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QuoteReplyTopic: Folk Lore Posted: 09-Apr-2006 at 01:59
I have been surfing this forum for a few weeks.I'm not historically aware but wanted to contribute something.
Here is one of my favourite folk-tales.
Learning How to Make Love
This couple couldn't figure it out. The man licked his wife's genitals while she stared straight ahead. The woman poked her husband's testicles with her nose. The man put his toe in the folds of the woman's vulva. The woman took the man's penis under her armpit. Neither one of them wanted to be the first to admit something was off. So it went on -- the man put his finger in his wife's navel. The woman batted her eyelashes against the arch of her husband's foot. They pinched each other's earlobes. They bit each other's rear ends. To perpetrate the lie, they ended each encounter with a deep sigh. Then one day while the husband was hunting, a man stopped by the igloo and said to the wife: I hear you have been having trouble. I can show you how to make love. He took her to bed and left before the husband came home. Then the wife showed her husband, careful to make it seem like the idea sprang from both. After all these years of rubbing one's face against the other's belly or stroking a male elbow behind a female knee, this couple had a lot of catching up to do. They couldn't stop to eat or sleep and grew so skinny they died. No one found them for a long time. And by then, their two skeletons were fused into one.
If you would like to read more Inuit folk-tales please visit the webpage.
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
Once long ago, Man went hunting along the water's edge for seals. To Man's delight, many seals were crowded together along the seashore. He would certainly bring home a great feast for Woman and Son. He crept cautiously towards the seals. The seals grew restless. Man slowed down. Suddenly, the seals began to slip into the water. Man was frantic. His feast was getting away.
Then Man saw a single seal towards the back of the group. It was not moving as quickly as the others. Ah! Here was his prize. He imagined the pride on Woman's face, the joy in Son's eyes. Their bellies would be filled for many days from such a seal.
Man crept towards the last seal. It did not see him, or so Man thought. Suddenly, it sprang away and slipped into the water. Man rose to his feet. He was filled with a strange emotion. He felt water begin to drip from his eyes. He touched his eyes and tasted the drops. Yes, they tasted like salty water. Strange choking sounds were coming from his mouth and chest.
Son heard the cries of Man and called Woman. They ran to the seashore to find out what was wrong with Man. Woman and Son were alarmed to see water flowing out of Man's eyes.
Man told them about the shore filled with seals. He told how he had hunted them, and how every seal had escaped his knife. As he spoke, water began to flow from the eyes of Woman and Son, and they cried with Man. In this way, people first learned to weep.
Later, Man and Son hunted a seal together. They killed it and used its skin to make snares for more seals.
http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/ak.html
Originally posted by Spartakus
Nice!
Would you like to share a folktale from Greece Spartakus.
Inuit would be a better word dirtnap.Would you like to share an original Folk Tale from Australia.
Herez another Inuit Folk Tale
THE MAGIC BEAR
Native American (Inuit)
Once there lived an old couple who did not have any children. The woman was thin and wrinkled, yet this couple still hoped to have a child somehow. One day, after he had killed an ice-bear, the old man took some of the blood and passed his hands over it, singing:
"Blood be flesh flesh be fur dear bear, dear bear, come alive to me ..."
At which point the blood turned into a little bear. The old couple fondled it, fed it, and took it into their sleeping skins with them. At length it was able to hunt harbor seals for its house-parents. Then it went after ringed seals. Once it even brought back a walrus. At last there came a day when the old man asked it to bring back an ice-bear. He said he liked nothing better than a big fresh slab of ice-bear meat. The bear was very upset by this, for it did not want to hunt a fellow creature. But the old man insisted, saying: "I am the house-father here. And you must do as I say."
And so the bear went off and brought back a big she-bear, which the old couple cut up into steaks. They ate these steaks that same night. After dinner, the bear left the house and did not return in the morning. Nor did it return the next morning. Both man and woman sang:
"Flesh of our flesh blood of our blood dear bear, dear bear come back home to us ..."
