Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/251

Rh it cost a great deal to accomplish?" And when he came to his wife and children he told them all about it, and they replied, "Who can possibly do or agree to all these different things? So, let us seek another diviner, for this one is only anxious to get for himself, and he cares nothing about saving people's lives." So the man agreed; the more so since he was already indisposed to do it, and his agreeing to it in the presence of the diviner was all pretence and hypocrisy.

So he consulted the oracle through another person, and this diviner said to him, "The oracle is startled; however, go away a little first and then return; but when you get home, take care and avoid broken pottery, and old bones, and things that are dead, and earth from a broken fence-wall; then take different kinds of beads (names given, one of them meaning 'Not overcome by calamity,' Tsiléondòza); and to-morrow evening come back here again, that we may know exactly the divination." So the man went back again to his wife and children. And when he had told them they agreed to it, and did accordingly; still, on the morrow he did not return to that diviner again, but changed to another one. And when he came to this other diviner it was simple and easy what he declared, for a cloth only was to be the expiation (fàditra), and the offering (sòrona)^ white beads called haren-tsi-maty (i.e. "riches not dead"=lost), and a straight road. (This diviner was not skilled.) So the man was glad because there was so little to be done, and went away home. And when he told his wife and children they also were glad.

So when the time came to go to the wars the man went away. And when they had gone about three weeks the soldiers came to a dense forest, and a herd of wild hogs rushed out, with tusks whetted and foaming at the mouth. On their approach everyone was taken by surprise and ran off; some made their escape, but some were unable to move from the place, and this man leaping, was caught by a liana and hung there helplessly. After being there for some time the liana broke, the man fell down and broke his thigh. So then he remembered the words of the skilled diviner to him, "You will be overtaken by regret, if you don't do this." Then the man, it is said, lamented thus: "Would that I had followed the skilled diviner's instructions!" And that, they say, was the origin of the expression "Injay," that is, "Would that!"

(To be continued.)