out of the town into the forest, Ngwe- konde also followed to go after her, without the people seeing her go. Ilambe went aimlessly, with Ngwekonde behind her. Then, when they were far from the town, Ngwekonde said, "Yes, I've got you now! — you, with your pride because you are the beloved daughter! Do not think that you will again see your father and mother." So she seized and dragged Ilambe to the foot of a big tree, tied her to it, and began to give her a severe beating. Ilambe pleaded, and said, "Ah, Ngwekonde! Please, what have I done? In what have I wronged you?" But Ngwekonde replied only, "No mercy for you!" and then tied her hands fast to the tree. Then Ngwekonde returned to the town. Soon after Ngwekonde had gone, Ilambe longed to get back to the town, for she feared the forest. She began to try to loosen the knots. She tried and tried and tried, but the knots were hard.
Darkness came, and she was very much afraid. Finally, after long effort, she got the cords loosened; hut she was weak, and faint with
26 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
hunger. She thought, "When I started on the walk, it was at random; and when I came to my senses, when Ngwekonde dragged me to the tree, I did not know in what direction we came; and now I do not know the direction back to the town." So she began to walk in any direction. As she went on and on, at last she happened into a path. She said to herself, "This path, even if it does not lead to my town, may lead me to where people are." She went on and on, and after a while, by daylight, saw that the view ahead opened. By that she knew that she was getting near to some clearing and perhaps to some village.
Following the path, she came straight to a hamlet; but she was afraid to enter it. She thought, "Perhaps the owners of this place may be enemies of my father; and they may beat me, just as did Ngwe- konde. I must hide." So she remained for a while on the outskirts, and then slowly and gradually crept from tree to tree on one side of the path, lest some one should see her. When she was close to the hamlet, she peeped through the bushes to see whether she could recognize any one; for she feared strangers. She saw no one at all, and went on into the street, and entered a large house, and began to look around her. She saw no person, but only goods and food. After she had examined this large house, she went into a smaller one, which was the kitchen, where the cooking was done. She exclaimed to her- self, "Ah ! it is not very late, and I am very hungry. I will try to cook something. And I must be quick, lest the owners come and find me, and kill me." So she started to work. She took of different kinds of food, and dried fish, and firewood, and began rapidly to cook. After the pot had boiled, she took out a little of its contents, and began to eat hurriedly. As to the remainder of the food, she went to the larger house, and got clean dishes, put the food into them, and set them on the table. Then she went out of the hamlet and hid herself in the bushes near by. Soon after she had hidden herself there, the owners of the place came. They were carpenters. They entered their house, and behold! on the table, food that was still warm. They exclaimed, "Who has done us this good thing?" .
They looked all through the house and into the kitchen, but no person was there. Then they looked outside, in the back-yard, and no person was there. They said, "Perhaps some other day we shall find out." So they went into the house, took their seats at the table, and began to eat. As they ate they shouted, "You who have done this, if you are a man or a woman, come out and show yourself!" But there was no reply. Ilambe had heard them, but remained quiet. So they said to themselves, "Never mind. To-morrow we will by artifice find out this person, whether it be a man or a woman. If it be a man, we will take him for a brother in our work. If it be a woman, then none of us shall marry her. She shall be our sister."
Batanga Tales. 27
At night she did not enter the town, but remained hidden near. Next morning the carpenters said among themselves, "We go to our work; but one of us must return early, as if unexpectedly, and perhaps we can find out this person." And they went to their work; but one returned early.
In the interval, Ilambe was busy with her work of cooking. She made the food and put it on the table. As she was passing from house to house, the man who had been watching came softly behind her, and seized her. She began to scream, and beg, "Please, please, let me go!" He said, "Do not fear. You have done no wrong. Be quiet." Then he asked her questions, and she told her story. So Ilambe was quieted, and she completed the arranging of the food on the table. Not long after that, the other men came; and the first man told them of Ilambe. They said to her, "Remain quiet. You are our sister. You need not be afraid of any thing. We will take good care of you."
The next day, off at their place of work, they began to buy nice things for her. And they dressed her in fine clothes.
But they warned her, "One thing we must tell you. Be very careful. Sometimes there is a certain big bird which comes here and picks up people, and kills them. When it comes, people have to remain in their houses, and shut their doors and windows." They also told her that the usual time of the coming of the bird was at noon. On another day they went away to their work, as usual. When they returned, Ilambe made their food; and they went into the house to eat it.
And the bird came at an unusual hour, and it killed Ilambe. When the men came from the house where they had been eating, they found her dead. They mourned for her. When they had made a coffin, and placed her in it, they refrained from burying it; for the body looked so life-like, and did not decay. So they kept it suspended in the air, and daily they went to look at her face.
2. TWO friends: a story of revenge. {Batanga.)
Ugula, son of Njambu-ya-Manga, and Ugula, son of Njambu- Mcpindi, were great friends. Ugula, son of Njambu-ya-Manga, said, "I am going to seek Ivcnga in marriage." So he went in his canoe, and stopped at the landing-place of her father's town. Hearing of his coming, Ivenga dressed her maid-servant finely, saying, "You sit in the house, in the hall; you wait for him. I want to know whether he has come for marriage with myself."
When Ugula came up to the house, he found that servant-woman there. He at once sat down with her, and he and she agreed on a marriage that night.
28 Journal 0 J American Folk-Lore.
Next day they had their food and play and every thing to please themselves, the woman forgetting that she was only a servant. When another day broke, he said, "Now for the journey!"
Ivenga came out of the house, and stood in the street to meet them. She called her servant, and said to her, "Do you assume this pride because of your marriage with Ugula?" Then she beat her.
Ugula, in astonishment, said, " Is it possible that it was a slave whom I married?" In his shame he took a pistol and shot its bullets into his body; and he died.
Thereupon Ugula-mwa-Mepindi said, "I am going now to avenge my friend ; " and he started with his man-slave on a journey to Ivenga's town, as if to marry her. He dressed the slave in fine clothes, and he told him, "Even if you find a woman in the hall of the house, do not sit down, but pass her by, on to where Ivenga herself is."
So they arrived there, and the slave went up to the room where Ivenga was; and he and she at once made a marriage, she thinking he was Ugula.
Early next day the two men said, "Now for the journey!" The townspeople went with them to escort Ivenga to the boat-landing. There Ugula said to his slave, "Get into the boat ! " And he beat him, and said, "You are made proud because you married Ivenga, eh?" He seized him in his fine clothes, and threw him, splash ! into the water.
Ivenga, when she saw how it was, snatched up a gun, and firing it, bang, bang, into her body, fell down, saying, "Is it possible that it was a slave who married me!" Then she died.
Love for a friend lasts long. It took vengeance, as Ugula avenged his friend, playing on Ivenga the same trick she had played on the other Ugula.^--n r g^^
["3. JOHN-THE-WISE AND I-AM-JOHN.^
Njambu-of-the-Sea lived by the seacoast, and he begat a man-child, by name John-the-Wise; and Njambu said, "Whoever else shall give that name to his child, it shall be killed." Thereafter any one so named was at once killed. Many were destroyed in that manner.
Also Njambu-of-the-Inland begat a child; and the child called himself a name, I-am-John. But his father spoke to him, saying, "That name is not to be named in this land." The son asked, "Why? Does a name belong to only one person?"
After that, this son went to the seacoast two or three journeys. Finally he remained there. And his namesake, John-the-Wise, put in his care a he-goat, on shares, as he said. Some time afterward John-the-Wise asked him, "Have the goats increased? Has the goat
1 See Aurelio M. Espinosa, "Comparative Notes on Spanish Folk-Tales," notes on Pedro di Urdemales (this Journal, vol. xxvii, p. 220); see also Reinhold Kohler, Kleinere Schriften, vol. i, pp. 91, 230. — Ed.
Batanga Tales. 29
given birth?" The other answered, "Yes, it has borne three times." ^ So John-the-Wise replied, "Can a male give birth to a child?"
Then I -am- John came and cut down a redwood-tree near to the house of his namesake, John-the-Wise, who asked him, "What are you cutting the redwood for?" I-am-John told him, "My father has just given birth." ^ John-the-Wise said, "What! can a man give birth?" The other one replied, "But you, you offered me a goat to raise a flock on shares, and you tried to deceive me by sending a male." Then John-the-Wise, in a rage, caused him to be tied that he might be carried and thrown into the sea.
He was put into a canoe, and was taken very far out to sea, to a certain island near White Man's Land, where the canoe stopped, and the crew scattered ashore to seek for food at a town near by; and they left I-am-John tied in the canoe. There he was moaning, "I did not wish to marry the daughter of a king;" that is, he had not been self- assuming in his difficulty with John-the-Wlse.
A white man from the town on the island happened along, and he heard him crying out, "I do not wish to marry the child of a king." The white man, misunderstanding, thought that I-am-John was being tied and taken on this journey to compel him to marry some king's daughter. This the white man thought would be a fine thing for him- self. So he said to I-am-John, "You're a fool ! Let me embark. You get out." So the white man stepped into the canoe and untied I-am- John, who then, at his request, tied him, and then went out of the canoe.
When the crew returned, they found, instead of I-am-John, a white man tied, and groaning, "I want to marry the daughter of a king." The crew thought him crazy, and said, "Such a fool as this will rejoice to die." So they took him and cast him into the sea, and returned to their country. In the mean while, I-am-John, the son of Njambu-of- the-Inland, had gone up to the town, and after a time he married the woman whom the white man had deserted for "a king's daughter."
The woman made a feast and invited many, and said, "Since my white husband died, I have not married; but to-day I am married." And she and her husband remained there for a while. Then this John obtained great wealth and power. He ordered that a man-of-war should be gotten ready, and it was immediately prepared. He and his people sailed from the island back to the shore of the country of Njambu-of-thc-Sca. They anchored there; and the sailors and soldiers landed, and went up to the town of John-the-Wise. They set it on fire, and burned it all.
* But really I-am-Jotin had eaten it.
' Powdered redwood i3 used as a medicine, and I-am-John pretended he was getting it for his father in child-birth.
3© Journal of American Folk-Lore.
4. THE THREE ILAMBES.
{Batanga.)
Three people named Ilambe went to get magic "medicine" at the town of Njambu-ya-Mabenga; of these, two were men, and one a woman. They happened on their way to see a squirrel lying on a branch of a tree, which, when it saw them, went back into a hollow in the tree.
The eldest Ilambe picked up a fruit and threw it so accurately that it closed the mouth of the hole so tightly that he no longer could even see where the hole was. Then Ilambe the second struck the palm of his hand on the tree, and the tree at once fell down on the ground flat with a crash. He dug in the hollow, and caught the squirrel; and he said, "This digging is the digging of Ilambe the second."^ And they went on their way, following the path.
After a while the woman said, "Let us rest! " So they sat down together. She pulled out a jomha from her basket, in searching for other food she had prepared, and found it was the squirrel already cooked. This had been done by some magic power.
So they said, "What other medicine do we need to go for at the town of Njambu-ya-Mabenga?"
So they went back to their own town.
5. KNOWLEDGE, STRENGTH, SKILL — WHICH IS THE GREATEST?^
{Batanga.)
There was a great queen, known in her own kingdom and in all other kingdoms for her wisdom, kindness, and justice. Her own kingdom had prospered greatly under her long reign. Wherever her trade had gone to other nations, they also had become rich; and wherever even her armies had gone, they always conquered, and in con- quering brought freedom and happiness by her good and just laws.
In another country far away lived three men, noted, — the one for his knowledge, the second for his strength, and the third for his skill. The first one was a student. He studied all books; he thought out many things that are not written in books; he could read the signs of the winds and of the stars; he could hear and see where others did not; he knew what was happening in places far off. The second was a worker. He had strength to do all kinds of hard work; he could make any thing that was to be fashioned by power of hands; he made all needed tools, and built great canoes. No one could work so long or so hard with axe, or oar, or paddle, as he. The third was a doctor.
* He said this, praising himself for his successful capture of the squirrel.
* See Reinhold Kohler, Kleinere Schriften, vol. i, pp. 298, 389. — Ed.
Batanga Tales. 31
He had skill to find out the properties of all herbs and trees; and he knew all the symptoms of disease, and just what medicines to apply in any case. No one died who could obtain his aid in sickness.
One day the wise man, by his knowledge of what was occurring else- where, brought the news that the great queen was very sick, that her own doctors were not able to cure her, that her people were seeking for new skill or new medicine, and that, if these were not obtained, she would die. He said he was sorry for her, and wished she might get well. And when he had told this news, he sat down. He did nothing more, and had nothing more to say. Then the doctor stood up and said, "Surely I am the one who is needed there at the sickness of the great queen. Though all those other doctors have failed, I am sure I should not, with my great skill. What a pity that I am not there! She would be sure to live if I were there to discover her disease and to choose the necessary medicine." And he sat down, and said no more; nor did he do any thing else. Then the strong worker stood up and said, " I am not only sorry for the great queen, but I am willing to try to do something for her. I have here my great canoe that only I with all my strength was able to make, and no one but myself is able to paddle it. I am willing to take this doctor to the queen's country, and let us see whether he can save her life." Then all the assemblage said his plan was good, and that it should be carried out. So the doctor took his medicines and got into the canoe, and the strong man paddled him safely over the big waves, and quickly brought him to the town of the great queen. Her people were glad when they heard that a great doctor had come.
He soon found out the disease, and then he quickly cured it. The queen recovered, and she paid him a large fee. Her people rejoiced in her recovery, and they praised the doctor's skill. Then the doctor got into the canoe again, and the strong man rowed him safely back to their country. There the doctor began to show the wealth he had received and to boast of his skill, that had been greater than that of all the queen's doctors. But the strong man — who had rccei\cd nothing, and whose kindness had made him ofTcr to use his strength to carry the doctor in his canoe — began to munnur, "Of what use would have been all your skill, if I had not had the strength to convey you to that country? But for me, you would have been sitting down here with your skill lying idle, and the queen would have died. I am the one who has saved her." But the wise man interrupted them both, and said, "Of what use would have been your skill and your strength, if I had not informed you of the necessity for their use? You both were in ignorance of the fact of the queen's sickness, and would have remained in ignorance but for me; and she would iiave died had I not brought you the news of her need of you. I am the one to be thanked
32 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
for her life." And each one argued over again. The worker and the doctor together said to the wise man, "Your news of itself was of no use. Without us, it would only have made people unhappy at their helplessness to relieve." Then the wise man and the doctor together had their argument against the worker, of the uselessness of mere strength, if it have nothing valuable for which to exercise itself. So all three kept on arguing, — two against one, and two against one, — and they nev^er were able to decide which was the greater, — knowledge, or strength, or skill.
