6 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



god of the night, and that it made the moon by magic, 

 transforming a frog into it; while the Iroquois indulged 

 in the pretty fancy that the moccasin-flowers (cypri- 

 pediums) are whippoorwills' shoes. 



This is a little astray from my present theme, to which 

 we may return by quoting from Waterton 73 that if one 

 of the related goatsuckers of the Amazon Valley be heard 

 close to an Indian's or a negro's hut, from that night 

 evil fortune sits brooding over it. In Costa Rica bones 

 of whippoorwills are dried and ground to a fine powder 

 by the Indians when they want to concoct a charm against 

 some enemy ; mixed with tobacco it will form a cigarette 

 believed to cause certain death to the person smoking it. 



To the mountaineers of the southern Alleghanies the 

 whippoorwill reveals how long it will be before marriage 

 — as many years as its notes are repeated: as I have 

 heard the bird reiterate its cry more than 800 times with- 

 out taking breath, this must often be a discouraging re- 

 port to an anxious maid or bachelor. One often hears it 

 said lightly in New England that a whippoorwill calling 

 very near a house portends death, but I can get no evi- 

 dence that this "sign" is really attended to anywhere in the 

 northern United States. 



This, and the equally nocturnal screechowl (against 



which the darkies have many "conjurings") are not the 



only birds feared by rural folk in the Southern States, 



especially in the mountains. A child in a family of 



Georgia "crackers" fell ill, and his mother gave this 



account of it to a sympathetic friend: 



Mikey is bound to die. I've know'd it all along. All las' 

 week the moanin' doves was comin roun' the house, and this 

 mornin' one come in at the window right by Mikey's head, an' 

 cooed an' moaned. I couldn't scare it away, else a witch would 

 'a' put a spell on me. 



