The Folk-TaUs of the Kiwai Papuans. 473 



HOW THE DÖGS LOST THEIR FACULTY OF SPEECH (ef Index, Animais). 



436. In former times the dögs were différent to what they are now, for they were like 

 people, except that they had four legs. They used to help their master to work in the gardens, 

 and could speak as men do. One day their master had connection with his wife in the bush, 

 and the dögs were looking on. In the evening when the people and dögs were sitting together in 

 the house the latter suddenly began to laugh. „What's the matter you laugh?" the people asked 

 them, and the dögs said, „Me laugh for father; father been kobori {hav& connection with) mother." 

 And their master was ashamed.. 



The next day the same thing happened, and the dögs went to look on at what their 

 master and his wife were doing in the bush, and on their return home they laughed (abbrev.). 

 Then the master seized a kömuni (fire-tongs of bamboo) and squeezed together the dog's jaws. 

 After that he tied a string tightly round the tongs and placed them on his shelf. In this way 

 the dögs lost their faculty of speech. (Gibûma, Mawåta). 



THE MAN AND DOG WHO LIVED TOGETHER. 



437. Long ago a man named Ûtubûru lived in one end of a house at Göromöuro, and 

 in the other end of the same house lived a dog named Baivåre. One day Ûtubûru said to the 

 dog, „I think you shift little bit, that house I make him belong me, You make you (your) house 

 other side, you got plenty pickaninny." But the dog said, „No good you send me go outside; 

 who feed me?" „No good I feed plenty man, I want feed myself," said Ütubüru. He was very 

 angry and closed all the doors saying, „All right, you no believe him (obey)." Then he set fire 

 to the house, and master and dögs were consumed in the fiâmes. (Kàiku, Mawåta). 



THE ANIMALS WHO WERE SUMMONED TO DOCTOR A WOMAN. 



238. A Büdji man named Dagåme was a great hunter and killed pigs every night. In 

 the beginning he brought home two pigs at a time, but gradually the number increased to 

 four, five, ten, twenty, and even one hundred in one night. Dagàme's wife spent her time 

 fishing. (Abbrev.). 



One day the women tried to capture a large bâta fish in a creek called Topi'ka, and when 

 Dagàme's wife sat down in the water with her legs out to corner the bâta, the fish passed right 

 into her vulva, so that only the tail stood out." The people tried to pull out the fish, but it 

 would not come, so they carried her ashore and summoned her husband. He too failed in pulling 

 out the fish. Then he sent a man to fetch the cassowary to come and draw out the bâta, and 

 the bird said, „1 no stop long v\ay, I stop close to; what name (why) you no been come before' 

 I pull out that fish." Th^ cassowary carried in its beak a leaf of \hQ kiklvâri tree, on the fruit 

 of which thèse birds feed, and it chewed the leaf and spät the juice at the fish, but only with the 

 N:o 1. 60 