6. AN AFRICAN PROVERB.^ "Ho timbakeni o makodo."^
{Benga.)
There were two men, friends and neighbors. The one, Ogula, said, "Chum, I am about to go to a far country to travel, and in my going I leave with you this my barrel of sitdnye.^ Take good care of it for me." His friend Boloba replied, "Yes; but that's nothing to do." The one friend Ogula went, and travelled in the far country. While he was there, it happened that his friend Boloba's wife was to become a mother, and that pregnancy caused a longing for no other vegetable but that very sitdnye. Next morning she begged her husband for that food, and he was vexed with her for asking him to break his trust. But it was just the same day by day. At last he said, " I say, if it is so, I will lose money; but I will at once take my friend's sitdnye. When he is about to return, then I will buy other for him." He took the barrel ; just as he was opening it, money fell out on the floor. Said he, "So, then ! This is the barrel which my friend said was of sitdnye, this one of money? Well, then, let me take the money, and return him sitd7iye; for he named sitdnye.^'
When the space of ten years had passed, then his friend Ogula arrived. And this man Ogula said to the friend Boloba, "Hand me my barrel which I left with you." His friend Boloba handed over to him promptly a barrel of sitdnye. When Ogula opened it, he found a barrel full of sitdnye, fresh and undecomposed. Then he wondered, saying, "I left with my friend Boloba a barrel of money, and he gives me back a barrel of sitdnye?'' Then Ogula called his friend, saying,
* Richard F. Burton, Supplemental Nights to the Book of One Thousand Nights and a Night, All Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad, vol. iv, pp. 405 et seq. See also Ibid., p. 597; Thcodor Benfey, Pantschatantra, vol. i, p. 283, ii, p. 120; C. H. Tawncy, Katha Sarit Sagara, vol. ii, pp. 41, 635.
* "Let us go back to the-place-that-was-left." Ma/^odo literally means "the deserted site of a village."
' The food they ate in that land.
Batanga Tales. 33
"My friend, what are you doing to me? I am the person who left with you a barrel of money, and do you return me a barrel of sitdiiye?^' His friend Boloba replied, "That isn't so; you left me sitdnye, and I return you also sitdnye. O chum! you are trying to steal money from me!"
The other one, Ogula, said, "You are the one who is trying to steal from me my money. But since you say so, come and enter complaint before the old men." Said the other one, Boloba, "Good thing! Let us go and enter complaint." They went off until they came to the old men. The first friend, Ogula, standing with his statement, said, "It happened, when I decided on a journey to that far country, that then I left with my friend my barrel of money, that he should take care of it for me. And I pretended to him that it was sitdnye, lest he, knowing it was money, perhaps would open it." His friend Boloba stated, "My friend left with me a barrel of sitdnye. When he arrived, then I returned him also a barrel of sitdnye; and here he comes sneaking along, saying that it was of money. And I say that I did not see money." The old men said, "So, that is the matter! — You, Ogula, the party of the first part, you are in error: you left with Boloba, the other party, sitdnye, and he returns you also sitdnye. Now, why do you wish to steal from him money?"
When Ogula heard that, he in wrath abandoned the affair, saying, "Let it be! The money was my very own: even if it be lost, I don't care!" Their two children playing in the street, the child of him who owned the money (Ogula) said to the other, "Chum, really! Your father, what is he doing with my father's moneys? My father left with your father a barrel of moneys, and your father is wishing to steal them with out-and-out theft." The other one, the child of Boloba, said, "It's not so: it is your father who is attempting to steal my father's moneys; because your father left with my father sitanye, and now docs he want to take from him moneys?" Said the other, the child of Ogula, "Chum, since you were born, have you ever seen sitdnye existing for ten years and not rotting?" The other answered, "No." The other one, the child of Ogula, added, "Sitanye, had my father left it, in these ten years, would it not decay and rot?"
Day by day they kept up that discussion. When the old men heard of it, then they said, "Ho limbakeni o makodo" ("Let us go back to the beginning").
When they returned the case for re-trial, they said, " It is so. You, this one, Ogula, you did not leave sitdnye. You left money; for sitdnye is unable to lie for ten years without spoiling. You left money. Take your money! " And he took his money.
VOL. XXVIII.— NO. 107. — 3.
34 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
7. GHOSTS AT A FUNERAL,
{Benga.)
In a certain town, people were standing up in the street, according to custom, speaking in succession at a wailing for the dead. A young child in the crowd rose from his seat and went to the boat-landing at the river-side. Looking across to the other side, he saw a company of beings ^ crossing the river. The child did not know who they were, and at once turned aside and hid behind the trunk of a tree, to watch what they would do. When those beings had finished crossing, the leader of their company took a funnel from his travelling-bag, and he dropped from it, into the eyes of all the people of his company, a fiuid, in order to make them invisible, saying, as he laid the funnel down, "A spirit can see a human being; but a human being cannot see a spirit."
When they all had had the fluid dropped into their eyes, they went on to the town. The child stepped out from the place where he was hidden, and picked up the funnel from the place where it had been laid. He dropped from it the fluid into his eyes and mouth and nostrils. Then he went back to the town, and sat on the veranda of a house, and saw all those beings sitting down in a place by themselves. However, none of the people of the town could see them, only that child, because he also had dropped the funnel-liquid into his eyes.
The leader of the spirit-company presently stood up in the street and began to talk to the townspeople, making of them an inquiry. But the people, not hearing or seeing the spirits, did not reply. So that child stood up and began to reply.
The wife of that leader said, "This child is seeing us." The spirit said, "No!" but presently he added, "Eh, stop first! I must see about it." So he took a pipe, and went to offer to give it to one of the townsmen; but that person did not take it. So the leader said, "They do not see us." But the woman still said, "Yes, truly, this child does see us!" So the leader said, "Just wait!" He picked up the pipe, and handed it to the child; and the child took it. To test the child further, the leader said, "Give me back my pipe!" The child handed it to him, and he took it. Then they, seeing that they were discovered, turned and went away. Those beings were spirits.
8. OVER-SLEEPING AND OVER-EATING — WHICH IS WORSE?
{Batanga.)
Viya-vibe (Over-Sleeping) and Ejedi-ebe (Over-Eating) contracted a friendship. Over-Eating went to visit at the town of Over-Sleeping.
' Re-embodied spirits of dead relatives of the deceased, for whom the wailing was being made, were coming to join in the ceremony.
Batanga Tales. 35
The latter prepared all kinds of food, filling the whole house full. Over-Eating entered straight into the house, and greedily swallowed all the things that were in the house; then he went out. As he was departing, he spoke to his friend Over-Sleeping, saying, "Now I'm going to my home; you must come and visit me in two days."
When the two days were up, this person, Over-Sleeping, arose, and, going on his way, arrived at the town of his friend Over-Eating. At once the latter went hunting in the forest to provide food for his guest, who remained in the town; and there he fell asleep. His head was laid down here, and his body there, and the limbs of the body stretched out full length on the ground. When Over-Eating returned from the forest, he found his friend all spread out on the ground, as if he were dead, and sleeping so soundly as to be unconscious. Thinking his friend had been killed, Over- Eating flew into a passion, saying, "Who are they who have killed a visitor in my town? " So he rose up and went to kill people of another family, in order to avenge his friend's death. ^
On his return, he found his friend Over-Sleeping awakened from his sleep and sitting up. Then people came, and said to Over-Eating, "What have you been killing people for?" So they called a council, and talked the matter over, bringing accusation against Over-Eating. But he said, "It is not I who am to be accused: Viya-vibe should be accused." ^
But the elders in the council decided that Over-Eating was the guilty one.
9. TWO PEOPLE WITH ONLY ONE EYE.
{Bata?iga.)
There were two people, a man and a woman. The one was blind ; so was the other. They possessed one eye. If one of them without the eye wished to see a thing, he could do so only by first saying to the other, "Give me the eye!"
One time the man went into the forest, carrying the eye with him, and he saw a honcy-trec; then he went back. When he arrived at his house, he told the woman, " I have found honey in a tree; we must go to-morrow to dig at it and pull it out of the hollow of the tree." So the next day the man, wearing the eye, carried the woman on his back; and they went and arrived at the foot of the tree. There he put down the woman, and took up his axe and machete. lie climbed the tree,
' According to the custom of killing the first person the avenger may meet, however innocent, in order to embroil all parties, and compel a combination against the unknown guilty one.
^ Because Ovcr-SIceping's deep sleep had made Over-Eating think him dead, and had caused the latter to go on the raid.
36 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
and chopped and cut, and he dug into the hollow, and he pulled out the honeycomb. Then he spoke, and called to the woman, saying, "You must weave a basket into which to put the honeycomb." His wife replied to him, "How shall I see, when I have no eye? Without the eye, how can I see to weave? Fling me the eye!"
So the man pulled the eye out of his socket, and flung it into her lap, below on the ground. The woman promptly caught the eye, and properly fastened it tight into her own socket. She began to cut sticks and twigs, and then wove the frame of a basket.
When she had finished the weaving of it, the man spoke to her, say- ing, "Fling me the eye!" So she skilfully gave the eye a fling, and threw it up to him into his opened hands; and he caught it, and put it in its place in his socket.
After a while, the woman spoke, saying, "Send me some honey; I wish to eat." But the man replied, "Just wait! You will eat to-day when I arrive." But the woman said, "I want to eat now." So the man threw to her a piece of the honeycomb. But she did not hear it fall, and did not know where it was; and she said, "Send me the eye, that I may pick up the comb." Upon that the man flung the eye again into her lap. The woman took it up, and put it into her own socket; she found where the comb had fallen, and began to eat the honey.
Then the man said to her, "Fling me the eye again up here!" The woman flung the eye toward him; but it lodged on a branch, and stuck fast in a crotch. Just then a bird came. The man, still waiting, and not knowing that the eye had been thrown, ordered again, saying, "Fling me the eye!" She replied, "The eye is up there." But the man answered, "No, I haven't it." And the woman responded, "You are deceiving me."
Just then that bird swallowed the eye and flew away. The man was changed, and became a nest of housc-ants; and the woman also was changed, and became a white ant-hill.
10. A PLAY AT HIDE-AND-SEEK.
Mwan'-ukuku ^ and Mwana-moto - were friends and playmates. Mwana-moto spoke to his mate, saying, "Come, let us make a play at hide-and-seek! " And they did so.
So Mwana-moto began to hide; and Mwan'-ukuku sought, and soon saw him. Then Mwan'-ukuku took his turn at hiding. Mwana- moto sought and sought, in vain, and did not find him. Thereupon, Mwan'-ukuku spoke, and said, "A human being and a ghost; can they play at hide-and-seek? For you, you cannot see a ghost."
» Child of a spirit; that is, a ghost. » Child of man; that is, person.
Batanga Tales. 37
As a friend and playmate of the human child, the child-of-spirits embodied itself when it chose to; but in this play it disembodied itself, and was invisible.
II. PISTOL, THE FIGHTING-GUN.
{Benga.)
Pistols were formerly called by West Africans "piitii," ^ because native people of old times first saw them in the hands of Portuguese traders.
There was a certain bold man who was noted for his great assump- tions. He respected no one, for there was no one whom he feared. One day he happened to meet a neighbor's child on the street, and he teased him. The child protested and resisted, then the man beat him. But this child happened to have a put 11, and, young as he was, he bravely did not hesitate, but instantly cocked it, and snapped the trigger at the other. And that big fellow was stretched on the ground dead. His people said in revenge, "Since this young one has killed this man, let us seize both him and his father, and let us go and cut their throats." But the council of old men said, "Not so! It is not this child who has killed that man. It is Fight that killed him. He made fight; and Fight has killed him." Then it was that they changed the name of the pistol, and called the piilu "eduka-njali" ("fight-gun") ; and that is its common name to this day.
12. THE THREE STATEMENTS.
A man sent off his three children, saying, "Go, and dig out for me from its nest the woodpecker (ebokikdkd), that bird that pierces holes in trees, and makes its sleeping-place there." So the children went to dig in the hollow tree, and presently they caught the male wood- pecker. On consultation, they said, "We will not give it to our father; let us go and eat it ourselves." So they went back to their town with it secretly.
After a while, when their father saw them, he suspected something wrong; and, meeting the eldest alone, he said to him, "You, the eldest, tell what was done with that bird." The child replied, "There was none." After awhile the father met the second child, and questioned him, saying, "What was done with the bird?" Thcchild said, "It was all bloody, and not fit to bring to you." Afterward the father saw the third child, and asked him, "What was done with tlu* bird?" The child replicfl, " It was only young and unfledged." So the father said to them, "(iive up the bird to me!" for they had made three dilTerent statements, and for that reason the father knew they were lying.
' " Piitu " was the native attempt to pronounce the word " PortURal."
38 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
13. FIRE AND WATER — WHICH HAS GREATER POWER?
Veya ("Fire") and Miba ("Water") were neighbors in a town. Fire said to Water, "I am the one who can surpass you in power. Without me, you could not cook food ; without me, people could not survive."
Then Water spoke, saying, "No, it is I who have greater power. Without me, what would people drink?"
These two persons kept on arguing about their power. Wherever they met, this one repeated the same arguments as before, and that one the same as before. So people became wearied with their discus- sions, and went into a council to settle this matter. When they ad- journed from the council, they said to the two disputants, "You two are each of sufficient power." Therefore it was settled, that, as neither one was able to surpass the other, neither was greater: they were of equal power, and therefore were to cease their dispute.
14. THREE brothers; OR, SETTLE FAMILY QUARRELS AT HOME.
Njambe begat three sons of one mother. He called them, when they were grown to be young men, saying, "Come ye, perhaps death is approaching, choose ye the woman whom ye want" (out of his number of wives, as part of their inheritance).