But the bear did not come back. The old people sang and wept and, in a short while, died.
"Ataataak unikkaaqtualaurit. Father, tell me a story."
"Taitsumaniguuq," he began, "there lived a heroic man who's name was Kiviuq."
Oh goody, I thought, Kiviuq was my favourite story character. Though the story has many versions, the beauty of Kiviuq was that he could and would adapt to anyone's storytelling style. In some stories, he has supernatural powers, and he always came into conflict with evil beings both human and animal.
Then again, he was a bit of a trickster figure, and could come into conflict with just about any entities who happened to be around. But it was the monster stories that were best.
We were at spring camp and it was warm enough to move into a tent. I, being the eldest child, was near the far wall, and I could entertain myself by staring at the white canvas, which had interesting spots.
I could pretend that the patterns on it were story characters, and "move" them around as they were silouetted against the white of the canvas tent. So, as my father spoke, the story came to life in my eyes as well as in my ears.
"Kiviuq was a powerful man," he said, "and had travelled to many strange places. He was powerful, but not as great as Iqimarasuqjuqjuaq" (an Ancient who's name has lost its meaning due to it's archaic nature) "and he fell into trouble from time to time."
"Kiviuq was kayaking that day when he came across a little island which seemed something like a small, waterbound peninsula. Having been on the search for a wife for a long time now, he thought there might be women about, and wasted no time in landing his kayak. He hid it in a safe place and continued in on foot. His seal-skin boots were soon full of holes from walking on the pebbly ground by the shore.
"Not only were his clothes in bad need of repair, but he was starving, having paddled on the sea for many days. It was then a welcome sight when he noticed a trail of smoke rising over a little hill. Not believing his good luck, he decided to be cautious and peered from behind a rock.
"To his amazement, there stood a beautiful woman, the likes of which he had never seen before. She had long, shocking white hair, and was tall and slender. She was hanging some skins on a line attached to her tent, and wonders of wonders was cooking a large pot of caribou stew over a welcoming fire!
"Kiviuq wasted no time and immediately limped down to the tent, playing a tired exhausted hunter for all it was worth.
"'Lovely woman, don't be afraid, I'm not a ghost,' he said by way of introduction. 'I've been washed up on these shores and I have not seen land for a many a day. Please take pity on this poor man and be so kind as to give me just a little stew. That is all I need.'
"He didn't have to beg so hard, as the lovely vision of a woman said in the faintest of voices, 'Welcome to my humble home. I live alone and human company would be refreshing, after all.'
"Thus it was that Kiviuq began living with the white-haired, beautiful woman. It was not a bad life being waited on hand and foot, but soon Kiviuq began to feel uneasy about the whole situation. He could not exactly pinpoint any problems, but it was a feeling that gnawed at the edge of his happiness.
"'So what,' Kiviuq said to himself, 'that she is a little strange and has some eccentric habits.' Every couple of weeks or so, she would insist on hunting by herself at night, and would arrive in the wee hours of the morning looking not like herself at all; in fact, a bit... disheveled.
"That, Kiviuq didn't mind so much. When she returned from such hunts, however, she would kind of smell funny, like she had been eating old meat. Again, Kiviuq was ready to endure all for the sake of living in peace. 'I'll get used to the smell,' he thought, 'after all, I'm a little strange myself.'
"It was only when these peaceful times began to deteriorate that Kiviuq was beginning to doubt his sanity. His wife, the beautiful woman, began to have times when she would launch into a temper tantrum and decry Kiviuq's abilities as a provider and capable man. 'What kind of man are you,' she would scream, 'that you send your wife out to feed you? You're like a monster, and you smell of sweat!'
"Kiviuq kept quiet, but each time the verbal abuse became sharper and just plain strange. Once, Kiviuq swore that he heard a sound like a high-pitched squeal in one of her tirades more like the sound a small animal would make when threatened.
