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A short story by Charles G. Leland |
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How A Hunter Visited The Thunder Spirits Who Dwell In Mount Katahdin |
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Title: How A Hunter Visited The Thunder Spirits Who Dwell In Mount Katahdin Author: Charles G. Leland [More Titles by Leland] (Passamaquoddy.)
And anon they came to a great cavern far within, and there was an old man seated by a fire, and the old man welcomed him. And he was very kindly treated by the strange pair all day: in all his life he had never been so happy. Now as the night drew near, the old man said to his daughter, "Can you hear aught of your brothers?" Then she went out to the terrace, and, returning, said, "No." Then anon he asked her again, and she, going and returning as before, replied, "Now I hear them coming." Then they listened, when lo! there came, as at the door without, a crash of thunder with a flash of lightning, and out of the light stepped two young men of great beauty, but like giants, stupendous and of awful mien. And, like their father, their eyebrows were of stone, while their cheeks were as rocks. And the hunter was told by their sister that when they went forth, which was every few days, their father said to them, "Sons, arise! it is time now for you to go forth over the world and save our friends. Go not too near the trees, but if you see aught that is harmful to those whom we love, strike, and spare not!" Then when they went forth they flew on high among the clouds; and thus it is that the Thunder and Lightning, whose home is in the mighty Katahdin, are made. And when the thunder strikes, the brothers are shooting at the enemies of their friends. Now when the day was done the hunter returned to his home, and when there, found he had been gone seven years. All this I have heard from the old people who are dead and gone. This tale was told me by Tomah Josephs (P.). It seems to have nothing in common with the very widely spread myth that the thunder is the flapping of the wings of a giant bird, and the lightning the flashes of its eyes. The tradition is probably of Eskimo origin, supernatural beings partially of stone being common to Greenland and Labrador. There is a strange but entirely accidental resemblance between this story and Rip Van Winkle, as in the distant sound of the nine-pins like low-muttered thunder, the hospitable entertainment, and finally the seven years as one day. Apparent resemblances are very deceptive. In the Eskimo mythology the _mersugat_ or _kutadlit_, who are the higher or benevolent spirits, protecting mortals, are distinguished from the evil ones by dwelling in cliffs, to which there are invisible entrances. There is a remarkable resemblance between Katahdin and Hrungnir of the Edda. Hrungnir has a face of stone; he is unquestionably a mountain personified, as Miss Larned declares: "His stony head pierces the blue sky." [Footnote: _Tales of the Elder Edda_, p. 235.] Both giants are the typical great mountain of their respective countries. Hrungnir has also very great affinity with the Chenoo giant. He has a _stony heart_, an insatiable appetite, and is cruel and brutal. The Iroquois have the very stone giants--or, as Schoolcraft calls them, the stonish giants--themselves, and a very curious picture of them has been preserved. [Footnote: Vide Cusick's _Five Nations_, 2d edition, and Schoolcraft's _Indian Tribes_, vol. i p: 429.] Of them he remarks, "Who the giants are intended to symbolize is uncertain. They are represented as impenetrable by darts." The connection between the stone giants of the Indians, the Eskimo, and the Norsemen, if not historical, is at least identical in this, that they all typify the mountains. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |