Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/226

 216 will kill you." So de nex' mornin' b'o' Rabby an' b'o' Boukee went. When dey got dere, dey say,—

An' de tree bruk open. B'o' Rabbit take a bucket an' he dip out his bucket full. An' b'o' Boukee shove he head, an' de tree close on his neck. B'o' Boukee look up. Long-Tus' an' b'o' Bear be acomin'. An' when he put his han' up an' shove dat tree, he peeled his skin right off. An' when he get home, his chillun look up, he say, "Pa has a raw head." An' he say to them, "Why you don' say, "A raw head an' a bloody bone." An' when de chil' ran feel his head, he slap him, an' de chil' darted, an' I flash him an' cause me to be here to tell you dat story.

The pattern of the pass-word is used in several other ways in the Bahamas and elsewhere. It is the introduction to the tale of "In the Cow's Belly," a tale in which, in Sierra Leone Frog and Spider, in the Cape Verde Islands Lob and Tubinh, in the Bahamas Rabbit and Boukee, go into the cow to cut flesh. The animals use the pass-word to go in—"Cow open" or "Vaca, abri nhefa, dexan entra (Cow, open mouth, let me in)," "Vaca, fixa nhefa, dexan sai (Cow, shut mouth, let me out)," or "Open, gobanje, open," "Shut, gobanje, shut," and Lob or Boukee