Then the eldest son, Kombe, stood up, saying, "I have no woman here who is fit for me to marry." And another son, Ugangila, stood up, saying the same words as the older one. Thereupon the other, Ugula, stood up with the same words as the others.
Then they went to their mother, saying, "Prepare us food for a journey." She prepared it for them; and they started on their journey to engage in marriages.
When they came to the middle of their way, there was a steep ascent of a hill, with a steep descent, and smother steep ascent beyond, and they did not see any path. So said Kombe, "I am the eldest; I must be the first to pass on. Look at me; if I see the way, I will return to call you. You also, if you see it, then you may return to call me." So Kombe went; but, as he did not see the road, he returned to where they were. They spoke to him, saying, "Come, we have seen the way."
Then they went on and on, and found a very large, deep pit. Kombe spoke, saying, " I am the eldest; let me go first." So he descended by a rope into the pit rapidly (pololo). But at the middle of the descent he found things which bit and stung; and these things covered his whole body. So he shook the rope as a signal; and his two brothers at once drew him up, and he stood at the top.
Then Ugangila said, "I also must go." So they tied him with the
Batanga Tales. 39
rope, and he went down. When he had gone halfway down, those things met him. He in pain shook the rope; and his brothers drew it and he came up.
Then Ugula spoke, saying, " I must go also." He went down to the very end, very rapidly, passing the stinging things safely. He saw and entered first a wide, open place, finding there a fine house, and three young women inside with their mother. The mother asked him, "What have you come to do?" He answered, "I come seeking marriage for my brothers; we are three, children of one mother. Therefore I want for the marriage these three daughters of thine." The mother said, "Yes, young man that you are, I am willing; but the father of these girls has killed many people on account of them, and he is in the room upstairs." Ugula fearlessly said, "Go tell him I am here." The woman went to tell her husband. When she went to tell him, she did not know who Ugula was: she had deceived him by her prompt consent to him. She suspected he was a man who had once attempted to steal her daughters. So she made up a story, saying to her husband, " I had left my paddle at the beach, and, when I came back, the man who stole your daughters came to the house." The father said he was willing to see him, and told her, "Let him come here. He must come to-morrow, in the morning, at eight o'clock." So the woman told Ugula to wait, and that he should go to the father next day.
When the day broke, Ugula dressed himself carefully, and went up to the room of his prospective father-in-law, and he told him the whole affair. The father was willing, and said, "It is well; I am pleased."
Then Ugula arranged with the young women. He spoke to one of them, Ivenga, saying, "My eldest brother is to be your husband;" and to another daughter, Eyale, "You are the wife of myself, Ugula;" and to the third daughter, Ekomba, "You are to be the wife of UgSngila." Then, by the rope, he sent up Ivenga, and next he sent Ekomba, and finally he sent Eyale. And then his brothers cut the rope; and Ugula was left behind, without a way of escape. He re- mained in seclusion in the extensive palace apartments, thinking what he should do. Some days after that, his father-in-law called him, saying, "Since you took from me my daughters to-day makes four days. What have you done with my children?" Ugula replied, "I have done nothing to them; but my brothers have done wrong against me." And he explained what had happened. Then the father was ready to help him, saying, "Put thy hand under the bed and take thence a small box." Ugula took it and handed it to him; but the father gave it back to him, saying, "This litlle Ngalo will tell you every thing that you should do. Now stand on my head." So he stood on his father-in-law's iicatl, and in the twinkling of an eye he
40 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
found himself at the top of the ground (but away from where he had left his brothers), and standing in a kitchen-garden at the rear of the house of a town. Not knowing where he was, or whether his brothers were anywhere near, and fearing lest they should kill him if they saw him, by the power of the Ngalo he transformed himself, making all his body full of sores, to disguise himself. Presently, when a woman, the owner of the house, came there behind the house to cut leaves in the garden, and saw him, she called to her husband, saying, "I have picked up a man! He must be my slave." ^
Then the people of the town said to her, "To-morrow there shall be an assemblage of the whole tribe." ^
When the next day broke, Ugula spoke to the people, saying, "I want to go now." They said, "No, remain here!" ^ And he remained. They, thinking the matter was settled, went away on a far journey; and, as they went on ahead, there he was, standing, having come there by the power of the Ngalo. They spoke to him, saying, "We had left you in the town." He replied to them, "Just wait. See what hap- pens." Then he said to the Ngalo, "Two good suits of clothing!" And they appeared in abundance. That woman who had captured him was wondering at him and his Ngalo; and her husband said to her, "See! we had left this person in the town, but now we come and meet him on the way before us!" So they went away without trying to claim him as their slave.
After a long time he built a house by that path. He spoke to the Ngalo, saying, "Since I brought you from that town, you have not showed me any work, nor any thing I shall do. I want you to renew my body and make it healthy as I was born, also give me a suit of clothing that will cause me to be invisible to all people."
So Ngalo returned all his sores inside, leaving his body clean. And it brought forward to him a fine horse, and he rode upon it. Then he passed on in his journey, and he came to the street of a town, and he went to where the King Nkombe-nyambe was. He spoke to the king, saying, " I have a tale to tell. I want you to summon for me here to trial Kombe and Ugangila, and Ivenga and Ekomba and Eyale, and my father Njambe and his wife." The king did so; and all the parties came, except Ugula's father and mother.
Then Ugula made his statement to Nkombe-nyambe, saying, "We were born of the same mother, three brothers, — Kombe and Ugangila and Ugula. Then our father called us, and said, ' I am going to die; but choose ye now your wives.' We replied to him, saying, ' We do not wish these thy wives, but only women who are daughters
' According to the custom of enslaving wandering strangers. ' To discuss the status of the stranger. • As a slave.
Batanga Tales. 41
of one mother.' So we journeyed to seek them in marriage. When we went on our way, we arrived at a deep pit; and Kombe said, 'I must go first.' Then he went, and he returned. Then went Ugangila, and he returned. When they finished, then I went down; and I met these young women with their mother. The mother spoke to me, saying, 'What have you come to do?' I answered her, saying, 'We were born three brothers : therefore we come to be married with these thy three daughters.' And she consented. Then she went out and told it to her husband. When I sent the women up to the top of the ground, my brothers cut the rope, and I was left down in the hollow. They have married those whom I sent up to them. Now the time of your court is arrived; therefore I bring up this case before you."
Thereupon, Nkombe-nyambe spoke, saying, "The affair is too great for me to judge. Go, return home; and your father himself must settle the dispute between you." The king also remarked, "Actually to be of one and the same mother, is it any thing? Even if you and another are children of the same mother, each should have his own heart, and do his own mind."
So Ugula took his horse and his wife Eyale, and returned and came to their town.^
15. A GREAT FRIENDSHIP.
Maseni ("Merchant") lived at the seacoast. UgSlg ("Poverty") a man, and his wife Ug6l6 (they two having the same name), lived in the interior. Kombe ("Sun") also lived in the interior, still farther away in the forest.
Maseni begat a man-child, whose fine qualities were without limit. His name was Pinda-'lema ("Darkness-of-Heart"). Maseni said to him, "I give the tribe a law under my seal and under pain of death, that, if any one shall see a child or any person as fine as Pinda-'lema, he must come out and tell me."
Ug^le the man, and his wife UgClS, also begat a man-child, whose name was Atome ("He-is-there"). When he was born, he had on his arm an ivory wristlet.
Kombe begat a female child, by name Unyongo ("Rainbow").
These children, strangers to one another, all grew up. One day Atome said, " I am going to the seaside, to travel and to see the sea." So he went, and emerged at a coast that is like that of the Batanga creek Jambwe. He went on his journey, and, looking thence, he saw the beach full of little children digging in the sand. We know how that part of the beach is in the season of the mbau^i^ala ("very small clams"). Atome had with him on his journey two birds, one
'See Franz Boas, "Notes on Mexican Folk-Lore" (this Journal, vol. xxv, pp. 254- 258); also Aurclio M. Espinosa {Ibid., vol. xxvii. p. 2ig, where litcratarc is given). See also Frank Russell. Atliabascan Myths Ubid., vol. xiii, p. ii).
42 Jour?ial oj American Folk-Lore.
on each shoulder. The people who were on the beach, seeing him, came to meet him. They said among themselves, "We have never seen such a fine person as this since we were born." They went back quickly to their town, according to Maseni's law, to tell him.
Pinda-'lema started quickly to meet Atome. When he met him, Atome presented him with those birds. Pinda-'lema said to him, "Come to the town." When he arri\'ed there, the tribe said, "He is to die." ^ But Pinda-'lema said, "Not so! He is my friend." He caused him to enter a house, and had food made for him ; and they ate.
Atome passed some time visiting there; and then Pinda-'lema said to him, "Let us go; you escort me on my marriage-errand." Atome said, "Yes, a good affair!" And they went on their journey to Kombe's town. Before that, Kombe had announced, "The person who comes to marry my child must first fast for eight days; then he may marry."
They emerged from the forest at the town of Atome's parents, UgSlg and Ug6le, — and then passed it by, on to other towns. The relative positions of the two young men were misunderstood, so that, as they came to any town, the inquiry was raised by the townspeople, "Atome and his steward, where are they going? " Atome would reply, "For a marriage." So that people still further misunderstood, and thought it was Atome who was seeking marriage. Before that, many men had gone that way, seeking to marry Unyongo, only to return, saying, "Who is able to endure hunger eight days, without eating?"
As they came to another town, the same inquiry was raised, "Atome and his steward, where are they going? " He replied, as before, "To a marriage." At all the towns they came to, they were met just so, and the questions and answers were just the same.
At last they arrived at the town of Kombe. They entered and sat down.
Unyongo was in her upper room. The townspeople came and saluted the visitors, "Mbolani!" — "Ai!" they replied. They were asked, "You are come on your journey for what purpose?" They replied, "For a marriage." Kombe said, "I have no objection. Which of you is for the marriage?" They both said "Pinda-'lema," thus leaving the impression, as Atome had been the chief speaker, that he was the leader.
Unyongo, peeping from her window, saluted them, and, being also under mistake as to their persons, said to herself, "It is well that it is not Atome." Kombe said to Pinda-'lema, "You do not have to pay any dowry goods, only the test of eight days of hunger."
The evening then darkened to night. Pinda-'lema went to Un- yongo's room. Did she think him Atome's steward? He and she
• The custom, in cannibal days, of eating strangers.
Batanga Tales. 43
enjoyed themselves, and talked in conversation. He asked her, "Do you love me?" She answered, "Yes, I love." All that night passed, and daylight came. He had nothing to eat that whole day. Next night, at midnight, his friend Atome took good food up to the room, handed him the food, and went out. But Unyongo did not know that Atome was bringing food. Unyongo and the man enjoyed themselves and gave each other tender words of love. She said to him, "Are we to marry?" The man said, "I do not know whether we can marry." He was uncertain whether he could stand that test of hunger.
Atome still kept on bringing food. Another day opened; and Kombe began to suspect, from Pinda-'lema's vivacity, that he was not fasting. So he said to Unyongo, "What ! are you giving him food? " She replied, "Father, I do not give him food, for I do not like him." It was true that she did not give him food ; but she deceived her father in saying she did not like him. Kombe, not satisfied with her denial, told her in the evening, "You don't lie any more on the side of the bed where you have been lying. You must lie on the outside; and he must take the wall-side."
At night she did so. They fondled each other, and then went to sleep. In the middle of the night, when Atome came and spread out the food, he touched the head of Unyongo, supposing it to be Pinda- 'lema, not knowing of Kombe's having changed their positions. Unyongo, being frightened, screamed, "O my father! Oh, who is this?" Atome took away his body, hiding sufficiently behind the post in the doorway.
Kombe and the townspeople came. Lamps were thoroughly carried around the room. They found the good food, and the table all ready. They sought for the person who brought the food, but did not see him. Kombe said, "Put the food in that drawer there." The drawer had a very difficult lock. Then they all went out.
Atome also went out that night, and he made other keys that same night at the blacksmith's bellows. When he had finished, he went up into the room. He tried one key, but it did not fit. He selected another; it clicked and the drawer opened. He took away the food that was there, and put in other pieces of fresh cassava-bread, locked the drawer, and went away. When the day broke, and people went up into the room and opened the drawer, the food they had seen at night was not there!
Kombe said, " I do not know about this matter; " and he began to call an assemblage of the people. Atome went out and changed his body by magic power, humbling himself as if he was a despicable fellow, all his body being covered with eruptions, and disease on his head, so that the townspeople would not recognize him, and would think him a visitor just arrived. He came and sat down amongst them.
44 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
Kombe began the investigation by asking, "Who has done this thing?" At once Atome replied, "I." Kombe, in surprise, "You?" Atome, "No." Again Kombe, "You?" Atome, "Yes." Again Kombe, "You?" Atome, "No." Then Atome spoke, "But now, you all assembled here, if I tell you the truth, will you grant my re- quest?" They said, "Yes." Then he said, "Well, I beg Kombe and you all that you will allow Pinda-'lema to go away with his wife." They said, "Yes, we are willing." So they gave up the woman to Pinda-'lema.
The young men started on their journey with their woman, to go back to the seacoast, to the town of Maseni, the father of Pinda-'lema. They arrived finally at that town; and the townspeople gave them a thorough welcome.
Later on in his stay, Atome said to Pinda-'lema, "Chum, I want one of your father's wives." Pinda-'lema said, "Good!" and he went to tell that wife of his father. At first she did not consent. But presently she said, as a sign, "If I see a lime coming into the upper room, I will consent." Afterwards, while they two were still sitting together, a lime-fruit came, thrown through the window by Unyongo, who was in the plot. The woman picked it up and put it into a basin. And Pinda-'lema went and told Atome, " Chum, she consents." Then the day darkened, and at night Atome started to go to the room of the woman. He stretched out his hand to feel her shoulders, and in so doing, he touched the head of Maseni, not knowing that Maseni was there. Maseni laid tight hold of his hand, saying, "Who is it?" Atome scuffled, and Maseni scuffled. Maseni shouted, "Ho, men! ho!" People came in the dark, and laid hold of Atome; but he slipped away from them to the house of his friend, Pinda-'lema, and sat down.
When Maseni and the others followed, and demanded that Atome be killed at once, Pinda-'lema, to create delay and to give Atome a chance to escape, said, "My father, you may kill him to-morrow." The people said, "Yes, wait till daylight."
When daylight came, the tribe was called together in assemblage, and Maseni said, "Produce him!" His son said, "Let him first have his cup of tea." When Atome had finished drinking it, Pinda-'lema said, "Let him also eat." When the food was finished, Pinda-'lema said, "My father, what do you say about it?" He replied, "Atome shall surely die." Pinda-'lema said, "My father, my friend saved me from starvation, and I will save him too." His father said, "Not so, unless with a fight."
That previous night, after the people had returned to their beds, Atome, going out of Pinda-'lema'shousc, had by magicpowerput aniron fence all around the town, so that, if there was to be a fight, all should perish together, and none escape; and also, that same night, Pinda-
Batanga Tales. 45
'lema had gone, with his magic silver sword in hand, off into the forest. There he had found a leopardess with newly-born kits. He had taken four of the little kits. The mother had followed him ; but he had put the little leopards in a small iron enclosure of his father; and the leopard went back to her lair.
Pinda-'Iema then began his address to his father. He said, "Now, then, my father! I caught young leopards last night, finding a leopardess with them newly born." The people interrupted, "Not so. Who can take a leopard's young just when she has borne them?" He answered, "Well, then, go to the enclosure and see." They went and found them, and acknowledged, "Yes, it's so."
Then Pinda-'lema resumed, "Men, now hear, for you have seen I speak the truth. This is the cause of this affair" (and he made up the following story): "I and my friend had a discussion. I told him that my father never slept. And he said, 'That is not true. Is there a person ever born who does not sleep?' And I said, ' If you go, you will find him awake.' So it was that he found my father awake; and he pressed his hand on my father's face, and my father seized him by the hand. And he and my father tusselled for that hand. My friend pulled away his hand, and the ivory ring which was on his wrist was left with my father. So, as I had told him, — 'If you do not find my father asleep, I will then catch a leopard's cubs,' — I went and caught the cubs of the leopard. Look at them! So it was only our discussion, not that he went to seek your wife."
The tribe were silent with amazement; and they said, "Eh! is it possible it was only a discussion!"
And they spoke to Pinda-'lema, saying, "Then you, what do you say should be done?" He replied, "I say that my father should give Atome the woman," in reparation for the false {sic) accusation.
But Maseni said, "I cannot do it." Then the two young men set the end of the father's town on fire, and his wives and children were in danger of being burned up. But Atome dipped his finger into water, sprinkled it on the conflagration, and the fire was extinguished.
So all the people said, "Let him take the woman" as a reward for putting out the fire. So Maseni gave them that wife.
Then they left Maseni and his town; and Pinda-'lema and his friend, and Pinda-'lcma's mother, and their two wives, went to build their own village.
This tale shows the great love of friendship. It overcame even the obligations of blood-relationship, and stood even that test.
16. TWO HROTIIKRS AND THEIR ENMITY.
The men of a certain town went to sea to catch fish. Two of them were near relatives, — half-brothers, children of the same father. One
46 Journal oj American Folk-Lore.
of them, the elder, caught a large, strange fish. The other, the younger, said, "This fish that you have caught, of what kind is it?" The rest of the fishermen came around in their canoes to examine, and they also asked, "What kind of a fish is this?" But none knew: so they called it Ngunu-Upaya.
As the younger brother lifted it up to examine it closely, it slipped from his fingers back into the sea. Then the older one demanded, "As you have lost it for me, follow it to the place whither it has gone, and get it." The younger replied, "Brother, let me alone: excuse me for its loss; for, even if I go to seek it, I do not know where it has gone." But the elder said, " I will not forgive you."
They returned ashore to their town, and continued their quarrel there. The elder persisted in saying, "I will never forgive you till you have followed where that fish has gone." So the younger, wearied with the quarrel, said to his mother, "Mother, make me food for a journey: I'm going to seek where that fish has gone." His mother and father both agreed to this mode of settling the quarrel, and said, "Go and seek it, for your brother is tired of you. Go and seek where it is." His mother went to escort him along the beach. At a certain point he plunged into the sea, and by magic power walked along the bottom. On the way he met many fishes, and to each he offered some of his food. They ate of it, thanked him, and said, "Go on your way in peace." Ashe went on, he came to a small house. An old woman was sitting there alone. Her body was covered with disease, emd the house was filthy with dirt. He entered, and saluted her; and she said to him, "I see that you are a handsome man; but why do you come into such a house as this, that is not fit for you?" He only replied by taking up a scoop and bailing out the dirty water. Then he went to a spring and brought good water, and with it he washed her whole body, and lifted her up from the ground, laid her on the bed, and made a fire near the bedstead. Then he said to her, "Old woman, eat. I have brought you food; eat." And he went out of the house, respect- fully leaving her alone while she was eating.
While he was out, the woman by magic power changed her body to the appearance of a young woman. She arose from the bed, sat at the table, and called the young man. He came in, and they ate to- gether. After they had finished the food, the woman asked, "The journey that brought you hither, what was the reason of it?" So he told her, "My brother caught a fish, and it slipped from my hands. He was angry with me, and ordered me to find the fish." Then the woman replied, "You are seeking a fish? Go on your way. At the next town enter, and there you must make a pretence to the towns- people by saying, ' Who has killed my uncle? I have come to seek the fish which my uncle has left as inheritance.' "
Batanga Tales. 47
He went on his way, came to that place, did as the woman had told him ; and they gave him that very fish that was lost.
Then he came back to the house of the woman, bringing the fish with him. She prepared food, and they ate together. Then the man said, "Come, escort me on my way." She refused, and remained in the house; but she gave him a stick of sugarcane, and told him to go and plant it on the shore. He resumed his journey, and came back to land, to the town of his people. His father and mother welcomed him with, "lye, iyS!" saying, "We did not know that you would ever come back." He took up the fish, and asked his brother, who was sitting there, "Where is my brother? There's your fish!" But the elder brother did not thank him, only saying, "Good! very good that I have obtained my fish."
The younger one took the sugarcane, and planted it near the door leading to the kitchen-garden. Many years passed, and the cane grew. One day the elder brother, feeling hungry, cut the stalk of cane and ate it. The younger one was out in the forest at the time. When he returned, and saw that the cane was cut, he said, "Who has cut my cane?" His father told him, "Your brother did it."
Then the younger son said to his brother, "The place where I found that cane, there you will go and find one like it for me ! " All the towns- people interfered, saying, "Let your brother alone! Where will he find the cane?" But the younger said, "Where I sought his fish, there he may seek my cane."
The quarrel continued day by day, and finally the elder, being wearied, said, "Mother, give me food for a journey, and I will go." He went away with the food, and entered the sea on the path on which his brother had gone; but he went recklessly, in ill will, and trusting to himself and his own power. He travelled, and he came to the house of the old woman. He found the house dirty, as it was before, and the woman diseased, as she had been; and he did not go in.
She looked at him, and said, "This is no place fit for you to enter." He showed her no sympathy, or desire to help her. Then she said to him warningly, and as a rebuke, "I perceive that you will not succeed on this jcjurney." The man rc'i)licd, "To enter your dirty house, or to go back? Even if I do not succeed, I prefer to go back." She only said, "Do as your character likes to do." He answered, "What can I do? If I do not find the cane, and I go back, I can but die for it." So he curtly said to the woman, " I'm going." And she ordered him, "Go!"
He started to return to land, but on the way he lost the route, and could find no path that he recognized. And finally ho was utterly lost, and was drowned.
48 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
17. THE TOUCAN AND THE THREE GOLDEN-GIRDLED CHILDREN.
Njambo had many women. He begot also many children. One day one of these women bore twins, both females.
Long after this, when the twins were grown beautiful young women, the elder went out for a walk on the beach ; and, looking off at the sea, she exclaimed, "Would that to-day the agent of some trading-house would come and marry me!" At once a steamer came in sight and anchored, having on board the agent of a trading-firm of merchants, coming to inspect the work of his clerks. Instantly he loved the young woman, and he said to Njambo, " I want to marry your child." Njambo assented, "Yes, but give me very many goods." The agent gave him a large quantity of goods, married the woman, and took her away with him to his own country in Manga-Man6n6 ("White-Man's Land").
The merchant, head of the firm, subsequently also came, and he married the younger twin. This woman said to him, "I shall bear you three children, — one named Manga ('Sea'),one Joba ('Sun'), and one Ngande ('Moon')." They agreed, as a promise, that this should be so; and he took her with him to his country of Manga-Maneng, to the same town where the other sister already was. But the mother of the merchant hated this daughter-in-law, so also did the mother-in- law of the elder sister. Moreover, the elder said to herself, " I am the elder; it was more fitting that I should have married the merchant rather than his subordinate, my husband, the agent." So she too hated her sister.
The wife of the merchant became pregnant; and her husband said, "I am going on a journey for amusement of travel."
When the birth-pangs seized his wife, after he was gone, she called her mother-in-law to assist her; also she called her elder sister, the one who married the agent. These two came, and they bandaged her eyes so that she should not see the child when it should be born.
So she bore a child, and she called it Manga. But the other two women took the child, and called for a carpenter. Under their direction, he made a cofifin, put the child in it, and threw it into the sea. Then they took a kitten, and said to the mother, "You are false. You have not borne a child of man; you have borne a puss." Then they withdrew the bandage from her eyes. She sat up; and when she saw the cat, she began to cry; and the mother-in-law and the sister returned to their places.
When the merchant returned from his journey, his mother said to him, "Your wife is full of falsehood. She said to you she would bear a man-child, but lo! she bears a cat." He replied only, "Well, she promised me three; there are yet to be born two."
A man who was living a hundred miles away, in casting his seine
Batanga Tales. 49
one day, drew in a little coffin. When he opened the box and saw a living babe, he exclaimed, "Lo! What a handsome child!"
Some time after this, the wife bore a second child; but before it was to be born, her husband went away on another journey. This he did to test his wife.
At the time of her confinement, the woman again sent word for the two women — her sister and the mother of her husband — to come. Again they bandaged her eyes. And she bore another child, giving it the name Ngande. The infant, as it was born, gave a little wail like a squeal. The two women called the carpenter, as at first; and they took a little shote, and said to the mother, "This is your second child." And, as before, the carpenter threw the little coffin into the sea.
When the merchant arrived home again, his mother said to him, "Your wife has borne the child of a pig. She is very false." He patiently replied, "Well, there is one more left; and the end will show."
Again the fisherman, a hundred miles distant, found the second coffin, and, opening it, saw a human being in it, and exclaimed, "Oh, how beautiful this person!" And the child was taken ashore, where his elder brother was already grown to be a stout lad.
More years passed, and the woman bore a third child. Her husband had again gone on his journey. And at the time of her confine- ment, the mother again called for the other two women. They bandaged her eyes, as twice before. When the child was born, it wailed with a voice like a puppy. So they brought her a little dog, telling her it was her child. They again called for the carpenter, and said to him, " Do for this child as you did for the others." So he made the coffin, and threw it with the infant into the sea.
When the merchant came home again, his mother said to him, "Dur- ing your journey your wife has borne a dog. So false ! " Then he said to his wife, "Did you not promise me three children? And yet the children were a dog, a pig, and a cat." So he ordered her to be put in his stable among the cattle, saying, "This woman and the cows shall be in one and the same place."
Again the fisherman who had found the other two coffins found a third. 0|)cning the box, he wondered at the child's beauty. He said to himself, "Who are those who throw these children into the sea?"
{){ those children, the first two were males, the third was a female. These three grew up in strength and beauty in the fisherman's house, where he lived all by himself, exccj^t that he had a large bird with him, that could talk with human spcecli.
Finally this fi.shcmian thought, "No! I'll Iraxc these young people here by themselves." And he went away lo live at another place, leaving them in the care of the Bird.
VOL. XXVIII. — NO. 107. — .\.
50 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
A message was sent one day to the town of the merchant by a news- teller whose name was EsGlengila. He said, "A young woman whom I have seen at a certain place is exceedingly beautiful, more so even than was this one you have placed in the cow-house. And the young men who are building her house are very fine. They are building stones of diamonds in that house. And that house has a bird that is called Utombo ('Toucan')."
The merchant, having his curiosity aroused, decided to go and in- spect that place. When he arrived there, he found the three young people all in one place. He was seized with a sudden surprise at their fine dress and signs of wealth, and with admiration for the young woman. He asked the young men that he might marry their sister. They consented, but they all three did so, deceiving him; for they all knew he was their father, the bird Utombo having told them so. They promised the merchant that in three days they would be ready to come to his house. He agreed to this arrangement, and went back to his town.
In three days he sent a steamer to bring them. They put on their very finest clothing, and embarked in the vessel. Soon they arrived at the merchant's town. There he made a great feast for them. And they all ate, except that Utombo ate nothing. When it was inquired why the Bird was not eating, the Bird said, " I want my food to be only a ukukumba (a certain forest fruit)." The merchant asked, "What are mekukumba?" The two young men answered, "As you have none here, gather stones, cook them in a pot, and he will eat them."
The stones were boiled over the fire; but the cook could not succeed in softening them. So the Bird said, "Well, if you cannot cook the stones, I will use a guest's right, and ask for what I want. Bring that woman who is out in the stable, and I will eat her."
She was sent for, was brought from the cow-house, and was promptly washed and arrayed for the feast. When she arrived, the two young men said to the merchant, "Summon all the employees and people on your premises. We have a word to say to you."
So all the people came together, very many. The three children were sitting together in one place. The woman also, who had put on fine clothes, was sitting with them, together with the Bird.
Those children, when they were born, had golden girdles, from which had come all their wealth.
The Bird spoke, and said, "All you men and people here, is there any among you who can eat a stone, as I can?"
They answered, "No!"
Then the Bird said, "I know of what I speak. This man wants to marry this young woman. But I have an announcement to make to
Batanga Tales. 51
you. These three children — that man is their father ; their mother is this woman. She promised her husband she would bear him three children. Those three are these. And they were born in greatness."
At this the merchant was amazed.
To prove his words, the Bird said, "You three children, remove your clothing to your waists, and show your girdles."
All the audience and the merchant examined, and they saw the gold.
Then the Bird said to the merchant, "Summon your mother, and carpenter, and the woman who married your agent; for they have done this thing."
