Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/60

54 the Dorgai. They valiantly armed themselves, but when the fly was followed by the Dorgai they took to their heels, as the others had done before, with the exception of one man named Bu. This warrior remained in the kwod, or bachelors’ quarters, and armed himself with a bow and arrow, the arrow being of a pattern named skŭri (4). When the Dorgai arrived Bu shot her in the stomach, which was ripped open by the well-aimed arrow, and thus she was at last killed.

The Kerpai people, however, brutally murdered Bu by piercing him through the eyes (5). They are both now in the sky, the Dorgai going first, being continually followed by Bu.

A long time ago, in a village on the lee side of Mabuiag, a young girl cried in the night for food, but her mother either would not or could not give her anything to eat. Attracted by the continual crying, a Dorgai came out from the bush, entered the house, stole away the girl, and killed her. When morning came the mother called together all her male friends and told what had happened in the night; the men armed themselves with every variety of weapon, even taking their dugong harpoons, and hurried into the bush to look for the Dorgai. They found her sitting asleep with the dead girl on her lap; the men tried to kill the Dorgai, but she was proof against their weapons, and sank into the ground; they seized an arm and hand and pulled, till at length the arm was severed from the trunk of the Dorgai. The men washed the arm and hung it up to dry, but in the night the Dorgai came and carried it away; hence the single hand in the constellation into which the Dorgai was transformed.