Kitabı oku: «The Strange Story Book», sayfa 10

THE STORY OF DJUN

Once upon a time a famine broke out among the tribe of the Tlingits, and one of their girls, who was an orphan and had to look after herself, would have fared very badly had she not now and then been given some food by her father's sister. But this did not happen often, for everybody was almost starving, and it was seldom that they had any food for themselves, still less for anyone else.

Now the girl, whose name was Djun, heard some of the women planning to go to the forest and dig roots, and though she wished very much to accompany them, they would not take her.

'You will bring us bad luck,' they said, and struck her fingers when, in despair at being left behind, she grasped the side of the canoe. But though the girl was obliged to loosen her hold from pain, she was so hungry that she would not be beaten off, and at last her father's sister, who was one of the party, persuaded the others to let her go with them. So she jumped in and paddled away to the forest.

All that day the women hunted for roots till they had collected a large pile, and had even caught some salmon in the river as well, and as evening drew on they prepared to encamp for the night, and built a fire to warm them and to cook some of the roots. But the girl, who had wandered away by herself as soon as they had landed, did not return, and the women were angry, and said that if she did not choose to come back, she might stay in the forest for ever. And the next morning, when they started for home, they threw water on the fire so that Djun might not be able to cook her food, if she had any to cook. However, the girl's aunt managed to steal a burning coal which lay on the fire, and, unseen by the rest, threw it into a deserted brush-house where they had slept, and put a piece of dried salmon with it. Just as she had done this she caught sight of the girl hiding behind the brush-house, and went to speak to her; for the other women were too busy packing the food into the boat to notice what she was doing.

'Are you not coming with us?' she asked, and Djun answered:

'No; as they don't want to take me, I had better stay here.'

'Well, I have put a live coal in that brush-house for you and a piece of salmon,' said her aunt, 'so you will have something to eat for a day or two.'

The girl did not leave her hiding-place till the boat was out of sight, and then she made a big fire from the burning coal, and cooked her roots and her salmon; but though they smelt very good, and she was hungry, she did not somehow feel as if she could eat. So she soon got up and went farther into the forest and dug some more roots.

'I shall be almost starving by the evening,' thought she, 'and I will eat them then;' but when evening came she had no more appetite than in the morning, so she curled herself up in a corner and fell asleep, for she was very tired.

She was awakened early next day by a rushing of wings, and, looking out of the door, found a flock of birds sweeping by. But there was nothing very uncommon in that, and she lay down again and slept for several hours longer. Then she got up and walked some distance till she reached a flat plain, where the best roots grew, but the flock of birds had found them out also, and were feeding upon them.

When they saw her they flew away, and she went to a spot covered with dead grass, for she expected that would be a good place to dig in. To her surprise, under the dead grass lay several big canoes filled with oil, dried halibut and dried salmon.

'How lucky I am!' she said to herself; 'it was well indeed that I did not return with the others,' and she broke off a piece of salmon and tried to eat it, but she could not.

'What is the matter with me?' she wondered. 'I wish my aunt were here,' and she felt rather frightened. And the next day she grew more frightened still, for she found out that the birds were spirits, and it was they who were preventing her from eating food, so that she might become a great shaman or medicine-man. After a little while her eyes were opened, and she understood many things she had never guessed at, and the spirit-birds she had seen took possession of her, and others came from the woods and the sea, and sang to her.

At first she went two or three times every day to visit the buried canoes and to dig for roots, but she quickly gave that up, for she had nothing with which to sharpen the sticks she used instead of spades; and besides, what was the use of digging for roots if you could not eat them? Meanwhile, in the village the girl's aunt mourned for her, as she felt sure Djun must by this time be dead of hunger.

'I am very lonely: I wish some of my old friends would come to see me,' thought Djun when she had been living by herself for several months, and the next morning a canoe appeared in sight, and in it were seated some people whom she knew. Then Djun was happy indeed, and she bade them follow her to the brush-house, and gave them food out of the canoes; for two or three days they stayed, digging for roots and for anything else they could get, and at the end of the time Djun said to them:

'It is well that you should go again, but be careful not to take with you any of the food that I have given you. Tell my friends that I am alive, and beg my aunt to come and visit me.'