"'Uakallangaa, I've got to do something,' he thought to himself, 'and I've got to do it soon. All this lying around and being treated like dirt is getting to me.'
"One day, while he was cogitating upon his lot in life , he thought he saw scratchings in front of the tent that he hadn't noticed before.
'And why,' he asked himself, 'does she always hang skins outside, even on a bad day? Oh, of course!' he cried in his Kiviuq logic. 'How could I have been such an idiot! She loves another! Why didn't I see it all before? That is who is giving her all those animal pelts.'
"He then hatched a plot to spy on her and follow her the next time she went 'hunting.'
"So it was that, one evening, Kiviuq pretended to fall asleep even faking a loud snore for good measure. He thought himself to be quite clever. 'You have to wake up pretty early to pull one over on old Kiviuq,' he chuckled to himself. 'Wait till she sees what I have in store!' He then lay on the smelly bed, keeping one eye open to launch his plan.
"One night he got lucky. His wife had gone out of the tent 'for a pee' and hadn't seemed to return. Peeking outside, he spotted no sign of life. Not even a slight breeze came up on that early fall night. It seemed that not only had Kiviuq's wife left, but she had taken a whole load of furs previously hanging on the line. 'Don't tell me she's leaving permanently this time,' Kiviuq growled. 'Women!'
"Kiviuq followed her tracks, which were visible on some sandy part of the ground. Oddly, there seemed to be an animal either with her or following her, as he began to see some strange footprints mingled with hers. 'What the... !?!' Kiviuq muttered a few curses to himself. 'This can't be happening.' Suddenly, the woman's tracks had vanished into thin air."
This was the part of this story that I had been waiting for, the part that came with sound effects and funny voices.
"'Either this lady can fly, or I'm going crazy.' Kiviuq doubted his sanity. Nevertheless, he followed what was left of the tracks to arrive at what seemed to be a small gathering of people.
Actually, what he could see through the fine mist that had risen up from the ground made it difficult for him to see shapes . The mist also had the strange effect of muffling the people's voices. Kiviuq thought he heard a cough, but it was someone who seemed to have laughed at another's joke.
"'Ha, ha, cough, ha, ha that's a funny one,' he heard. 'But you know what's funnier? What's funnier is how their children look when they're born. They look like overgrown lemming cubs, all hairless and blind! Ha, ha, ha, bark, bark!'
"'Good grief!' Kiviuq barely managed to exhale in breathless terror. 'These are animals! Animals who were talking!
And, there, right in the thick of it all, was his wife. Only, she was not in a shape that Kiviuq was accustomed to. She looked kind of like a fox but only bigger. Who could mistake those beautiful, hazel eyes, and that lovely, white hair? But her mouth: it was no longer human, but canine. And to complete the effect, her voice had become high-pitched and gravely.
"'Ka, ka, ka, ka, kaw! Ka, ka, ka, ka, kaw! Ka, ka, cough, ka, kaa, ka, kaa...'
"Then they turned, and they saw him. Kiviuq fled.
"'Bark, bark! A human! Yip, yip, yip, yiiiiiii...!'
"'Kaa, ka, ka, ka-ooooww, come bacck! Kaa, kaa, kaa, cooommme seeee your son, yip-yip-yiiiip!'
"Kiviuq prided himself as a brave man, but he ran hard, refusing to look behind him. He ran until he could no longer hear that voice, the voice that he knew so well as belonging to his beautiful wife, but that was also the voice of a fox.
He ran until he was out of breath, finally leaning against a rock to get his bearings. He had run so hard that sweat was streaming down his face, mingled with tears. His tears were salty and tasted like the sea that he had had to prowl for many a lonely night.
"He left in his kayak that very night, and before long, the mist obliterated the island that had been his home, leaving nothing but grey clouds on the horizon. Ahead, a small shaft of light from the setting sun once more became a lure to him, and promised adventures to come.
"And that's the end of the story," my father said.
"It can't be," I protested, still wide awake.