When they appeared, and were charged with their crime, the carpenter said, " I only made and nailed a box. I have nothing in this matter." The mother-in-law also denied, saying, "I have nothing to do with it. It belongs to the agent's wife."
But the merchant ordered, "Seize these two women, — my mother and this wife of the agent; tie a stone to their necks, and throw them into the sea; for they have lied to me greatly."
So they were tied with a stone to their necks, and were thrown into the sea; and they died.
Then the merchant took his three children and their mother to his house. And he and his wife ended their marriage in peace and happiness.
Ambler, Pa.
52 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
PENOBSCOT TALES.
BY F. G. SPECK. I. THE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF RABBIT. ^
(a) Rabbit tries to outdo his Host the Woodpecker.
Here lives my story. Rabbit went to visit his friend Woodpecker. When he came to the door, Woodpecker said, "Come in and sit down!" There was a stump just outside the wigu^am. " I have nothing to eat," said Woodpecker, "but I will go now and get something for our din- ner." Then up the stump he went, and began to dig worms out of the wood with his beak. "These," said he, "are eels for our dinner. I always get them in this way." And when he had enough "eels," he cooked them, and the two had their dinner.
Then Rabbit invited Woodpecker to come over and visit him at his house in the brush, and have dinner. When Woodpecker arrived, Rabbit said, " Now I'll go and get our dinner. You sit down and wait." He took a piece of bone with a point to it and tied it to his forehead, as the woodpecker has its beak. Then he tried to climb up a tree near his wigwam, as Woodpecker had done. Up he got a little way by dint of hard scrambling; but his paws slipped, and down he came fiat on his back with a thud that drove all the breath out of his body. Up the tree he clawed his way again. This time he got farther, and tried to dig worms ("eels") out of the wood, jabbing in with his bone as he had seen Woodpecker do; but he lost his hold, fell all the way down, and got killed. When Woodpecker saw what had happened, he came out and jumped over the dead Rabbit twice. The second time Rabbit came to life. "Now you go lie down. You are sick. You can't do anything now, you are sick. I'll get the dinner," said Woodpecker to him. Then he went up the tree, dug out the "eels," cooked them, and they had their dinner.
(b) Rabbit tries to imitate his Host Kingfisher.
Now Rabbit went visiting again. He saw Kingfisher sitting before his wigwam on a branch overhanging the water. Whenever a fish swam by. Kingfisher would dive in and spear it with his beak. When he had enough fish, he came down and invited Rabbit to come in and have dinner with him. After they had eaten. Rabbit wanted to get some fish, as Kingfisher had done. So he went out on the branch; and when he saw a fish, he dived in to get it. But he could
> Narrated by Joe Solomon, Oldtown, Me.
Penobscot Tales. 53
not swim, and nearly drowned before Kingfisher could get him out. Then, when he felt better, Rabbit went on,
(c) Rabbit kills the Young Fishers and is pursued.
Next Rabbit came upon a camp of Fishers, the young ones and the old mother at home. He took a poking-stick from near the fire, and knocked them all on the head until they were dead. Then he ran away into the thicket. When the old Fisher came home and found his family killed, he struck Rabbit's trail and started after him. He trailed him into the thicket, and soon began to gain on him. When Rabbit saw that he was losing, he turned himself into a priest striding before his church reading his prayer-book. When Fisher came along, he asked the priest, "Did you see a rabbit go by here?" The priest held up his hand for silence, not to interrupt him in his prayers. In a few minutes he asked him again the same question. "Yes," said the priest, "there are a lot of rabbits around here. The swamp yonder is full of them." "Well," said Fisher," Fm looking for the rabbit who killed all my family;" and he was going to start on again. "Stop a while before you go, and have something to eat and drink," said the priest. Then they went into the church, and the priest gave Fisher some wine and bread. "Put the pieces of bread into your shirt," said the priest: "you will need them soon, if you are going to chase that rabbit." So Fisher tucked some bread inside his shirt. Now, Fisher fell into a sound sleep after drinking the wine. Then Rabbit resumed his proper shape, and left Fisher lying in a snow-bank. When he woke up, he was almost frozen to death; but he started on. The church had disappeared, and the priest had changed back into a rabbit and run off. As soon as Fisher got hungry in following the mass of rabbit-tracks in the swamp, he decided to eat the bread the priest had given him. He felt inside his shirt, but only pulled out a handful of rabbit-excrement. Then he knew he had been fooled; and ever since then Fisher has been running after rabbits, and killing them wherever he can find them. Here ends my story.
2. THE ADVENTURES OF RABBIT (SECOND VERSION). ^
(a) Rabbit tries to ittiitate his Host Kingfisher.
Here camps my story. Rabbit was going along on his way, when he saw smoke coming from the roof of an old camp. When he got close to the door, he rapix-d, and Kingfisher came out. Said he, "Come in, my chum, and sit down!" Tiicn Rai)bit went in and sat down, and Kingfisher went down to the shore by the river. Rabbit watched him. Out on a cedar-branch Kingfislier began leaning over and looking
' Narrated by Buck Andrew, Oldtovvn, Me.
54 J otirnal of American Folk-Lore.
down into the water. Pretty soon he jumped into the water head first. Then he swam to shore and hauled out a big fish. He cleaned and cooked it, and then they ate it. After eating, they spent a while telling stories. When Rabbit started for home, he told Kingfisher to come over and visit him. When he arrived home, he built a camp, and pretty soon his partner Kingfisher came along. Rabbit told him to come in and sit down, and after a while they both got settled down. Then Rabbit got a sharp bone and fastened it to his forehead. His camp was near the river. Then he went out on a tree leaning over the water, and jumped right in, although he did not see anything. He had a hard time. He got drowned. Then Kingfisher got him ashore and stretched him out flat on his back. He jumped over him, and at once Rabbit came to life again. "Sp — , sp — , sp — !" he sputtered, "I got fish that time! Sp — , sp — !" He spat out the water. Then said Kingfisher to him, "You sit still, I'll get the dinner." Then he went out, caught some fish, and they had dinner.
{b) Rabbit escapes from the Lynx after killing his Family.
Rabbit started ofif again, and had gone a short distance when he saw another camp. He thought he would stop and have something to eat, as he was very hungry. In this camp he saw one old creature and two young ones. They were lynxes. He took a club and hit them all on the head, then ran away. When the other old lynx came home, he saw the rabbit-tracks, and knew by that who had killed his folks. He started ofT on the trail, and at last came to a church with a priest walking before it preaching. Lynx asked the priest if he had seen a rabbit. "Yes," said the priest, "a lot of them in the swamp." Then the priest invited Lynx inside to have something to eat and drink. Lynx went in, and the priest got him drunk. He gave Lynx some crackers, which he put inside his shirt to save until he might get hungry. Soon Lynx fell asleep. When he awoke, he found himself frozen in ice; and when he examined the crackers, he found that they had changed into rabbit-excrement in his shirt. That priest was Rabbit himself, and so he had fooled him. Then Lynx sped on again through the swamp, following rabbit-tracks. Soon he saw some teamsters hauling wood. Said he, "Where is Rabbit?" and the teamsters sent him chasing off toward saltwater (the ocean), and the Lynx chased Rabbit until he came to salt water. There he saw a big ship floating, and those on board fired at him. Then I left and went away. That is why the lynx is always chasing about and hunting rabbits nowadays.
Penobscot Tales. 55
3 . THE STORY OF JACK.
{A European Story.)
There were once three brothers who started out in the world to find their fortune. The oldest started first. He took with him some bread; and as he went along the road, he came to an old woman who begged alms of him. He told her that he had nothing but some bread, and that was only enough for one. Then she warned him to beware of the rock and a savage dog which he would find on his road. As he went along, he tripped on a sharp rock and dashed his brains out. The next to the oldest brother started out in the same way, and met the old woman, and exactly the same thing happened. Last of all came Jack, the youngest brother. When he met the old woman, he gave her half of his loaf; and she told him to beware of the rock, and then gave him a club to use against the dog which she said would attack him before long. Soon he came to the sharp rock, but saw it in time to step to one side, and so passed in safety. Then he came to where a big dog sprang upon him, but he struck it with the club and killed it. Having passed these dangers in safety, he came to the palace of the king. Here he asked for work. The king asked him what he could do, and he replied that he could do anything. "Very well," said the king, "if you can do anything, I will hire you;" and they struck a bargain, agreeing that the first one to become angry with the other should submit to having his back skinned. The first task that the king gave Jack was to plant his field. Jack took the plough and ploughed up patches of the ground; so that when it was planted and grew up, the grain appeared in patches here and there. When the king saw it, he was about to scold Jack, who said, "Are you angry?" — "Oh, no!" said the king, "I am not angry."
The next task he gave him was to herd the royal swine. He told Jack to go to the palace of a great giant in the neighborhood, and pasture his swine in the giant's field. For a lunch Jack took a lump of maple-sugar. When he arrived at the giant's palace, the monster came out, and would have killed him if Jack had not leaped into a tree. "Before we fight," said Jack, "let us see who is the greater man. Here I have a stone. I can chew it to bits." Then he chewed up the maple-sugar. Then the giant took a stone and tried to bite it, but could not break it. The giant told Jack to come down, and they would be friendly until they could try some more contests. Tlial night Jack went into the giant's yard and bored a hole through one of the trees, then covered the opening with bark. The nc\t morning he challenged the giant to punch a hole through a tree. Tiie giant struck a big tree and drove his fist into the wood. Then Jack drove his list through the hole in the tree, so that it came through on the other side, and the giant began to fear him for a very strong man. "Now," said
56 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
the giant, "let us take this cane and see who can throw it the highest." He produced a great cane of solid gold, weighing three tons, and hurled it so high that it did not come down till evening. Then Jack took the cane in his hand, and, looking toward the heavens, addressed himself to the Angel Gabriel. "Gabriel," said he, "for a long time I have wanted to make you a present. Now, here is a nice gold cane which I am going to throw you. Keep it when you get it for a present. Are you ready?" — "Hold on!" said the giant, "don't throw it, I don't want to lose it." So the giant gave up, and was afraid of Jack because he thought he was the stronger man. So Jack herded the swine in the giant's field, and at night went home to the king's palace. On the way he cut off the noses and ears of his swine and stuck them in the mire. Then he ran to the palace and told the king that the swine were mired, and to hurry down and help him. So, clad in his best clothes, the king hurried to the mire, and saw the noses and ears sticking from the mud. He grabbed one of the snouts and pulled. When it came up, he fell over backwards and smutted his clothes. "Go back to the palace and get a clean suit from my wife, and hurry!" he told Jack. Then Jack went to the palace and told the queen that the king ordered him to have intercourse with her. She would not believe him, but Jack told her to open her window and ask the king if it were not true. So the queen called down to the king in the mire, and asked him if what Jack said was true. "Yes," he replied, "and be quick about it!" So Jack mounted the queen, and by and by the king returned to his bedroom and saw them. He was about to draw his sword and kill Jack, when Jack said, "Are you angry now?" — "Yes, I am!" said the king. Then he had to let Jack take four inches of skin from his back.
4. STORY OF JACK THE SOLDIER.
{A European Story.)
There was a soldier in the army whose name was Jack. One day he deserted, ran down the road, and left his horse and uniform. The general sent a captain and a corporal after him to capture him; but when they overtook him. Jack said, "Sit down here, and we will talk it over." Then he asked them if they were satisfied with their job, getting only a shilling a week, and he coaxed them to start in the world with him to seek their fortunes. At last they agreed, and all three started out on the road in search of adventure. Soon they struck into a big woods, and at night saw lights shining in the windows of a wonder- ful palace. When they entered, they found it completely furnished, but without occupants. A fine meal was spread on the table, and three beds were found made up. The only living things they saw were three cats. After eating and smoking, three beautiful maidens appeared
Periobscot Tales. 57
and told the men that they would like them to stay and live with them. That night they all slept together; and the next morning found every- thing as before, but the beautiful women had turned back into cats. For three nights they staid in this way; and the last night the captain's girl told him that if he would live with her, she would make him a present of a table-cloth which would always supply itself with whatever food he wished. The corporal's girl told him the same, and offered a wallet which should always be full of gold. Jack's girl made him an offer of a cap which would transport him wherever he wished. The men accepted the offer and received their presents. The next day, when the women had turned back into cats, the three men proposed to travel around and see the world ; so they all put their heads together, and Jack pulled the cap over them and wished them to be in London. They found themselves in London at once. Soon Jack became in- fatuated with a beautiful woman whom he wished to marry. She kept refusing him, however, and putting him off till the next day. He offered her a wonderful present. Then he went to the captain and borrowed his table-cloth. He gave her that, but still she put him off. Then he borrowed the corporal's wallet and gave her that, yet she put him off. At last he begged her to give him a kiss. She laughed and agreed. Then he slipped the cap over their heads and wished to be in the wild woods of America. Immediately they found themselves in the heart of the wild woods, with not a soul near them for miles. She cried very hard, but soon begged Jack to go to sleep, and smoothed his forehead for him. Then, when he fell asleep, she took his cap and wished herself back in London again. When Jack woke up, he found himself alone in the wilderness, and he began wandering, and soon came to a great apple-tree with apples as big as pumpkins. He tasted one, and immediately a growing tree sprouted from his head, and he could not move. Near by, however, was another small apple- tree whose fruit he could just reach. He ate one of these small apples, and immediately the tree came off his head. So he gathered some of the big apples and the little ones, and wandered on. Soon he came out upon a great headland overlooking the ocean, and there he saw a ship sailing by. He signalled to it, and at last the sailors came ashore to get him. He told them he was a great doctor who had been lost in the woods, and wanted to get back to the old country. Then they took him on board and started back to England. Halfway across the ocean the captain got terribly sick, and the sailors called upon Jack to try to help him. He went down and gave the captain a piece of one of the big ap[)les to eat ; and at once a growing tree sprang from his head, its branches reaching way up among the masts. When the sailors saw this, they were going to throw him ovorjjoard, but he told them to wait until he tried his other medicine. Then he
58 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
gave the captain a piece of the small apple, and the tree came off his head. By this they knew Jack was a great doctor. When they landed in England, Jack saw his two friends, the captain and the corporal, sawing wood at an inn to earn their living. He went to a town and built a shop, where he put his great apples up for sale, and many people came to see the wonderful fruit. In the mean time Jack's lover had built a great palace with the money from her wallet; and she heard of the wonderful doctor and his apples, so she went to see them. When she saw Jack, she did not know him because his beard had grown, and thought the apples were very wonderful. She bought one at the price of fifty dollars. When she took it home. Jack left his shop, and waited to see what would happen. Soon the word went around that the wealthiest woman in the kingdom had a tree growing from her head, which none of the doctors could take off. So Jack sent word to the woman that he was a great doctor and would guarantee to cure her. So she sent for him, and he came. First, he told her that she had some great mystery in her life, that she had wronged somebody. He told her that before he could cure her, she would have to confess to him. Then she admitted that she had wronged a man, and had taken his things and left him. Then he told her that she would have to give up these things before he could cure her. So she gave him a little key, and told him to go in the cellar to a certain brick, behind which he would find the table-cloth, the wallet, and the cap. When he got these things, he left the palace, and soon she died for her wrongs. He went back to his friends who were sawing wood, and gave them their things. Now, they all started back to the palace where the three cats were. When they arrived, they found the palace all neglected, and the three cats looked very old. That night they turned back into three old women, who complained bitterly of being neglected. After they had eaten, however, the old women resumed their youth and beauty, and that night the youngest told Jack how they were bewitched by a great bull who lived near by. She told him that if the bull could be killed and his heart cut out, the spell would be removed, but that others had tried in vain. So the next morning Jack went down to his enclosure of stone and looked over. He saw a monster bull coursing around the inside. In the middle of the yard was a well, and a big rock standing at one side. When the bull was at the far end of the yard. Jack jumped the wall and ran for the well, followed by the bull. He had no sooner jumped into the well, than the bull smashed against the rock and fell over dead. Then Jack climbed out and cut out his heart, which he took back with him. That night the three girls ate a piece of the heart, and the spell was removed. After that they all lived together in the palace.