So the people of the canoe returned to the village, and told such tales of the food they had received from Djun that all the townsfolk hastened to get into their canoes and paddled straight off to the place where she was living. When they drew near enough to see the brush-house, they beheld it surrounded by thousands of birds that seemed to stretch right upwards from the earth to the sky. They also heard the shaman's voice and the sound of singing, but as soon as they approached closer to the brush-house, the birds flew away.

After that the shaman went out to meet them, and she asked:

'Where is my aunt? I want her;' and when her aunt came Djun gave her everything that was stored in one of her buried canoes, and then she said:

'I should like two of the women to stay with me and help me with my singing,' and one after another the chief women of the tribe, with their faces newly painted, rose up in the canoes; but she would have none of them, and chose two girls who were orphans like herself, and had been treated very badly by their kinsfolk.

'The rest can come ashore,' she said, 'and camp out here,' but she took the orphans and her aunt into the brush-house.

Now these high-born women had brought their slaves with them, and Djun took the slaves in exchange for food, and put necklaces and paint and feathers and fine robes upon the orphans. And the whole of the village people stayed with her a long while, and when they got into the canoes again they were fat and strong with all that Djun had given them.

For some time Djun lived quite happily in the brush-house now that she had some companions; then a longing took hold of her to go back to her own village, so she worked magic in order to make the chief of the town fall ill, and the people, who had learnt that she had become a shaman, sent a canoe to fetch her and offered her much payment if she would cure him.

The family of Djun the shaman was one of the noblest in the tribe, but misfortune had overtaken them. One by one they had all died, and when the girl came back to the village nothing remained but the posts of her uncle's house, while grass had sprouted inside the walls. She beheld these things from the canoe and felt very sad, but she bade the slaves cease paddling, as she wished to land. Then she drew out an eagle's tail, and, holding it up, blew upon it and waved it backwards and forwards. After she had done this four times, the posts and the grass disappeared, and in their place stood a fine house – finer and larger than the one the chief had lived in.

'Bring in whatever the canoe contains,' she said; and when everything was ready she went into the house, and the two orphan girls went with her.

'The chief's daughter is ill as well as her father,' so Djun heard after she had been back in the village for a few days, and she waited in the house, expecting to be summoned to work a cure. But though they had sent for her while she was living far from them, now that she was amongst them again she looked so like the girl they had known from a child that the people could not believe she could be a real shaman, and called in others. However, in spite of the care of these medicine men, both the chief and his daughter became worse and worse, and in despair, their kinsfolk suddenly bethought themselves of Djun. The girl was not in the house at the time that the messenger arrived, but one of the orphans met him, and asked:

'How much will they pay the shaman if she cures them?'

'Two slaves,' was the answer.

'That is not enough,' said the child; 'go back and tell them so.'

And the messenger went back and came again.

'How much will they pay the shaman?' asked the child as she opened the door to him.

'Two slaves and much goods,' answered he.

'That is well; she will come,' said the child, and the messenger returned with her answer.

'We will go together,' Djun said to the orphans, and the three set off at once to the house of the chief. Inside, there was a crowd of people, except for an empty space round the fire where lay the chief and his daughter. The shaman sat down between them and worked all the spells she knew, but they grew no better. Then she rose and walked through the people in the room, and when she had looked at each one she said to the chief:

'The witch that is killing you two is not here.'

As soon as the people heard that, they left the house and brought in those of the villagers who had not come before, for there was not room for a very great number. For the second time Djun went among them and examined them, and then she repeated:

'The witch is not yet here.' But the spirits, which showed her what others could not see, opened her eyes, and after a moment she spoke again.

'The road of the witch is very clear now; it runs straight to this house.' After that she waited in silence, and the people were silent also. At last they heard a bird whistling in the woods at the back, and the shaman said:

'She is coming now; open the door and let her in,' and they flung the door wide, and there flew in a wild canary.

'Go and sit between the two sick persons,' said Djun, and the canary fluttered towards them, making such a noise with her wings that they were frightened and shrank away from her. And the shaman desired a man to tie the bird's wings to her side so that she might be still. Next a rolling sound such as thunder makes a long way off filled the air.

'Here come her children,' cried the shaman. 'Stop all the holes so that they may not enter, for they are very angry.' But though the holes were stopped, there were cracks in the boards, and the birds flew in through the cracks till the house became full of them, and the noise was deafening. They flew round and round among the people, and whosoever they touched received a cut or a bruise. Suddenly – no one knew how – they all vanished, and not a bird was left in the room save the one which was tied.

