406 ZUNI CREATION MYTHS. Iethann. 13 



with voices strong-sounding and sure, bade them cease from their 

 clamor and terror, saying — 



Look now, ye faithless and witless ! 



The mothers who love not their offspring 



Ami cherish them not through all danger. 



Must lose them anon, as the wood'oird, 



Who sits not her nest, doth her broodlings ! 



Fear not, but cleave fast to your children 



Though they strange-turn and frightful of seeming! 



'Tis the magic of water, and wildness 



Of heart, and will jiass (as men's laughter 



Doth pass when the joy-thought is sobered). 



As ye win your way forth from the waters. 



Thus spake they, and continued speaking; whereupon the people 

 who were yet left, took heart, even the women, and stayed their 

 thoughts, clinging stoutly to their little ones as they fared through the 

 waters, what though the terror and hurt was sore. Thus passed they 

 all safely over, and— even as had been said — as they won their way up 

 from the waters and sat them down to rest on the farther shore below 

 the mountains, lo! the little ones' grew warm and right again. But 

 never were the thoughts of womenkind beguiled wholly from that har- 

 rowing journey. Wherefore they be timid of deep places, startled (as is 

 the voice of a vessel by any shrillness of sound) and witless-driven by 

 the sight of reptile-creatures. Lo! and so their anxieties are like to 

 press themselves on the unripe and forming children of their bowels. 

 Wherefore, also, we guard their eyes from all weird- seeming things 

 when they be with child. 



THE AWAITING OF THE LOST CLANS. 



Now, when the people were rested and the children righted, they 

 arose and Journeyed into the iilain to the east of the two mountains 

 and the great Avater between them. Tlience they turned them north- 

 ward to the sunrise slopes of the uppermost of tlie mountains. There 

 they eucamiied, mourning for their lost children and awaiting the 

 coming, perchance, of those who had fled away. 



THE STRAYING OF K'YAK'LU, AND HIS PLAINT TO THE \A/^ATER- 



FOWL. 



Ataht ! And all this time K'yak'lu, the all-hearing and wise of speech, 

 all alone had been journeying afar in the north land of cold and white 

 desolateness. Lost was he, for lo! all the world he wandered in now 

 was disguised in the snow that lies spread forth there forever. Cold 

 was he — so cold that his face became wan, and white from the frozen 

 mists of his own breathing withal, white as become all creatures who 

 bide there. So cold at night and dreary of heart was he, so lost by 

 day and blinded by light was he, that he wept, continually wept and 

 cried aloud until the tears coursing down his cheeks stained them 

 with falling lines along the wrinkles thereof (as may be seen on his face 



I 



