Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/399

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II.—The second Order of birds comprises those which in some points resemble the woodpeckers in their habits, although the woodpeckers proper have no representative in Madagascar. Of the seven families of the first sub-order, the Climbing-birds, two only are represented in the island, viz., the Parrots and the Cuckoos, as to each of which there are some interesting points to be noted. The two Madagascar species of parrot have none of those brilliant tints which adorn many of this family of birds in other parts of the tropics, one being dark-grey in colour and the other slaty black. A native proverb, whose "moral" is to reprove a too easy-going, changeable disposition, speaks of "a parrot seeking fruit in the forest: he finds a luscious morsel here, but in an instant is off to get another there." The Grey Parrot, M. Grandidier says, is fàdy, or sacred, to one of the royal families of the Vèzo Sàkalàva, and he gives the following story as accounting for the veneration in which they hold it: —

"Lahimerisa, King of Fiherènana, told me that one of his ancestors was one day walking alone in one of his manioc plantations at some distance from the royal village, when he was surprised by a band of robbers on a marauding expedition from the Bara country. They did not know the king, who had nothing in his appearance or dress to denote his rank. But seeing his thick chain of gold gleaming under the knobs of hair covered with grease and white clay, they took him unawares, speared him, and possessing themselves of the coveted prize, threw the body into a hastily dug grave, and decamped. How long he remained there he could not tell; but he was not dead, only seriously wounded; and on recovering consciousness, and seeing nothing but darkness around him, and feeling the earth pressing heavily on his chest, he believed himself in the other world. He was in profound distress; when suddenly he seemed to hear shrill piercing cries, as if a flock of parrots had passed over his head. He