Hours had passed since the shaman first came to the house, and it was now morning. The canary never ceased making a noise all that time, and at last the shaman said:

'She wants to go to the place where she has put the food and the locks of hair with which she is bewitching the chief and his daughter. Untie her wings and let her do as she will, but be careful to follow her.' So they untied her wings, and the canary flew out of the house followed by four men, and she hopped ahead of them the way she had come through the woods.

At length she stopped and began scratching at the roots of some bushes till she laid bare a skull. On the top of the skull some leaves, hair, food, and scraps of clothes were carefully arranged in a pattern. She picked up as many of them as she could carry in her beak and flew with them down to the sea, letting the wind scatter them in different directions. This she did till all had disappeared and the skull likewise, and then she returned to the house with the four men following her, and they found the chief and his daughter quite cured, for as soon as the skull and the other things had touched the sea, they recovered by magic.

'Do you hear the noise she is making?' asked the shaman, when the bird had begun to chatter as noisily as before. 'She wants to go away from here, but not to her home, because the other birds will be ashamed of her. The place she wishes to go to is a town called Close-along-the-beach. Therefore, let a canoe be got ready at once to take her there.' So the canoe was got ready, and the bird flew into it, and they pushed off from the shore, and paddled till the bird suddenly broke out into the strange speech, which no one could understand but the shaman.

'This must be the place,' they said, and paddled in towards the beach, and the canary flew out of the boat and went very fast down to the shore followed by a man who wished to see where she was going, and she stopped at a tree whose roots stuck out above the ground. For this was the bird-town of Close-along-the-beach.

That is how the ancient Indians first heard of witchcraft.

[Tlingit Myths and Texts.]

WHAT BECAME OF OWEN PARFITT?

In the early part of the eighteenth century a family named Parfitt were living in a small town in the West of England called Shepton Mallet. We are not told how many children they had, but some probably died young, for the only two we hear about are the eldest daughter Mary and her brother Owen, about fifteen years younger.

Owen was apprenticed by his father to a tailor as soon as he had reached the proper age, and learnt his trade thoroughly. But he hated sitting still sewing all day long, and one morning his stool waited for him in vain, and some hours later a message was brought that he had enlisted under the king's banner. Little was known of him for many years: occasionally a report was carried by some pedlar or old soldier that Owen was serving in this country or in that, but after a while even these rumours ceased, and at length people forgot that such a person as Owen Parfitt had ever existed. His parents were dead; only his sister was left to remember him.

Then suddenly he appeared amongst them, bent and crippled with wounds and rheumatism, and unrecognisable by anyone but Mary. Together they set up house, and Owen again got out the board and the big scissors and the chalk and the wax which his sister had carefully kept, and announced to the town of Shepton Mallet that he was going to become a tailor once more. However, the cottage which the brother and sister had taken proved inconvenient in many ways, and after a time they moved to another, near the high road, with the main street lying at the end of the garden. Here he used to sit in the evening when his work was done, and talk with some of his old friends who would lean over the gate and tell him all the news.

As time went on, Owen's rheumatism grew worse and worse, till at length he was too crippled to move without help, and by and bye he became unable to stir hand or foot. Mary had grown very old also, for her eightieth birthday had long been past, and though no cottage in Shepton Mallet was cleaner than hers, she was very feeble, and Owen looked forward with terror to the day when she would certainly break down. But Mary was not the woman to give in while there was any strength left in her, and when she found that she could not get her brother outside the door by herself, she engaged a girl called Susannah Snook, living about fifty yards away, to come and assist her. Between them they carried him along the passage to a chair placed, if the weather was fine, outside the house door, and there they left him, warmly wrapped up, while his bed was made and his room put tidy.

It was in the afternoon of a June day in 1768 that Owen Parfitt, dressed in the night things which he always wore, with an old greatcoat over his shoulders, took up his usual position in the little garden. No one seems actually to have seen him or spoken with him, but then it was haymaking season, and the fields round the Parfitts' cottage were filled with people, while it is only reasonable to suppose that the turnpike road opposite had many carts and horsemen passing up and down. Be this as it may, there was the old man taking his airing, 'plain for all folks to see,' when Susannah, having made him comfortable, turned and went back to Mary. After the bed had been made and the room put to rights, the girl went home, but she must either have quitted the cottage by a back door, or else the helpless old man must still have been sitting where she left him. In any case, in about half an hour the news reached her that Owen had disappeared, and his sister was almost distracted.