"Why not?"
"Well, Kiviuq can't kayaktuq forever. Where did he end up?"
My father knew where I was going with this. He sighed, "Aren't you getting sleepy?"
"Uh, sure, but I want to know where he went next. He met... the Spider Woman next, didn't he?"
Kiviuq would have stayed and looked into becoming a wolf... He certainly would never have run from the likes of these creatures...
Knowing the Spider Woman loves to sever the heads of the unsuspecting guest, our hero Kiviuq made his way to her island cave where he snuck upon her and cut off all of her arms and legs with his sword and as she cried in pain she asked "how did you know I was going to kill you?"
"Because you are not dealing with an ignorant or frightened fool. I have heard enough of your legendary inuendo's and threats. You have become so large you have not recognize how exposed your limbs have become. I will leave you to your own end but if you want to play with me further, I will finish you." Kiviuq said with such true conviction the spider trembled in what was her first taste of real fear...
The wounded spider lay silent as Kiviuq left the cave and launched his kayak, headed back to fox island carrying eight spider limbs as gifts or bait...
Claas
Schlaschenschlinger was a wealthy cobbler living on New Street in New
Amsterdam. He was a contented bachelor who could afford eight - eight
mind you! - pairs of breeches and he had a little side business selling
geese. He cut quite a figure in New Amsterdam society, and was happy
being single, until he met the fair Anitje! She was as pretty as a
picture, and Claas fell head over heels for her. He was not her only
suitor, by any means. The local burgomaster was also courting the fair
Anitje. But the burgomaster was a stingy, hard man, and in the end,
Anitje gave her heart and hand to Claas.
At first, Claas and
Anitje were very happy and prosperous, raising geese and children. But
the burgomaster was a vengeful sort of fellow, who began a series of
"improvements" to the local neighborhood, charging highly for each one,
until all their money was gone. The arrival of a blacksmith who repaired
shoes with hob nails, so that the shoes lasted a year or more, left
Claas, Anitje and their six children as poor as church mice.
Christmas
Eve found the Schlaschenschlinger family down to their last, cold meal
of bread and cheese. Claas was wondering what he had left to sell, in
order to feed his family. Then he remembered a fine pipe that he had
found in one of his stockings on a long ago Christmas morning in
Holland. It was a fine pipe, too good for a mere cobbler. Claas knew
even then that such a gift could only be from Saint Nicholas himself.
Claas
leapt up and went to dig through an old chest until he found the pipe.
As he unearthed it from under a pile of clothes, a draft of cold air
came from the open front door. Claas scolded his children for playing
with the door and went to close it, but found the doorway filled by the
merry, round figure of a stranger.
"Thank you, thank you, I will
come in out of the cold," said the man, stomping in the door and taking
a seat by the poor excuse for a fire that blazed in the hearth.
The
family gathered around the white bearded old fellow as he tried to warm
himself. He scolded them roundly for not keeping the fire hot, and when
Claas admitted that they had nothing left to burn, the old man broke
his fine rosewood cane in two and threw it on the fire. The cane blazed
up merrily, heating the whole room, and singeing the hair of the cat,
which leapt away with a yowl of indignation, making everyone laugh. It
was hard to be sober around this merry old man, who made sly jokes, told
riddles, and sang songs.
After sitting for half an hour with the family, the old man began rubbing his stomach and gazing wistfully at the cupboard.
"Might there be a bite to eat for an old man on this Christmas Eve?" he asked Anitje.
She blushed in shame and admitted there was nothing left in their cupboard.
"Nothing?" said he, "Then what about that fine goose right there?"
Anitje
gasped, for suddenly the smell of a tenderly roasted goose filled the
room. She ran to the cupboard, and there was a huge goose on a platter!
She also found pies and cakes and bread and many other good things to
eat and drink. The little boys and girls shouted in delight, and the
whole family feasted merrily, with the little white bearded old man
seated at the head of the table. As they ate, Claas showed the old man
the pipe he meant to sell.
