i8o 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 123 i 



The next morning they gave birth to a son. 

 This son was a queer thing. It was like a 

 piece of wood. There was no head on top of 

 it, and below there was no means of urinating 

 or reheving the bowels. The two talked the 

 matter over and took the son and cut it into 

 many pieces and direw one piece onto a peach 

 tree and another piece onto a willow tree, and 

 some onto every kind of tree and onto other 

 objects. On the third morning the two arose 

 and saw that there was smoke (from fires 

 made by people) everywhere. Then people 

 arose everywhere and called on them to be 

 mother and father, and they named all 

 things.'*^ 



The Story of the Deluge (664) 



Two brothers went daily to plow a field. At 

 night Ye Seo (je^ sau^) came and turned the 

 soil back.*- Then one night the two broth- 

 ers went to watch. They saw the old man 

 come and turn the soil back. The two broth- 

 ers ran and seized the old man. The older 

 brother said, "Let's beat him." The younger 

 brother said, "Do not beat him but ask him 

 why he is doing it." The old man replied, 

 "The older brother is not a good speaker 

 (speaks offensively). Let hun go and make 

 an iron barrel. The younger brother speaks 



well (kindly) . Let him go and make a li 

 wooden barrel. Do not do any farming. A 

 deluge will come and submerge the field and i 

 the earth." 



When the brothers had returned, the older 

 brother made an iron barrel (or drum). The 

 younger brother with his sister got into the 

 wooden drum, and it floated. The iron drum 

 sank, and the older brother was drowned. 

 Ye Seo saw all this, and took the wooden 

 drum into the sky. He used a 4-pronged iron 

 weapon, and dug deep pits into the ground,*^ 

 and the water receded down these pits. 



The world had no human seed. Tso 

 Nts'ang (tread mare) went up to the sky 

 and requested the brother and the sister to 

 come down. They were unwilling to come 

 down. Then Ye Seo sent them down and 

 wrote their names in a book. He hung the 

 wooden drum (or barrel) up in the sky. The 

 brodier and the sister came down to the earth. 

 The sister was unwilling to marry her brother. 

 Then each took a flat round stone, and they 

 rolled the stones down from the opposite 

 sides of a canyon. The two stones stopped 

 together in the same spot. Then one threw 

 up a needle and the other threw up a thread, 

 and the thread went through the eye of the 

 needle. They then realized that it was the 

 will of heaven, and they were married.** 



THE WARTY TOAD 



An Ancient Immortal Who Covered up the 

 Sky Is a V/arty Toad (123) 



In ancient times, when there were very few 

 people, there was a man and his wife. All 

 their lives they had no children. One day 

 the woman felt an itch on her knee. She 

 scratched it. In a short time something as big 

 as an egg rolled out, and the woman held 

 it under her armpit. 



One day the wife went out and walked 

 over the hills, and the crows flew over her 

 head and cawed. She lifted up her head and 



*^ Apparently the pieces of flesh became people. 



*2 Other Miao and Lolo stories simply say an 

 old man. 



*3 In the Ch'uan Miao country there are many 

 natural deep pits in the limestone, into which 

 water flows and disappears. 



** This story was told to the writer by Glao Ao 

 or Peach Two, whose age was 60 years. He 

 lived near Tso Hsi, Yunnan, where he was born 

 and had lived all his life as a normal Miao 

 farmer. His grandfather was a Miao king who 

 led a rebellion against die Chinese. As the name 

 implies, he was the second son in the Glao 

 family. 



looked, and a warty toad leaped out of the :| 

 round egglike thing under her armpit. 



The woman brought the toad home with 1 

 her. The toad would not drink milk. In 1 

 less than a year it grew up. But the hus- 

 band and his wife hated the toad because it : 

 stank badly and could only leap along below. , 

 The father thought of killing it and took it : 

 out with him to split wood. 



When the wood was about to split open the 

 father told the toad to climb up to the top 

 of a tree and see whether the mother had 

 brought breakfast. The toad leaped upon the 

 tree, and die father struck twice with his ax 

 and cut the tree down. The father thought 

 that the tree had crushed the toad to death. 

 He went home and said to his wife "Today I 

 have killed that dirty thing." But before they 

 had finished speaking the toad came back, 

 whistling as it rested. It had brought the big ; 

 tree home on its back. 



Then the parents dared not say anything 

 except to tell the toad to eat. Afterward they 

 secretly thought of a method to kill it. The 

 father went and chiseled out seven stone 

 mortars for husking rice. One day the father 