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 59
SOME MICMAC TALES FROM CAPE BRETON ISLAND.
BY F. G. SPECK.
The following tales were written down from the dictation of Chief Joe Julian of the Sydney band, and John Joe of Wycogamagh, Cape Breton Island. As a contribution to comparative mythology they represent local versions of some myths well known not only among the Micmacs, but among the northern Algonkin in general.
GLUSKAP'S JOURNEY. {The Cape Breton Local Version.)
Gluskap was the god of the Micmacs. The great deity, Ktci- ni'sxam, made him out of earth and then breathed on him, and he was made. This was at Cape North (KtE'dnuk, "At the North Mountain"), Cape Breton, on the eastern side. Gluskap's home was at Fairy Holes (Gluska'be wi'gwom, "Gluskap's wigwam ").i Just in front of the caves at this headland are three little islands in a straight line, long and narrow, known as Ciboux Islands. These are the remains of Gluskap's canoe, where he left it when it was broken. At Plaster Cove (Two'butc, "Looking Out") two girls saw his canoe broken into three pieces; and they laughed, making fun of Gluskap. At this he told them that they would remain forever where they are; and to-day there are two rocks at Plaster Cove which are the remains of these girls. Next, a little farther north, at Wreck Cove, Gluskap jumped from his canoe when it foundered, lifting his moose-skin canoe-mat out, and left it on the shore to dry. It is there to-day. There is still to be seen a space of fifteen acres of bare ground where the mat lay. Then he started on and went to Table Head (Padalodl'tck), on the south side of Great Bras d'or. Here he had his dinner. Next he struck into Bras d'or Lake straight to Wycogamagh, on the western end, where, at Indian Island (Wi'sik, "Cabin"), he started a beaver and drove him out, following Bras d'or Lake to St. Patrick's Bay. At Middle River he killed a young beaver, whose bones are
> This is now known as Fairy Holes, between St. Ann's Bay and Great Bras d'or. Tlie Micmacs tell how. sixty-two years ago, five Indians — Joe Bernard. Francis Bernard. Clement Bernard. Joe Newell, and Tom Newell — entered the caves which honeycomb this headland, carrying seven torches. They walked as far as the torches would light them, about a mile and a half, found eight brooks in the caves, and when they came out discovered how a rock three hundred feet wide had moved since they had entered. The Indians regard these caves as very mysterious.
6o Journal of American Folk-Lore.
still to be seen there. ^ Then Gluskap followed the big beaver until he lost track of him for a while. He stood at Wl'sik (Indian Island), and took a piece of rock and threw toward the place where he thought the beaver was. This rock is now Red Island (Pau7Enukte'gan), This started the beaver up, and he ran back through St. Peter's Channel and burrowed through underneath, which is the cause of the crooks and windings there now. Then the chase continued outside in the ocean, when the beaver struck out for the Bay of Fundy. Here at PlI'gAnk ("Split Place"), Split Point, Gluskap dug out a channel with his paddle, forming Minas Basin, Nova Scotia. There he killed the beaver. Near here is a small island, which is the pot in which he cooked the beaver; and there, too, is another rock, near Pot Rock, which is Gluskap's dog left behind at this time. Turtle (Mi'ktcik) was Gluskap's uncle. Here with his pot and dog he turned Turtle into a rock, and left them all there. Near where he killed the beaver are still to be seen the bones turned to rock. When he broke the channel here in Minas Basin to drain the water out, in order to uncover the beaver, he left it so that to-day the water all drains out at each tide. So Gluskap caused the Bay of Fundy tides. Then he crossed over eastward and came out at Pictou, where there were many Indians living. While there, he taught the Micmacs how to make all their implements for hunting and fishing, — bows, arrows, canoes, and the like. After a while he prepared to leave, and told the Indians, " I am going to leave you. I am going to a place where I can never be reached by a white man." Then he prophesied the coming of the Europeans and the baptism of the Micmacs. Then he called his grandmother from Pictou, and a young man for his nephew, and departed, going to the other side of the North Pole with them. Again he said, "From now on, if there should ever be war between you and any other people, I shall be back to help you." He is there now, busy in making bows, arrows, and weapons for the day when the white man may bother the Micmacs. The Micmacs are Gluskap's children. As he prophesied it came true, for in 1610 the first Micmacs were baptized and became Christians. Gluskap had departed just a little before them, because he knew he had to make room for Christ; but he is the Micmac's god, and will come to help them if they ever need him. When Peary dis- covered the North Pole, he saw Gluskap sitting at the top of the Pole, and spoke to him.
GLUSKAP TESTED BY CHRIST.
One time when Gluskap had become the Indian's god, Christ wanted to try him to see if he was fit: so he took Gluskap to the ocean, and
' A Micmac named Ta'mekian (Tom Stevens) a long while ago is said to have found some ot these bones. — ribs eight feet long, — some of which, with a hip-joint of monstrous size, he is said to have brought out. The Indians claim that these remains are now in the Museum at Halifax.
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 6i
told him to close his eyes. Then Christ moved close to the shore an island which lay far out to sea. When Gluskap opened his eyes, he saw it. Christ asked him if he could do as much as that. Then Gluskap told Christ to close his eyes a while. When Christ opened his eyes, he found that Gluskap had moved it back to its place again.
TAKEN-FROM-GUTS (mUSPUSYE'GENAN) .
There were two wigwams in which they were camping, an old man and his son. These two were giant man-eaters {kogwe'sk). After a while the young man got married, and a boy was born by his wife. When this boy was about six years old, another was about to be born ; and the young giant, knowing his wife was pregnant, went to his father and said, "I'll give you my wife. You can kill and eat her." So the next day the old man took his walking-stick and went to his son's camp. When he entered the wigwam, he told his daughter-in-law to bend her head down; and having put the end of his stick into the fire, when it was red-hot, he poked it into her heart and killed her. The little boy, her first son, was watching his grandfather, and saw what he did. Then the old man took a knife and cut out the mother's bowels, and left them lying near the spring where they got water. Her carcass he took home with him. So the poor little boy was left alone, as his father was away hunting. Every day, as he went to the spring where his mother's bowels were, he saw a tiny boy. He tried to catch him, but failed every time. Nevertheless he saw the tiny creature smile at him. At last one day he did catch him, and he took him home. This little fellow had now grown larger and stronger. He had a little bow and arrow, and a bladder full of oil, and the old man wondered what it was. The elder brother asked him to make him another bow and arrows, and he asked what he wanted to do with them. "Give them to another little fellow," he answered. So another bow and arrow were made, and the elder boy gave them to the small one. One day while they were playing and shooting, they hit the bladder of oil and spilled it. Every night, after playing together about the camp, the small boy would return to the spring before the old man came home; but one day he came early and watched them playing. Then he ran and closed the wigwam, so that the little fellow could not escape. The little boy cried and begged to be freed, but the old man gave the little fellow some blue- jay feathers to coax him to stop crying. At last the little fellow got tame and stopped crying. After this he grew fast, and .soon was bigger than his elder brother. This little fellow's name was Taken-from- Guts (Muspusye'gi':nan) because he was born from his mother's bowels after they had been cut out by the old giant her father-in-law.
Now, one day Takcn-from-Guts asked his elder brother, "Where is mother?" Then the brother told him, "Our father got grandfather
62 Journal of American Folk-Lorc.
to kill mother." So Takcn-from-Guts said, "We'll kill the old fellow." Then they built a bijj; strong wigwam, getting lots of bark and hanging two or three dry trees inside, so that it would burn well. Then they invited their father inside; and as he was tired and sleepy, they made a big fire inside, and soon he fell asleep. Then they got ready and set fire to both ends of the camp at the same time, went out, and closed the door. Then their father began crying inside, but he soon burned to death. When there was nothing left but bones and ashes, the boys gathered the bones: and Taken-from-Guts took them, crushed them into powder in his hand, and blew them into the air. "You will become mosquitoes to torment and eat the people," he said. And so the giant was turned into the mosquitoes who now try to kill people by sucking their blood.
Next Taken-from-Guts asked his elder brother, "Where is our grandfather?" When he told him, they went to their grandfather's camp. On the way they killed a moose. When they reached their grandfather's wig^vam, the old people were glad, because they expected to eat the two boys. But they said, "We have killed a moose. To- morrow we will go back and get the carcass." So they went back to the moose and cut up the meat. When they got back to where the moose was, their grandfather, who went with them, was tired and sleepy. When he fell "asleep, they warmed the fat from the moose's guts, and held it on top of the old man until in a short time he was dead. Then they cut out his heart and took it back to the wigwam, where their grandmother was waiting. They gave it to her to cook, telling her it was a piece of the moose's heart. She roasted it; and as soon as she ate it, she knew what it was, and said, "He had a very sweet heart." Then Taken-from-Guts took a tomahawk and killed the old woman.
Now they started on, and Taken-from-Guts asked his brother where they were going. Said he, "We are going to kill all the rest of the giants." Soon they reached where Marten and his grandmother were camping. When they entered the camp, Taken-from-Guts asked Marten for a drink of water, as he was thirty. Marten's grandmother answered, "We can't get any water around here. Unless you have a good-looking daughter, it is impossible." Taken-from-Guts asked, "Why?" She said, "A creature named Bull-Frog (AblEge'mu) has taken all the water, and you can't get any." Then Taken-from-Guts asked Marten again for a drink, and Marten went and brought him some rily water; l:)Ut when Takcn-from-Guts saw it, he threw it away. He was so thirsty that he licked his fingers for the moisture. Then Takcn-from-Guts went to see Bull-Frog, and beheld in his camp thousands of bladders all full of water. When he entered, Bull-Frog looked up, and Takcn-from-Guts hit and killed him with his toma- hawk. Then he sent home all the girls that Bull-Frog had taken from
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 63
the people in payment for drinking-water. Then he went out and broke all the bladders of water, and rivers and lakes appeared every- where.
The next day the boys built a canoe to travel on the river. Then they went down the river and stopped at the place where Porcupine had his den. It was all full of rocks. Porcupine's wife was at home; and when they went in, she built up a fire so hot that Taken-from-Guts's brother soon died. Nevertheless Taken-from-Guts said, "I'm very cold," and he wrapped a bear-skin about him. Soon Porcupine- Woman could not stand it any longer. Then Taken-from-Guts revived his brother, and they started on in the canoe until they came to where the giants had built a trap. It was a place where steep rocks crushed everybody who tried to go by. Taken-from-Guts saw the trap ahead, and said to his brother, "Look out! there is a trap ahead. Strike with your paddle!" So Taken-from-Guts broke it away with his paddle, and they passed through.
Soon they came to a pond where there were lots of wild geese, that looked up as they came in sight, and were about to screech. These geese belonged to Gluskap, who lived across the pond. They were his watch-birds, and informed Gluskap when any one approached, by screeching. Then Taken-from-Guts held up his hand and told the geese to keep quiet. The geese kept quiet. Then they landed and went into Gluskap's camp, and quickly put up their wig\vam. When Gluskap came out, he saw it, and wondered at such a powerful man. But towards evening he went and visited Taken-from-Guts, and talked with the boys. Taken-from-Guts gave Gluskap a pipe to smoke. Gluskap drew on it once and smoked it dry. Then he gave Taken-from-Guts a pipe, and said, " Fill this." And Taken-from-Guts smoked it dry. Twice he did this. When Gluskap went out, Taken- from-Guts said to his brother, "It's going to be a cold night to-night, I can see it by the clouds." That night was indeed so cold that when he put his pot to boil, one side of it boiled while the other side froze. The next morning it was fine and warm, and Taken-from-Guts went to wake his brother, who said, "I'm frozen to death." At evening Taken-from-Guts said, "It's going to be windy to-day by the looks of the clouds," and he told it to Gluskap, who thought, "I had better fix up my camp, for this is a very powerful man." So he put weights all around his wigwam. That night it blew a gale so hard that he could just about keep his camp up. It nearly blew down. The next day was fine, so the brothers left Gluskap and started on. When they le't, Gluskap gave Taken-from-Guts a piece of fur for a present, one skin. Taken-from-Guts handed it to his i)rotlier to carry. As they went along, it grew bigger and heavier, until at last he could not carry it any farther. So Taken-from-Guts carried it; but soon he stopped, and
64 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
said to his brother, "You stay here and start a fur business with this skin. I can't carry it any longer." His brother then remained.