Susannah flew back to the cottage as fast as her feet would take her, and found Mary weeping bitterly. The girl at once tried to find out what had happened, but the old woman was so upset that this was not very easy. Bit by bit, however, Susannah discovered that after she had returned home, Mary had gone upstairs for a short time, and on coming down again was struck by the silence.

'Owen, are you there?' she cried, but there was no answer. 'Owen!' she repeated in a louder voice, but still there was nothing. Then she went to the door and found the chair just as she and Susannah had left it, but with no trace of her brother save the greatcoat which was lying on the back.

'Did you hear no noise?' asked the girl, after listening to her story.

'No; nothing at all. I just came down because I had finished what I had to do upstairs!' And Susannah added, on telling her tale, 'the chair, when I looked, was exactly as we had placed it.'

The alarm once given, the neighbours lost no time in making a thorough search of both town and country for some distance round, even of the most unlikely spots. Ponds and wells were dragged, ditches examined, outhouses explored; though why anyone should wish to hide a harmless old cripple in any of these places, nobody stopped to ask, still less how it could have been done in broad daylight. But in spite of the thorough nature of the hunt, which did not cease even during a sharp thunderstorm, and went on all that night and the next day, neither then nor later was any trace ever found of Owen Parfitt.

As far as we know, nothing further was done about the matter for nearly fifty years, when some gentlemen happened to hear the story and were interested in it. They sought out all the old people in the town who had known the Parfitts and questioned them as to what had happened. Of course, the worst of this kind of evidence is that no kind of notes had been taken down at the time, and also that the love of astonishing their hearers by wonderful details which never occurred is a great temptation to many. On the whole, however, the witnesses in the inquiry into Owen Parfitt's disappearance seem to have been more truthful than usual. Susannah Snook, the last person living to see the old man, told her tale as it has been already set down, and her account was closely borne out by that given by another old woman as far as her own knowledge went. Then followed some men, whose clothes had been made by Parfitt as long as he had been able to work, and who had helped in the search for him. One of these declared that Owen was 'neither a very good nor a very bad man, but was said sometimes to have a very violent temper.' Yet, even if this was correct, it does not throw much light on the mystery.

The general opinion of the neighbours at the time of the vanishing of Parfitt was that he was carried off by demons, and indeed the whole affair was so strange and without reason that their view was hardly to be wondered at. The discovery of part of some human bones under a wall near Parfitt's cottage gave a new turn to their thoughts, but this happened many years after the disappearance of Owen, and were held, when examined in 1814, to be the bones of a girl supposed to have been murdered. One witness only contradicted Susannah's evidence, and that was Jehoshaphat Stone, who swore Mary Parfitt had assured him that she had come downstairs hastily after hearing a noise, to find her brother gone and the chair displaced. But this fact he did not know of his own knowledge, and Susannah, when asked about the displacing of the chair, declared for the second time that the chair was exactly as she had left it, and that Mary had expressly said she had heard no noise.

One more question remained to be put, and that was if the old man had any money about him which might have led to his kidnapping or murder, though this seems very unlikely. One witness said he had a small pension amounting to about seven pounds a year, but an old woman who was related to the Parfitts 'was quite sure he had nothing of the sort,' and even if he had contrived to save a little during the years when he could still work at his trade, it must soon have gone in the days of his helplessness. At any rate, he would hardly have had it upon him when he was dressed in his night things, without any sort of pocket to put it in.

'But was he a totally helpless cripple?' inquired Dr. Butler, the future Bishop of Lichfield, to whom the evidence was sent by the gentlemen who had collected it. 'Be very careful, gentlemen, to discover whether he walked to his chair on the day of his disappearance, or whether he was capable of walking so much as a few yards; for there seems to have been a rumour that a person of his description was seen wandering that evening near Frome ten or twelve miles distant.'

In accordance with Dr. Butler's wish, a close examination was made into this matter, but none of the witnesses had ever seen Parfitt on his feet or attempting to use them for many years before he vanished. But supposing, as has been sometimes known, that a sort of miracle had been wrought and his powers of walking had come suddenly back, how could he have got from Shepton Mallet to Frome in broad daylight, past cottages and along roads where everyone knew him, without being recognised by a single person on the way?

'I give it up,' as they say about riddles; and Dr. Butler 'gave it up,' too.