Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/66

60 “Budzi”, on being asked his new name, and then followed the original Budzi.

At sunset they came to what they took to be a large mound of the wild-fowl (surka = Megapodius) and slept on the top of it. In the morning Budzi found a white-egg-like body, and tasting it, found it sweet—it was the root of a wild yam (7); his namesake also awoke and saw and tasted it; they then discovered that the hillock was not the nest of the mound-bird, but the heap at the roots of a gigantic yam. “By God!” Budzi exclaimed, “he no gammon fine yam! this yam belongs to me; if any man take him may he have elephantiasis (koingnar) in his legs” (8). They then wended their way homewards, and the two Budzi lived together.

On the southern side of Badu there are two islands, Zurăt and Kwoberkĕlbai, much resorted to by turtle, great numbers of which were caught by the inhabitants.

On Kwoberkĕlbai lived a man named Gabakwoikai, and one morning the men at the village told him they had seen turtle-tracks on the beach at Zurăt. “All right,” he replied, “I will go.” So he started off, but, instead of taking a canoe, he simply sat on the steering-board (walunga) of a canoe and paddled himself across to Zurăt. He soon found the eggs, dug them up, and rolled them in a bundle of grass, leaving them on the shore while he went to look for some fruit.

The Dorgai who lived on the other side of the island had made a basket ready, and then had gone to sleep for a week, so that plenty of fruit might ripen and fall ready for her, and it chanced that she woke the same day and went to gather her harvest. Gabakwoikai having picked up all the fallen fruit, climbed up into the tree to gather more, and did not see the Dorgai’s approach, The latter,