Takcn-from-Guts, however, kept on, and at last came to two camps where old woman Skunk lived. She had some daughters. When he entered, she said, "Come in the back of the wigwam, my son-in-law!" The next day she said, "We'll go to the island and get some eggs." So they did go; and when they reached the island, the old woman told him that there were more eggs farther in from the shore. "I want you to get them," she said. So he went farther in, and she paddled off in the canoe and left him there. When he came back to the shore, she was gone and he was alone. The Gulls came by where he stood, and he asked them to carry him to the mainland. The Gulls did so, and he reached the camp ahead of the old woman. At this she was very much astonished. When night came, she told him, "I shall have to sleep with you to-night. That's the rule." — "All right," said he. That night she covered him up with fur and skins and lay down with him, intending to stifle him with her odor when he was asleep; but Taken-from-Guts made a hole through the coverings with his knife. Through this hole he could breathe. She tried very hard to kill him with her smell; but he breathed through the hole, and the next morn- ing got up all right. The next day she had another test for him. She had a deep hole where she threw her other sons-in-law to kill them, and into this she threw Taken-from-Guts. When he reached the bottom, he found an old Turtle sitting there waiting for his prey. Turtle looked about for his knife to kill Takcn-from-Guts; but while he was looking, Taken-from-Guts climbed out safely. They could not kill him.
RABBIT AND OTTER (tHE BUNGLING HOST).
There were two wigwams. Otter lived with his grandmother in one of them, and Rabbit with his grandmother in the other. So one day Rabbit started out and wandered over to visit Otter in his camp. When Rabbit came into the wigwam. Otter asked him if he had any- thing to eat at home. "No," replied Rabbit. So then Otter asked his grandmother to cook something for Rabbit, but she told him she had nothing there to cook. So Otter went out to a pond which was right in front of the camp. He jumped into the pond, and caught a nice long string of eels. Meanwhile Rabbit was looking on to see what Otter would do to get his food. So when he saw Otter go home with his string of eels. Rabbit thought he could do the same. So he went over and asked Otter to come over to his camp the next day and have dinner with him. Accordingly the next morning Otter went over to Rabbit's camp. When he arrived. Rabbit asked his grandmother to hang the pot and cook something for dinner. "We have nothing, no fish, meat, or anything," she said, "but you go out and get something."
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 65
Then Rabbit went out to the pond, the same as Otter had done, and dived in to get eels; but he could not get anything, not a fish, as he was unable to dive no matter how hard he tried. In the mean time his grandmother was waiting. After a while, however. Otter went out to see what ailed Rabbit, and, after searching near the pond, found him all wet and with nothing to show for his efforts. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "I'm trying to get something to eat," he replied. So Otter jumped into the pond and got a big string of fish for him, and so they had dinner. Then Otter went home.
The next day Rabbit started out to visit Woodpecker. When he reached Woodpecker's wigwam. Rabbit found him there with his grandmother. So the old woman started for a pot to make a stew or something; but she said, "We have nothing to cook." Then Wood- pecker went out. There was a dry tree-trunk in front of the wigwam, and he went to it and picked a quantity of meal out of it. This he brought in to his grandmother, and they all had dinner. Rabbit had watched how Woodpecker got his meal ; so he invited Woodpecker to come over to visit him, and went home. The next day Woodpecker went over to visit Rabbit. When Woodpecker arrived. Rabbit asked his grandmother to hang up the pot and cook dinner. " But we have nothing to cook," she said. So Rabbit went outside with his birch- bark vessel to fill it with meal, as he had seen Woodpecker do. He started to pick meal out of the trunk with his nose, as Woodpecker had done. After a while Woodpecker came out to see what ailed Rabbit, and there he found him with his nose all flattened out and split from trying to break into the wood. So Woodpecker left. Ever since then Rabbit has had his nose split.
One day, being out of food, Rabbit thought he would go and see Otter and steal some eels. He got into the habit of doing this every second night. Towards spring Otter began to wonder where his eels went to, as the barrel was getting low. So one morning Otter found Rabbit-tracks around, and said to himself, "I'm going to kill Rabbit for stealing my eels." Now, Rabbit knew what was going on; and when Otter reached Rabbit's camp, Rabbit had fled. Otter then asked Rabbit's grandmother, "Where has Rabbit gone?" She an- swered, " I don't know, last night he brought home some eels and then went away." — "He has been stealing my eels," said Otter, "and I'm going to kill him." So Otter started to trail Rabbit, who knew that Otter was following him. As Otter began gaining on him, Rabbit picked up a little chip and said for it to become a wigwam. At once this became a wigwam, and Rabbit turned himself into an old man sitting inside. Soon Otter came along and saw the wigwam. He went to the door, and there saw a little gray-headed man sitting inside. The old man was blind too. Otter did not know this was
VOL. XXVIII. — NO. 107. — 5.
66 Journal of Afnerican Folk-Lore.
Rabbit himself; so out of pity for him he gathered some fire-wood for him, and asked if he had seen anything of a Rabbit passing by. " No," replied the old man; and Otter started on again. After a while Rabbit left his wigwam and struck out on another road. Soon Otter could not find any of Rabbit's tracks, so he returned to the wigwam, only to find it gone. Only a chip remained in its place. Then he saw the tracks where Rabbit had jumped out: so he was very angry, and cried, "He won't trick me again!" Then Rabbit knew that he was being overtaken again, and, taking another chip, he wished it to become a house, and there was the house. So when Otter came along, he saw the house. There was a verandah outside, and a big gentleman walking back and forth all dressed in white. He had a paper which he was reading. This, of course, was Rabbit himself, but Otter did not know it. "Did you see Rabbit?" he asked. The big gentleman appeared not to hear him. The second time he asked, the big gentle- man said, "Sek, sek, sek, abEirgEmutc." ^ This was supposed to be English he was speaking, and to mean "Never saw Rabbit;" but Otter looked hard at him, and noticed his feet, which were those of Rabbit. So Otter suspected that this was the person he was seeking. Then the big gentleman gave Otter some bread and wine, and Otter started on after Rabbit again. This was the second time he had been tricked, and he soon turned about and hurried back to the house. When he came to the place, the house was not there. Otter could see the tracks where Rabbit had started running away. "He won't trick me again, that's his last time!" declared Otter. So Rabbit started off, and soon came to the head of a bay where there was a little island so small that a person could almost jump over it. Rabbit jumped on to the island, and wished it to become a big man-of-war. When Otter came out to the shore, he saw the big ship anchored there, and the big gentleman in a white suit walking on deck. Otter cried, "You can't trick me now! You're the man!" Then Otter swam out toward the ship, to board it and kill Rabbit; but the big gentleman said to his sailors, "Shoot him! He's worth a lot of money over in France."
BADGER DISGUISES HIMSELF AS A WOMAN, MEETS WITH HERON, AND IS
KILLED BY A GIANT BIRD.
Badger lived with his younger brother in a big wigwam. He was a nice and quiet fellow. The wigwam had two doors, one of which was Badger's. He never used any other door in going in or out, lest he lose his good luck. He was very careful to preserve his good luck. One morning when he went out, he saw an ill-omened creature (cli:mu- dji'tckwetc); and that spoiled his luck, as the creature was a kind of
' 5eA: has no meaninj;; aftsZt'^/rmuic signifies "rabbit."
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 6j
witch. So Badger left his home, saying downheartedly, "I won't have any good luck any more." As he went on, he soon got to another village. He transformed himself into a young girl, and entered a small camp, dressed as a woman. This was where Marten and his grandmother lived. As soon as Badger in the guise of a strange girl came in, Marten went and told the chief that a strange young girl had come to his camp. The chief had a young son who was of an age to get married, so he thought he would marry this strange girl to his son. Then he went and proposed to her for his son. "Yes," she answered, " I will marry him." Soon they were married, and after a while the chief's son went away hunting in the woods. Then Badger went to the chief, her father-in-law, and told him it was the custom in her country for the wife to live in her father-in-law's wigwam and sleep with her sisters-in-law while her husband was away. So Badger slept with the chief's daughters.
Now, after a while it was expected that the chief's son's wife would bear him a child, as it grew time, and everybody was waiting for it. So Badger got an unborn caribou and fixed it up to appear that a child had been born. Everybody was glad that the chief would have a grandson. So Badger told them that in her country they always had a separate camp built for a woman having a child, and obeyed everything that she asked. Said she, "In my country the child of a chief is never seen by any one until after they have made a big feast and dance. " So whatever she said was all carried out, and a big feast was made. Then Badger covered up the young caribou so that no one should see it before the feast. The first to see it would be the father. Then they brought the child over to the feast to be shown. Old man Big-Turtle, a shaman, was there, and knew that it was not the right kind of a baby; so he said to himself, "To-morrow I'll have that caribou for myself to eat." He was a shaman. Now, when they took the child from the little camp over to the big feast. Badger ran away. When the baby was uncovered, it was found to be nothing but a young caribou all dried up. The people could not imagine who the mother was, or where she had come from. Then old Big-Turtle told them, "It was Badger!"
As Badger fled, he soon came, at about sunset, to where three girls were up in a tree. When they saw him coming, they said, "There is Badger!" because he had returned to his proper shape. Then they took their hair-ribbons ofT and tied them on limbs as tightly as they could. Badger was very glad to find the girls, and called to them to come down and make camp for tlic night for him. "Wry well," they said, "we'll build camp; but you go uj) the tree and get our hair- ribbons, but don't break them, and we'll build camp." When he went up the tree, they went off a little distance, saying that they were
68 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
going for some wood and boughs for the camp. When the girls got a short distance away, they ran off. Soon they reached a Httle brook, and saw Heron standing on the shore. The girls asked him if he would let them cross ov^er on his neck. Heron allowed them to cross, and they hurried on. After a while Badger came along; and when he saw the old Heron, he said, "Hurry up! take me over, stretch your neck!" Then Heron let him start across on his neck; but when he was midway, he turned his neck over and let Badger fall into the river. Badger did not escape until he was carried way down river; and when he did, he met two boys. These boys were Sea-Gulls. He asked them where they camped. They told him. "Who's home?" he asked. "Grandmother," they answered. So Badger went to their camp and saw the old woman. He addressed her as " mother;" but she answered, "Badger is not my son, I never had Badger for a son." Badger replied, "My name is not Badger, it is Wearing-a-Diaper (Edona'bes)." — "No," said the old woman, "you are not my son." — "But I am," said Badger; " I can tell you what kind of a day I was born on, in sleet weather I was born" (me'daTan^skup e'nawla'neq) . She counted all her sons, and said, "No, none was born then. You are Badger all right." The old woman had a big pot in which she was about to cook meat. Whenever she wanted any grease for food, she pulled out one of her hairs and put it into the pot. This would make two or three inches of grease in the pot. Then Badger was angry with her for denying him, so he took his tomahawk and cut her head off and put it in the pot. The two little boys saw him do it. This old woman was mother of the birds. After Badger ran away. Crow, one of the old woman's other sons, came home, and saw their mother's head in the pot. "Who did it?" he asked. " Badger," the little boys answered. "Which way did he take?" And they told him. Then Crow pursued Badger; and when he caught up with him, he could only snatch off his cap, as he was not strong enough to do more. W^hen Crow took his hat away. Badger cried, "Oh, I'm so glad! My hat was so warm, I'm glad you pulled it off! I'm very glad! " So Crow had to give up. But next came Eagle, another brother, who caught up with Badger; and he tore off Badger's coat, as he was bigger and stronger than Crow. "I'm so glad! " said Badger, "my coat was so warm and heavy! " Next came a giant bird (kEllu'), strong and big. He lifted Badger right up. "Well, I'm glad, because I'm very tired. Lift me up as high as you can." Badger knew he was going to be killed. When they were very far up, Badger began singing, "The whole earth looks as smooth and soft as the boughs on the floor of a camp." But the giant bird took him over a ledge of rocks where he dropped caribou to kill them, and let Badger drop. When Badger had fallen about halfway, he said to himself, "Just let the backbone be
Some Micmac Tales from Cape Breton Island. 69
left." So he fell, and was all broken to pieces, — all but his back- bone, — and the backbone is there yet, I guess.
WHY THERE ARE NO PORCUPINES OR SKUNKS ON CAPE BRETON.
During the war between the English and the French in Canada, the English soldiers at Louisbourg, Cape Breton, captured a French priest. They tortured him by putting him naked into a pen with porcupines and skunks, to kill him by their quills and the odor. Then he said that never again would skunks or porcupines live on the island, and now to-day there are none here. Even if they are brought to the is- land, they die when they eat the things that grow here, on account of the curse. "^
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
1 Not only are skunks and porcupines absent on Cape Breton, but red deer and rac- coons seem likewise lacking.
\
70 Journal of American Folk-Lore,
SOME NASI^PI MYTHS FROM LITTLE WHALE RIVER.^
BY FRANK G. SPECK.
In the summer of 1913, while investigating some lines of culture contact between the northern Ojibwa, Cree and Montagnais, I en- countered John Turner, a native of Moose Factory, who narrated the following myths of the Naskapi of Little Whale River, on the east coast of Hudson's Bay, near Richmond Gulf, longitude 78° west, latitude 56° north.
I also include a short cannibal-monster story from the Waswanipi Band of Cree {Waswanipi Uiluwak, "Far-away Water People"), who hunt around Waswanipi Lake (longitude 76.3° west, latitude 49.3° north). This was narrated by a Waswanipi woman met with on Riviere des Quinze, Quebec. Linguistic material from the Was- wanipi Band shows the dialect to be Cree (belonging to the so-called I and k type). Its closest affinities, in phonetics and etymology, are with the Moose Factory dialect. The Waswanipi are about at the southeastern boundary of the Cree-speaking group. South of them are the Tete de Boules and Algonkin; east of them, the Montagnais; and northeast, the Mistassini.
I. AYAS'I.
Ayas'i ^ was a great chief and trickster. He was an old man and had two wives, — an older one, his first wife; and a younger one, his second. By the older one he had a grown-up son, and several younger ones by the other wife. Now, the young woman was very jealous of the older wife, because she thought that Ayas'i would give the chieftainship to his son by his first wife; in other words, to his oldest son. She tried in different ways to invent stories against the son to poison Ayas'i's mind against him. She kept telling Ayas'i that the oldest son was trying to seduce her. Although Ayas'i liked his oldest son, he came at last to believe the younger woman's stories, and began to suspect the boy. But the stories he heard were not proved. The boy was very quiet and well-behaved.