"Why that pipe is a lucky pipe," said
the old man, examining it closely. "Smoked by John Calvin himself, if I
am not mistaken. You should keep this pipe all your days and hand it
down to your children."
Finally, the church bells tolled
midnight, and the little old man cried: "Midnight! I must be off!" Claas
and Anitje begged him to stay and spend Christmas with them, but, he
just smile merrily at them and strode over to the chimney. "A Merry
Christmas to you all, and a Happy New Year!" he cried. And then he
disappeared. Ever afterwards, Anitje and her daughters claimed they saw
him go straight up the chimney, while Claas and the boys thought he
kicked up the ashes and disappeared out the door.
The next
morning, when Anitje was sweeping the fireplace, she found a huge bag
full of silver, bearing the words "A Gift from Saint Nicholas". Outside
the house, there arose a clamor of voices. When Claas and Anitje went to
investigate, they discovered their wooden house was now made of brick!
At
first, the townsfolk thought they were in league with a wizard, but
when Claas told them the story and showed them the new possessions and
riches left to them by the old man, they made him the town alderman.
The
transformed "Dutch House" remained a landmark for many years following
the death of Claas and Anitje, until the British tore it down to make
way for improvements in the neighborhood.
One
rainy autumn, a traveler got lost in the mountains of Arkansas. He was
tired and hungry, and so was his horse. Night was approaching. All at
once, he saw a cabin. A squatter sat on the porch fiddling the same tune
over and over.
The traveler asked the squatter for food and
water for himself and his horse. The squatter replied: "Ain't got a
thing in the house."
The traveler asked where the next house was. The squatter said: "Dunno. I ain't never been there."
The
frustrated traveler asked if he could spend the night. The squatter
replied: "House leaks. My wife and me sleep on the only dry spot."
"Why don't you mend the roof?" asked the traveler.
"Can't mend the roof on a rainy day."
The whole time, the squatter continued to fiddle the same tune, over and over.
The traveler snapped: "Why don't you finish that tune?"
"Can't get the turn of the tune."
The traveler took the fiddle, played the turn of the tune and finished it.
"Stranger,"
said the squatter, "Grab yerself a chair and set down. Sal, cut a hunk
outta that deer and cook it. Son, get the whisky and put the horse in
the shed. You jest play away, stranger. Tonight, you can sleep on the
dry spot!"
There
once lived an armadillo who loved music more than anything else in the
world. After every rainfall, the armadillo would drag his shell over to
the large pond filled with frogs and he would listen to the big green
frogs singing back and forth, back and forth to each other in the most
amazing voices.
"Oh," thought the armadillo, "Oh how I wish I could sing."
The
armadillo would creep to the edge of the water and watch the frogs
leaping and swimming in a frantic green ballet, and they would call back
and forth, back and forth in beautiful, musical tones. He loved to
listen to the music they made as they spoke, though he didn't understand
their words; which was just as well - for the frogs were laughing at
this funny animal that wanted so badly to sing like a frog.
"Don't be ridiculous," sang the frogs as they played. "Armadillos can't sing."
Then
one day a family of crickets moved into a new house near the armadillo,
and he was amazed to hear them chirp and sing as merrily as the frogs.
He would creep next to their house and listen and listen all day, all
night for their musical sounds.
"Oh," sighed the armadillo, "Oh how I wish I could sing."
"Don't be ridiculous," sang the crickets in their dulcet tones. "Armadillos can't sing."
But
the armadillo could not understand their language, and so he just
sighed with longing and listened to their beautiful voices laughing at
him.
Then one day a man came down the road carrying a cage full
of canaries. They were chirping and flittering and singing songs that
were more beautiful even than those of the crickets and the frogs. The
armadillo was entranced. He followed the man with the cage down the road
as fast as his little legs would carry him, listening to the canaries
singing.
"Oh," gasped the armadillo, "Oh how I wish I could sing."
