Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/395

 Rh swarm of locusts and afraid of a kite." One of the native Hain-tèny or "oratorical flourishes" says: "The kite is an arrant thief, the crow is blear-eyed, and the brown stork is long-necked: all are rogues and abuse one another."

Another very widely-spread rapacious bird is the little lively and noisy Hìtsikìtsika, or Kestrel, which is found in or about every village, often perched upon the gable "horns" of the houses, or even on the extreme point of the lightning-conductors. Its widely-spread name is probably an imitation of its peculiar querulous cry. Several native proverbs refer to the kestrel's quick restless flight and its frequent habit of hovering aloft, poised almost motionless, or with an occasional quivering of the wings; and this, as it is very like the Malagasy so-called dancing, which consists rather of a graceful posturing and movement of the hands than of the feet, is also called by the people "dancing" (mandìhy). E.g., "The kestrel is at home in dancing, and the little-grebe is at home in the water"; "The kestrel is not hovering (lit. 'dancing') without reason, for there below is something (in the shape of prey)"; and again: "Dance, O kestrel, that we may also learn (to do it) in harvest-time." And its habit of driving away the robber Papàngo, but itself appropriating the kite's intended prey, is referred to in a proverb applied to one who was expected to be a benefactor, but turns out an oppressor, thus: " He was thought to be a kestrel to be honoured (or, to protect the birds), but becomes a falcon (Vòromahèry) carrying off the chickens." Among some tribes, or, perhaps, only certain families, the kestrel is a sacred or tabooed bird. M. Pollen says: "Being one day hunting in the neighbourhood of Anòrontsànga, I killed one of these kestrels, when a farmer came to meet us, saying that I had committed sacrilege in killing, as he said, a sacred bird. He begged me to leave it to him, so that he might bury it in a sacred place. I hesitated, except to grant him the beak of the kestrel, which had been broken by the shot. The good man, accompanied by a slave carrying a load of sugar-cane, and happy to take away