One day the young woman was out in the bush and saw a partridge,
and then she thought of a plan to trap the boy. She hurried back
to the camp, and told the son to come and shoot the bird for her.
"Oh, no!" said he, "there are plenty of younger boys here. Get
' Published with the permission of the Geological Survey of Canada. - The vowel a is pronounced like u of English but; ' denotes that the preceding consonant is long; 'denotes main stress; ' denotes aspiration.
Some Naskapi Myths from Little Whale River.
some of them to go and kill the partridge." But she coaxed him to come, saying that he was so much more able. At last he consented, and went with her and killed the partridge. Then the young wife pulled up her dresses, took the dying bird, and made it scratch her between the legs until she was lacerated around her lower parts. Then she went back to the camp. That night Ayas"i lay beside her and desired to cohabit. "No, no!" she said, "I'm too sore. I'm all cut up from my struggles with your oldest son." Ayas'i was surprised. Then she showed him the scratches and wounds, and told him how he had struggled with her in the woods and raped her. So Ayas'i grew bitter against the boy.
The next day a big canoe crowd arrived at the camp, as Ayas'i was a great man and often had visitors from far away. He got the crowd together, and said to them, "Now, to-morrow we will all go to the islands and collect eggs for a great feast for my son, as he wants eggs from the islands." Ayas'i was a great chief, so whatever he said had to be done. The next morning he told his son, "You must come too.'' — "No," said the son, "I don't want any eggs, anyway." But Ayas'i made him go too. So he got his canoe; and they embarked, and paddled toward a big island, Ayas'i at the stern, and the son paddling at the bow. When they saw a big island, the son asked, "Is that the island?" — "Yes," said Ayas'i. Then he blew his breath and blew the island farther ahead. The son could not see his father blowing, and wondered why the island could not be approached.
At last, however, they reached the island when Ayas'i thought they were far enough from home. "Now, go ashore and gather eggs," said Ayas'i. His son began gathering eggs near the shore. "Now go farther up. There are some fine eggs over yon rise. Don't stop so near the shore," said Ayas'i. Every time the son would look behind to see how far he was from the shore, Ayas'i would send him farther inland. Then, when the boy was some distance in, Ayas'i jumped into the canoe and paddled away home. The son called after him, " Father, father, you are leaving me!" — "Well, you have been making a wife of your step-mother," cried Ayas'i; and away he went, leaving his son behind. So the boy was left on the island, and waiulerod about, crying.
One day the boy met a Gull. "O grandchild! what are you doing here alone?" asked the Gull. "My father left me," said the boy. "You won't ever see the mainland again," said the Gull; "but I'll try to take you myself. Get on my back, and I will try." So the boy got on his back, and the Gull tried to fly up. But the boy was too heavy, and the Gull had to turn back. "But go over to the other end of the island, and there you will find your grandfather.* Maybe he can help you," said the Gull.
' Merely a term used in addressing older people.
72 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
So the boy wandered on, crying, and soon came to the other end of the island. There he saw a big Catfish (?). "What are you doing here?" said the Catfish. "My father left me," said the boy. "What do you want?" said the Catfish. "To get ashore to the mainland," said the boy. "Well," said the Catfish, "maybe I can take you over. Is it clear?" (The great Catfish was afraid of the thunder.) — "Yes," said the boy. "Are there no clouds?" asked the Fish. "No," said the boy. "Are you sure? Well, then take a stone in your hand and get on my back. Hold on tight to my horns (the Catfish had two horns on his head) ; and when you find me going too slowly, hammer with the stone, and I'll hurry faster, especially if it begins to look cloudy. Are 3'ou sure there are no clouds? Well, hold on tight, now!" And with this they started like the wind. Every little while the boy would hit the Fish a rap with the stone, and he would go still faster. Soon it began clouding up. "Is it clouding up yet?" asked the Fish. "No," answered the boy, even though he heard thunder. "What's that I hear? Is it thunder?" asked the Fish. "Oh, no!" cried the boy, and hit him harder with the stone.
Just then they reached the mainland; and the boy just had time to jump ashore, when a thunder-bolt came and smashed the Fish to pieces. But the boy got safely ashore, and began wandering about until at last he came to a small wigwam. He walked up and lifted the door-cover. There inside he saw a Fox sitting before a small kettle over the fire. When the Fox saw him, she said, "Well, grandchild, what are you doing here?" — "My father left me," the boy told her. Said the Fox, "I don't think you will ever succeed in getting home, as your father is very tricky and strong. Nevertheless I will try to help you."
In the mean time the boy's mother, the first wife of Ayas'i, felt very bad over the loss of her son. She cried all the time. She would go away in the woods by herself all day and cry; and every night, when she came home, Ayas'i would meet her outside the door and throw embers from the fire on her and burn her. So this went on day after day.
Now, the Fox agreed to help the boy. She transformed herself into a person and guided him along the trail. Soon they came to a place where a lot of hooks (like fish-hooks) were hanging down from the sky. There was no way of getting past without being impaled. Then the Fox turned herself into a small animal, and went up into the sky where the hooks were hung, and jerked them up. She told the boy to jump by when she jerked them up; and he did so, and got safely by.
As they went along farther, they soon came to a place where two monster-dogs were guarding the path. It was very narrow, and there
Some Naskapi Myths from Little Whale River.
were a lot of rocks. The Fox turned herself into a weasel, and turned the boy into another small animal. Then she wriggled in and out among the rocks, and the dogs began barking fiercely. "I'm barking at Ayas'i's son!" cried the dogs. The Fox in her weasel form popped up here and there among the rocks until the dogs were frantic. They barked so much, that their master got angry at them, and came out and killed them for making such a noise about nothing; for every time he looked to see what caused them to bark, he could not see anything. When the dogs were dead, the Fox led the boy through safely. Now, these obstacles were all put along the trail by Ayas'i to prevent his son from getting back.
As the boy and his guide, the Fox, passed on, they soon came to a place where there was a flint stone, rounded on the end, and three- cornered on its sides. Then the Fox-Woman said, "Carry that stone with you, you may need it." So the boy took the stone. Soon they came to a wigwam where lived two women who guarded the way. These women had sharp teeth set in their vulva, with which they killed anybody who cohabited with them. This every one had to do before he could pass them. The Fox-Woman told the boy that he would have to cohabit with these women, but to use the stone. So that night, when they intended to kill him, he used the long stone on them, and broke all the teeth in their vulvas. Then he cohabited with them, and afterward passed safely on. So they started on again.
In the mean time the boy's mother continued her mourning. When she went into the woods, she would hear the little birds singing about her where she lay down. Their song would say, " Mother, I'm coming back." When she first heard it, she thought it was her son returning, and she would look up to meet him; but when she saw it was only little birds, she would cry all the harder. Then, when she would go back to camp at night, Ayas'i would burn her again. At last she be- came so down-hearted that she would pay no attention to the birds, who said, "Mother, I'm coming back."
At last one day the boy, after passing all the trials, did come back; and the Fox- Woman guided him to where his mother lay crying. When he saw her, he cried, "Mother, I'm coming!" but she would not look up, thinking it was only the birds mocking her grief. Then the boy went up to her, and she saw him. He beheld her face, all burnt and scorched. "What has caused your face to be burnt?" he asked. " Your father did it. He says my son will never come back," she replied. "Well," said the son, "Go to camp, and tell Ayas'i that I am back."
So they went along back to the camp. When Ayas'i heard the woman coming again, he jumped up to get coals of fire to throw on her, as usual. "Your son will never come back!" he cried. "Yes,
74 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
he is back now!" Ayas'i was so surprised that he dropped the fire; and when he looked, there stood his son. So the son said to his father, "You have been cruel to me and to my mother, all for nothing. You left me on an island, and I am back. Now I will be cruel to you. You shall creep all the days of your life." So he turned Ayas'i into a frog. He then said to his mother, "You shall be the best-looking bird in the world. People will never kill you. You shall be the robin." And he turned his mother into a robin, the handsomest bird in the world. That is the origin of the frog and the robin. That is the end.
2. THE FOUR WIND BROTHERS.
There were four brothers in a family which lived in a great cave in the earth. Of these four brothers, one was the North, another was the South, another the West, and the other the East. These were the Wind brothers, who made the winds. The West was the youngest of them; the North was the oldest; the South was the next to the oldest; and the East was the next to the West, the youngest. To cause the winds they would stand up, so as to be head above the great hole, and blow. Then the wind would come according to which of the brothers made it, the north, south, east, or west. And so it con- tinued. The West was very wild when he raised a wind. But the oldest, the North, said to him, "No, no! Don't do that! You will raise such high winds that it will destroy the people, the Indians." Then when the youngest, the West, jumped up again to blow a wind, the North would tell him, "No, no! Stop, you will kill our mother!" Well, so they lived, these brothers, causing and regulating the winds of the world.
It happened that the North wind was the softest, and the East wind a little stronger, harder. The South also came with gusts, strong, but not as bad as the West wind, the youngest brother, who was the worst. When these brothers made the winds, they were satisfied with doing just enough not to destroy the people, but tried to manage things rightly. They would say, all of them, "We must try to look after our people, not to destroy them with our winds!"
3. THE GIANT CARRIED OFF BY THE EAGLE.
There was once a giant Beaver who had his house on the top of a great big rock on the shore of a lake. This Beaver was about one hundred feet long, and his cabin was very large. Near him lived a giant man who used to hunt the Beaver, but lived in fear of a monster Eagle who was watching all the time to carry him off. This Eagle was so large that he could pick up the giant as easily as an ordinary eagle could carry off a rat, even though the giant was taller than the largest tree, and broad to suit his height.
Some Naskapi Myths from Little Whale River.
At last the giant's family grew so hungry, that he was compelled to go and hunt : so he took his ice-chisel ^ and went to chisel for the giant Beaver. He drove the Beaver from his nest, and at last cor- nered him and killed him. Then he packed him on his back and started for home. On the way the Eagle saw him coming, swooped down, and picked up both the hunter and his beaver as easily as he would two rabbits. Far up on a rocky mountain he flew with them to where he had his nest, thousands of feet above the valley. His nest was very large and had young eagles in it. When he got there, he began picking the beaver to pieces to feed it to his young eagles. Now, he kept the giant safe in the nest until the beaver was all gone.
In a few days there was nothing left of the beaver, and the Eagle got ready to kill the giant hunter. He rose high in the air, and swooped down to strike the giant with his wings and claws. Then the giant took his chisel and held it blade up, with the hind end braced agapst the ledge, so that when the Eagle swooped he would strike upon it. There it held fast; so that every time the Eagle swooped to strike the giant, he struck upon the chisel and cut his breast. After several trials the Eagle fell over dead into the nest.
Now, the giant was free from his captor, but could not get down from the nest on the cliff. He killed the young eagles. At last an idea came to him as to how to save himself. He cut the Eagle open down the breast and crawled inside. The idea came to him to shove off the cliff, and that the Eagle's wings and body would break his fall. So he pushed off, and down they went a mile through the air. He landed heavily, but was not hurt. He looked around to see where he was, and soon started for home. He had a long way to go, the Eagle had carried him so far.
In the mean time, when the giant's family found that he did not return the day he went for beaver, they started out to track him. They trailed him to where he had killed the Beaver, and farther, soon coming to a place where his tracks ended suddenly, as though he had been picked up. Here they gave up and went back to their camp. Said one of the old men, "Our son must have been carried away by some creature. We must help him all we can by our thoughts." So they waited and "wished" for his safe return. At last, after a few days, the giant arrived, and told his adventures; but the old man said, "It was not your cunning or strength that saved you, but the strength of our thoughts."
4. THE SNOW MAN.
An Indian was travelling in the winter-time; and the snow was
soft and slushy, as the weather had grown warm. He was wading
' The ice-chisel is made by attaching a bone, or nowadays a metal blade, to a pole of sufficient length.
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through the slush on his journey. The walking was so bad that he grew angrier as he proceeded. At last he came to a lake, and found that it was covered with water on the ice, and he had to wade through it. As he got wetter, he grew still angrier; and he exclaimed at last, "Why does the North Man do this? Why doesn't he send good winter weather?"
At last he came to a portage at the other end of the lake. As he started on the portage, he saw a man all in white standing before him. At first he did not know who it could be; but as he came closer, he discovered that it was a Snow Man. He had been feeling very angry as he came along, and the Snow Man saw how cross he looked. When the hunter came close, the Snow Man said, "What is the matter?" Then the hunter replied, "Such terrible slush and melting weather! The North Man is no good." Then the Snow Man said, "I can't do anything for you now; but some time I will try to help you." — "All right," said the hunter. The Snow Man disappeared, and the hunter went on with his journey.
The spring came, and warm weather. The lake melted and broke up. Then the hunter thought to himself, "I wonder what the Snow Man meant when he said he would help me ! " He began to hunt, and saved the grease from the animals he killed, and put it all in bladders. He made a big camp and cut lots of wood, and kept piling up wood and storing grease all summer and fall, for he thought the Snow Man had meant something serious by what he had said.
When fall was over, the weather began to grow cold, and the snow season commenced. It snowed and snowed, and drifted in great masses around his camp and over the wigwam. So the winter went on colder and colder, until one day the Snow Man came to the camp. He found the hunter sitting by his fire. " How do you find the weather now?" said the Snow Man. "All right," replied the hunter. The Snow Man staid, and the cold increased and the snow drifted higher. The hunter kept putting wood on the fire, and pouring grease on it, to make it burn stronger. By and by the Snow Man again asked the hunter, "How do you like the weather now?" — "All right," answered the hunter, as before. He had really had enough cold weather, but he would not give in. He stood the cold well, because he had plenty of provisions, wood, and grease. He used these and piled wood on his fire, making the wigwam hotter and hotter.
At last the Snow Man could stand it no longer, for he was com- mencing to melt. Soon he had to go away. But before he went, he told the hunter, "You are a stronger man than I am. You have conquered me, and now I will leave." After that he