Inside the cage, the canaries twittered and giggled.
"Don't be ridiculous," sang the canaries as they flapped about. "Armadillos can't sing."
The
poor tired armadillo couldn't keep up with the man and the cage, and
finally he fell exhausted at the door of the great wizard who lived in
the area. Realizing where he was, the armadillo decided to beg a boon of
the man.
Timidly, the armadillo approached the wizard, who was
sitting in front of his house and said: "Great wizard, it is my deepest
desire to learn to sing like the frogs and the crickets and the
canaries."
The wizard's lips twitched a little in amusement, for
who had ever heard of an armadillo that could sing. But he realized that
the little animal was serious. He bent low to the ground and looked the
creature in the eye.
"I can make you sing, little armadillo," he said. "But you do not want to pay the price, for it will mean your death."
"You mean if I die I will be able to sing?" asked the armadillo in amazement.
"Yes, this is so," said the wizard.
"Then I want to die right now!" said the armadillo. "I would do anything to be able to sing!"
The
wizard and the armadillo discussed the matter for many hours, for the
wizard was reluctant to take the life of such a fine armadillo. But the
creature insisted, and so the wizard finally killed the armadillo, made a
wonderful musical instrument from his shell, and gave it to the finest
musician in the town to play.
Sometimes the musician would play
his instrument by the pond where the frogs lived, and they would stare
at him with big eyes and say: "Ai! Ai! The armadillo has learned to
sing."
Sometimes the musician would play his instrument by the
house where the crickets lived, and they would creep outside to stare at
him with big eyes and say: "Ai! Ai! The armadillo has learned to sing."
And often the musician would visit the home of his friend who
owned the cage full of canaries - who was also a musician - and the two
men would play their instruments together while the little birds watched
with fluttering wings and twittered in amazement: "Ai! Ai! The
armadillo has learned to sing."
And so it was. The armadillo had
learned to sing at last, and his voice was the finest in the land. But
like the very best musicians in the world, the armadillo sacrificed his
Life for his Art.
A
man and his family were constantly on the move, hunting for beaver.
They traveled from lake to lake, stream to stream, never staying any
place long enough for it to become a home. The woman sometimes silently
wished that they would find a village and settle down somewhere with
their little baby, but her husband was restless, and so they kept
moving.
One evening, after setting up camp on a large lake,
the young mother went out to net some beaver, carrying her baby upon her
back. When she had a toboggan full of beaver meat, she started back to
camp. As she walked through the darkening evening, she heard the
thump-thump-thump of mighty footsteps coming from somewhere behind her.
She stopped; her heart pounding. She was being followed by something
very large. Her hands trembled as she thought of the meat she was
dragging behind her. The creature must have smelled the meat and was
stalking the smell.
Afraid to turn around and alert the beast,
she bent over as if to pick something off the snowy path and glanced
quickly past her legs. Striding boldly through the snowy landscape was a
tall, barrel-shaped, long-haired creature with huge tusks and a very
long trunk. It was a tix - a mammoth - and it looked hungry. She
straightened quickly and hurriedly threw the meat into the snow. Then
she ran as fast as she could back to camp, dragging the toboggan behind
her. Her little baby cried out fearfully, frightened by all the
jostling, but she did not stop to comfort him until she was safe inside
their shelter.
She told her husband at once about the terrible
mammoth that had stalked her and taken the beaver meat. Her husband
shook his head and told her she was dreaming. Everyone knew that the
mammoth had all died away. Then he light-heartedly accused her of giving
the meat away to a handsome sweetheart. She denied it resentfully,
knowing that he really believed that she had carelessly overturned the
toboggan and had let the meat sink beneath the icy waters of the lake.
After
her husband went to set more beaver nets, she prepared the evening
meal. While it was cooking over the fire, she walked all around the
camp, making sure that there was an escape route through the
willow-brush just in case the hungry mammoth attacked them in the night.
