Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/410

354 Guinea-fowl is mentioned in a good many native proverbs. Thus, an assemblage of people who are subject to the same chieftain is termed "Akànga tsy ròa volo" i.e., "Guinea-fowls of the same plumage", something like our saying, "Birds of a feather flock together". Again, "A guinea-fowl going into the forest: waiting for the rain to clear off, but caught by a steady downpour." The difficulty of catching the bird is referred to in the saying, "Seeing a beautifully marked guinea-fowl, and throwing away the fowl at home in one's house"; reminding one that "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". And again, the maxim that "Union is strength", is enforced by the proverb, "Guinea-fowls going in a flock are not scattered by the dogs". Here is a fable referring to this bird: "Once upon a time, they say, a guinea-fowl went to visit his friends beyond the forest; but when he got into the midst of the woods he grew giddy and fell, breaking his wing. Then he lamented and said: 'To go on, to go on, I cannot; if I return, I long for my relations.' And from that, they say, the people got their song, which says, 'A guinea-fowl entering the forest: go on, he cannot; return, wing broken; stop where he is, he longs for his relatives.

Of the Madagascar Partridge, M. Grandidier says that it lays from fifteen to twenty eggs, and that, according to Sàkalàva belief, any one who, having found the nest of the Tsipòy (as it is called), does not break the eggs, causes the death of his mother; but if, on the contrary, he destroys them, he causes the death of his father! This superstition, as he says, probably comes from the rarity of finding the nest at all. The Quail is called Kibodòlo, i.e., "Spirit-quail", by the Bàra, and about this bird the Bétsileó have a saying that "The quail delays its proper work in the autumn, and leaves it until the spring"; and that then they know by its note the proper time for planting rice. Of the Bustard-quail, whose names are all compounds of the same word (Kìbo) as that by which the other quail is known, M. Pollen says that the foot of this bird, hung round the