Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/227

Rh forgets it when he wants to come out. In the Cape Verde Islands the pass-word or formula is also used in connection with a mama peixe caball, a mother sea-horse. You say in the tale, "Mama (breast) bax'," and the sea-horse comes in to the beach, you say, "Mama riba," and she goes out to sea. The water homologue in the Bahamas occurs in a tale about Rabbit and Boukee crossing a river to get pumpkins. Rabbit tells Boukee to say, "Low water, low," but Boukee forgets and says, "Flow water, flow." Common to both island groups is a tale of an ascent to Heaven. In the Cape Verde Islands tale the pass-word serves as a means for bringing down the fig tree—"Figerinha, bax', bax'," "Little fig-tree, down, down," "Figerinha, tip, tip," "Little fig-tree, up, up," —on which Lob eats and, forgetting the formula, is carried on up to the sky; in the Bahamas the formula brings down the spirit house—"Susie come down, Susie go up" or "Mary come down so low," "Mary go up so high."

With a North Carolina variant of the foregoing down and up variants, I will conclude our pass-word series, a series of tales that illustrates remarkably well, I think, whatever the vicissitudes, the immense vitality of the folk-tale.

One day, in the old times, Ann Nancy started out to find a good place for to build her house; she walk on till she find a break in a nice damp rock, and she set down to rest, and take 'servation of the points to throw her threads.

Presently, she hear a gret floppin' of wings, and the old Mr. Buzzard came flying down and light on the rock, with a big piece of meat in he mouth. And Nancy, she scroon in the rock and look out, and she hear Mr. Buzzard say, "Good safe, good safe, come down, come down," and sure 'nough, when he say it three times, a safe come down,