The husband and wife lay down to sleep next to the fire after
they finished the evening meal. The husband chuckled when he saw that
his wife kept her moccasins on and the baby clutched in her arms.
"Expecting the mammoth to attack us?" he asked jovially. She nodded, and
he laughed aloud at her. Soon he was asleep, but the woman lay awake
for a long time, listening.
The wife was awakened from a light
doze around midnight by the harsh sounds of the mammoth approaching.
"Husband," she shouted, shaking him. He opened his eyes grumpily and
demanded an explanation. She tried to tell him that the hungry mammoth
was coming to eat them, but he told her she was having a nightmare and
would not listen. The wife begged and pleaded and tried to drag him away
with her, but he resisted and finally shouted at her to begone if she
was afraid. In despair, she clutched her little child to her chest and
ran away from the camp.
As she fled, she heard the harsh roar of
the giant creature and the sudden shout of her husband as he came face
to face with the creature. Then there was silence, and the woman knew
her husband was dead. Weeping, she fled with her child, seeking a
village that she had heard was nearby. Sometime in the early hours of
the morning, she heard the thump-thump-thump of the creature's massive
feet stomping through the snow-fields, following her trail.
Occasionally, it made a wailing sound like that of a baby crying.
The
woman kept jogging along, comforting her little baby as best she could.
As light dawned, she saw a camp full of people who were living on the
shores of an island on the lake. She crossed the icy expanse as quickly
as possible and warned the people of the fierce mammoth that had killed
her husband. The warriors quickly went out onto the ice and made many
holes around the edges of their village, weakening the ice so that the
mammoth would fall through and drown.
As evening approached, the
people saw the mammoth coming toward them across the ice. When it
neared their camp on the island, the creature plunged through the
weakened ice. Everyone cheered, thinking that the animal had drowned.
Then its large hairy head emerged out of the water and it shook its long
tusks and bellowed in rage. The mammoth started walking along the
bottom of the lake, brushing aside the ice with his large tusks.
The
people panicked. They screamed and ran in circles, and some of them
stood frozen in place, staring as the mammoth emerged from the ice and
walked up onto the banks of the island. The wife of the eaten man fled
with her baby, urging as many of her new-found friends as she could
reach, to flee with her. But many remained behind, paralyzed with fear.
Then
a boy emerged from one of the shelters, curious to know what was
causing everyone to scream in fear. He wore the bladder of a moose over
his head, covering his hair so that he looked bald. He was a strange
lad, and was shunned by the locals. Only his grandmother knew that he
was a mighty shaman with magic trousers and magic arrows that could kill
any living beast.
When the boy saw the hungry, angry mammoth,
he called out to his grandmother to fetch the magic trousers and the
magic arrows. Donning his clothing, he shook his head until the bladder
burst and his long hair fell down to his waist. Then he took his magic
bow and arrows and leapt in front of the frightened people and began
peppering the beast with arrows, first from one side and then the other.
The mammoth roared and weaved and tried to attack the boy, but the
shaman's magic was powerful, and soon the beast lay dead upon the
ground.
Then those who fled from the mammoth returned to the
camp, led by the poor widow and her baby. The people whose lives had
been saved by the bladder-headed boy gave a cheer and gathered in
excitement around the boy. In gratitude, the people made the shaman
their chief and offered him two beautiful girls to be his wives, though
he accepted only one of them. The widow and her baby were welcomed into
the tribe, and a few months later she married a brave warrior who became
close friends with the shaman-become-chief.
And from that day to this, the people have always had chiefs to lead them, and no mammoths have troubled them again.
There
once was an evil priest who did not fear God or man. His duties for the
church included counting the offerings and ringing the bells to summon
people to Mass. But his heart was filled with greed, and he began to
take advantage of the good people of his parish. The priest stole money
out of the offerings to keep for himself, and when he had filled a chest
full of gold, he killed a man and buried him with the chest so the
murdered man's ghost would guard it. Anyone who tried to dig for the
treasure would be devoured by the skeleton of the murdered man.
