1894-95. | THREE CARRIER MYTHS. 23

tree. Immediately he set upon striking it with a stick, repeating the
words he had heard his wife utter.

Soon enough the beautiful young man white as daylight made his
appearance, fell down upon the disguised husband and played with him
as one would with a woman. He was trying to know him!, when the
husband cut his head and testicles off with a knife he had kept concealed
in his bosom?. The head was no sooner separated from the trunk than
it was changed into a red woodpecker’s scalp. Then he scraped off a
great quantity of sap. When he had filled up his tcatyay therewith, he
hid among the shavings of the ’kermih what he had torn from the day-
light young man.

Home again, he presented his wife with the whole, saying: “See what
a load of sap | have brought you. Eat it.” She therefore began to eat
of the ’kermih, suspecting nothing. But as soon as she had seen the red
woodpecker’s scalp, she hung down her head, refused to eat any more and
commenced to weep. ‘What ails you?? Why weep you?” asked her
husband. But she answered not and continued weeping.

At the same time columns of smoke were seen all around and tongues
of fire appeared on all sides. They soon concentrated themselves to-
wards the point where the couple stood. Very many men perished by
fire; only a few escaped.

Meanwhile the red-headed woodpecker! was flying to and fro amidst
the smoke and flames repeating its usual cry: ¢can/ tcan!® This caused
a few drops of rain to fall which, however, had no marked effect on the
conflagration. Then he was heard to say: “Let the scalp of my cousin®

be given back to me!” For a time people did not know what he meant.
At last some one remarked: “Since he wants his cousin’s scalp, let it be
thrown up’ to him!” Therefore, while the little woodpecker was flying

amidst the flames, the red woodpecker’s head’ was thrown up to him.

A shower fell at once, which soon extinguished the fire. But in his

1T—n the Biblical sense of the word.

2Tn the Carrier mythology, weapons carried in the bosom are always for a nefarious purpose
See first legend, p. 4, also ‘* Notes on the Western Dénés,” p. 52.

8 Témga? lit., ‘* What are you feeling?”

4 Melanerpes erythrocephalus ; in Carrier, ¢sél’kan, ‘¢red-head.”

5 Zcan, which to the native ear represents that bird’s cry, means ‘‘rain” in Carrier.

6 7.¢,, the red woodpecker (Sphyrapicus varius ).

™To throw to and present with are rendered by the same word in Carrier.

8 The similarity of names renders this part of the myth rather obscure in English, This is
not the case in Carrier, where the smaller woodpecker is called fsé/’kan, whilst its ‘‘ cousin” goes
by the name of Z7¢z77.