boas] COMPARATIVE STUDY OP TSIMSHIAN MYTHOLOGY 769 



goes to the town in human form, but does not understand their language. He finds 

 the chief's house, and sees the chief's daughter seated behind the screens in the rear 

 of the house. He goes to the place where he has hidden the sea-lion skin and sleeps 

 there. He appears again as a sea lion and takes more arrows and spears. He goes 

 to the chief's daughter and talks to her, but she does not understand his language. 

 He marries her. The next morning the chief calls him to the fire. He is very beau- 

 tiful. One day he goes to the place where he has hidden the weapons and the skin 

 and returns to Q la'gan. He brings the weapons from Xass River to his father-in-law. 

 He and his wife learn how to cultivate tobacco. He tells his wife and his father-in-law' 

 what lias happened to him, and he is sent home. He takes along the weapons which 

 he has taken from the Masset people and goes to his father's town. The people there 

 do not believe that he is alive. Since he is beautiful, his cousin likes him. He puts 

 her to shame, and she dies M 654. 



At Q!ado' (Metlakahtla) there is a youth who loves a girl. She 'rejects him, and 

 tells him to pull out his hair, his eyebrows, his eyelashes, his mustache, and the hair 

 on his body. Then she refuses him. He whittles arrows and shoots them up to the 

 sky, making a chain. He places the bow at the bottom of it and'goes up. He reaches 

 the Moon's town and is invited in and made to sit at the right-hand side of the Moon 

 in the rear of the house. The Moon takes the innermost one out of a set of five boxes 

 and takes out a comb, moistens his hands with water, and rubs the youth's eyes. 

 Thus he is made good-looking; and by combing, his hair is made long and beautiful. 

 The youth stays many nights, and is sent back with instructions not to look at the 

 girl. He is sent back home, refuses to look at the girl, who dies Sk 354. 



Deans 0.37 records a garbled version of this tale: The youth is induced to cut his 

 hair. He goes up to the sky and marries the daughter of the Sun. This is given as 

 a Tsimshian tale. 



(b) Southern Versions 

 Aversions: Sts Hill-Tout 5.354; LkufigEn Hill-Tout 7.346; Lil 336. See also Sh 5.14) 



A youth is in love with a girl. When he approaches her, she orders him to wash 

 himself. When he returns, she orders him to scrub his privates with gravel. When 

 he returns again, she rejects him outright. The youth then starts off into the woods. 

 [Here follow incidents that do not belong to the story here discussed. He marks 

 his trail in order to find his way back, meets blind men who are making a canoe, and 

 takes away their adze, which they are passing from hand to hand. He restores their 

 eyesight. They are Willow Grouse. They direct him to a house in which two blind 

 women are cooking food. He restores their eyesight. They direct him to Sand-Hill 

 Crane, who in turn directs him to the house of the Face Maker and tells him what 

 to do.] The youth enters and asks for a change of face. He is shown boxes full of 

 faces, and finally finds one with long black hair, leaning against the wall. This 

 one he takes. The Face Maker sprinkles medicine over the youth, cuts off his head, 

 and puts in its place the new one. Then he sees that his former head was very ugly. 

 He goes back home, sits down behind the village, and wishes for the girl's younger 

 sister to come and see him. This happens, and the girl tells her elder sister of the 

 beautiful man whom she has seen. Now the girl approaches him, but he treats her 

 in the same manner as he had been treated. [Here follows another story telling 

 how the girl creates a duck of excrement, which the youth is caused to pursue. \V1 len 

 he finally hits it, it is retransformed into excrement. ' The youth reaches a coast on 

 the other side of the ocean. Under the upturned canoe he conceals his younger 

 brother, who had accompanied him. He himself cuts his chest and lies down. A 

 duck comes. He catches it and shakes it until the bones drop out. He does the 

 same to a diver and an eagle. He dons the eagle skin; the brother, that of the duck. 

 The canoe is put into the diver skin, and they fly off. The younger brother and 

 the canoe arrive at home, while he flies into the clouds, where he finds an old couple. 

 50633°— 31 eth— 10 49 