The
evil priest planned to return to Spain with his ill-gotten treasure,
but he fell ill with a fever a week before his ship was scheduled to
leave. On his deathbed, the priest repented of his crime. He swore to
his confessor that his soul would not rest until he returned the gold to
God. The priest died before he could reveal the place where the
treasure was buried. As he gasped out his last breath, he said: "Follow
the bells. They will lead you to the treasure."
The Padre who
attended the dying priest did not heed his words. But the sweeper who
was working in the hallway at the time of the evil priest's death was
struck by the notion of buried treasure. He was very poor and wanted a
better life for himself and his family, so the sweeper determined to
take the treasure for himself. Each night for a week, he took a shovel
and dug in the monastery gardens, searching for the priests treasure. He
found nothing.
One night the sweeper was awakened from his
dreams by the sound of the parish bells ringing out loudly in the
darkness. He leapt to his feet, fearing some emergency, and then
realized that his wife and children had not stirred in their beds.
Remembering the evil priest's last words, the sweeper felt sure that the
mysterious ringing of the bells was for his ears alone, to lead him to
the treasure.
Taking his shovel, the sweeper followed the sound
of the church bells up and up into the hills. He was gasping for breath
when he reached the source of the sound. He was on a wide ledge
overlooking the valley. Two trees guarded the spot, and it was beside
these trees that the glowing, ghostly church bells hovered. Taking his
shovel, the poor sweeper dug a deep hole among the roots of the trees.
After several moments, his shovel hit something hard! Eagerly, he swept
the dirt away from the object and found a small chest. He hauled it out
of the ditch with trembling hands, placed it on a rock, and broke the
lock with the edge of his shovel. when he opened it, piles of yellow
gold met his dazzled eyes. He gathered up a handful of coins, reveling
in the weight of so much money. The coins were cool to his touch, and he
felt the smoothness of the metal as he rubbed the coins between his
fingers. And that was when he heard the moaning...
Looking up,
the sweeper saw the skeleton of the murdered man whom the evil priest
had buried with the treasure. It was rising out of the pit under the
trees, eye sockets glowing with blue flames. "Mine," the skeleton
intoned, stretching its bony arms toward the sweeper. "Mine!"
The
sweeper screamed in terror and leapt away from the box of treasure,
dropping the coins that he held in his hands. He ran down the hill as
fast as he could go, the skeleton in hot pursuit. Behind him, the bells
began to ring again as he fled for his life from the ledge.
The
sweeper kept running long after the sounds of pursuit ceased, and did
not stop until he reached his home. It was only then that he realized he
had left his shovel back with the buried treasure on top of the hill.
it was an expensive shovel and he could not afford to lose it.
Waiting
until daylight, the sweeper went reluctantly back up into the hills to
retrieve it. When he reached the ledge, there was no sign of the
skeleton, the chest of money, or the hole he had dug the night before.
He found his shovel at the top of a tall tree whose first branches began
nearly twenty feet above his head. The skeleton must have placed it
there after it chased him down the hill, he decided grimly, knowing that
there was no way he could retrieve it.
Turning sadly away, the
sweeper's eye was caught by a gleam in the bushes near the rock where he
had placed the treasure chest the night before. Carefully, keeping his
eye on the place where the skeleton lay buried, the sweeper felt around
the rock until his hand closed on two gold coins that the ghost had
missed. Casually he put the coins in his pocket and hurried from the
ledge. When he got home, the sweeper put the coins into a sock and hid
it under the floorboard for safekeeping.
The sweeper never went
back to the ledge to retrieve the evil priest's buried treasure, though
sometimes he was still awakened by the mysterious sound of the bells. He
knew it would take someone more pious than himself to banish the ghost
of the murdered man and reclaim the money for God. But he did use the
gold coins to send his eldest son to school, and with the left-over
change, he bought himself a new shovel.
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