Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/70

58 the shelter of the maloka they gather around the family fires for the meal of the day, and afterwards first one and then another will tell tales far into the night.

These long rigmaroles are not easy to understand, and the variations are so many that it is difficult to ascertain if the tale is a new one or merely a fresh edition of something heard often before. Animal tales abound, stories in which the birds and beasts stand for characteristic ideas. Of the latter the following are typical:—

Though there are tales of bygone Chiefs of outstanding merit, relationship is only traced so far as memory serves, practically only on the father's side, for the mother, brought from another household, soon among these unsettled tribes will lose touch with her own people. There is no trace of any totemic system. Animals, I repeat, are hated enemies. I questioned a Boro tribe about one district void of habitations, and was told that the reason was as follows:—

"The Utiguene once lived there, the most powerful of tribes, but long, long ago the Chief had a daughter, ugly and bird-rumped, so the medicine-man called her Kemuime, (monkey). When she was so high (five feet) she went out to pick peppers in the bush, and did not return. The tribe decided a tiger had taken her, and organised a tribal hunt, but they were attacked by