Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/256

 216 the fellow who killed and ate my people! You will not do it any more!"

After he had dined heartily on the choicest parts of the wallaroo, and anointed his body with the fat, he proceeded to the river, where he saw the people whom the wallaroo had said were fishing there, and enquired if they had seen anything of the padamelon and other friends who were missing. They replied,—"No! that old rogue the wallaroo must have killed and eaten them. He is no friend of ours." The willy-wagtail told them how he had killed and roasted their common enemy, and they were pleased to hear it. After that he returned to his own people, who were all very glad to learn that he had avenged the death of their friends, and he became a chief man in the tribe, and had four young wives. All the old men assembled in council, and decided that in future no man should go alone, either hunting game, or to search for missing friends, or on a hostile expedition, but that two or more should always proceed together, a custom which has been followed to the present time.

, II.

Cumberland.

Mr. L. of Maryport told me that in his own house, once when his father died and again when an uncle died, they heard a loud noise of broken glass, as if a heavy glass chandelier had fallen. They had no glass of any kind broken.

He also told me of a boy who was born with marks on his face, whose parents heard that if they took him on the same day to three houses where the head of the house lay dead (it did not matter whether the dead were men or women, so long as they were heads of houses and had all died on the same day), and if his face was touched by their dead hands, he would be cured. This was done, and the boy was cured. He is now nine years old.

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