Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/65

Rh of headless flying foxes, and to his great surprise saw, instead of them, a row of men sitting on his log. He then bit off the heads of the two remaining flying foxes and saw them transformed into men. Budzi said to the men, “You are my men now I’ve got a lot of daughters at home, you shall have them and stay along with me”; so they all went off to Budzi’s house, which lay to windward (i.e., to the east or south-east). Budzi gave his eldest daughters to Mutuk and the chief, and the rest fell to the lot of the other men (6). That night, as soon as Budzi was asleep, Mutuk said to his wife, “You come along—we no stop here,” and all the men departed with their wives and went a long way in the darkness.

In the morning, when Budzi woke, he found his hut empty; he rubbed his eyes and looked again, but saw no traces of his daughters or their husbands; outside he easily found their tracks, and immediately followed them. On coming up with the fugitives he asked why they had deserted him; they replied that there were too many mosquitoes at his place. “There are no mosquitoes here,” said Budzi; “we will stop here.” That night, as soon as the father slept, his family again decamped; when Budzi discovered their second flight he saw it was useless to attempt to retain his daughters, so refrained from following the party.

Budzi, thinking to himself that it was no good one man living in a house by himself, went into the bush to find a madub bushman who would share his house. He called out, and a man replied. Budzi asked his name; it was Madub. “Well,” said Budzi, “you come along and live with me, your name is no longer Madub, it is Budzi—same name as my name—what is your name?” The bushman made no reply, so Budzi caught hold of him and pulled him, and his arms and legs came off. A second time Budzi went into the bush, and the whole adventure was repeated, even to the dismembering of the unfortunate bushman. A third attempt brought better results, for the bushman answered