Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/380

314 of birds, creatures, and folks from clay. He stopped a moment and tore a fragment from his body and flung it into the weeds. It came hissing forth after a while, a great rattle-snake, and watched him at his work. When Old Sun's work was done—that is, all except the making of people, for his first attempt of that sort was a failure—he breathed life into his creatures 'without going to the trouble of stepping in circles or saying words.' When each began to move with its own peculiar motions, and cry out in its own peculiar voice, the delighted creator bent over his work, breathing flames of joy, and all caught fire. At this juncture, the watching snake bored a hole in the moist earth and saved himself from harm. After Old Sun had put out the conflagration. Grandfather came out to console his parent and thereby obtain a hold on his affections, but Turtle, erstwhile the despised one, was before him. Turtle's hair was singed off, his eyelids were shrivelled, his eyes were weakened by the smoke and heat, but he was unmistakably alive, and stronger from his baptism of flame.

"'Hello, my child! do you still live?' cried Old Sun.

"'Oh, yes! my big fine daddy, oh, yes! oh, yes! but my back is dried hard as a gourd in the fall, and my innards is all swivelled up like the grass. Can't you spit on my back, my daddy so fine; can't you spit on my back and cool me off?'

"'Oh, yes, child, yes! I can cool you off; oh, yes; child, yes! I can cool you off; but if I spit on your back to cool you off, you will live so long you'll forget your own name.'

"'Oh! I won't mind that, my old daddy so fine; oh! I won't mind that, my old daddy so fine. If you can make out, oh! why shouldn't I? oh! if you can make out, oh! why shouldn't I? So just spit on my back and cool me off.'

"So then Old Sun spat and cooled him off, and the sacred spittle gave poor homely Turtle a great increase of vitality, a gift his irritated creator had no thought of bestowing upon him before the great fire, for you must know that Turtle was Old Sun's first experiment at forming man. Old Sun 'was not any too well pleased' with Turtle's appearance when first moulded, but when the clay image became instinct with life, and the large-bodied, small-limbed, hairy, awkward creature