Web
and Book design,
Copyright, Kellscraft Studio 1999-2021 (Return to Web Text-ures) |
Click
Here to return to
The Algonquin Legends of New England Content Page Return to the Previous Chapter |
(HOME)
|
How Glooskap bound Wuchowsen, the Great
Wind-Bird, and made all the Waters in all the World Stagnant. (Passamaquoddy.) The Indians believe in a
great bird called by them Wochowsen or Wuchowsen, meaning
Wind-Blow or the Wind-Blower, who lives far to the North, and sits upon a great
rock at the end of the sky. And it is because whenever he moves his wings the
wind blows they of old times called him that. When Glooskap was among men
he often went out in his canoe with bow and arrows to kill sea-fowl. At one
time it was every day very windy; it grew worse; at last it blew a tempest, and
he could not go out at all. Then he said, "Wuchowsen, the Great Bird, has
done this!" He went to find him; it was
long ere he reached his abode. He found sitting on a high rock a large white
Bird. "Grandfather,"
said Glooskap, "you take no compassion on your Koosesek, your
grandchildren. You have caused this wind and storm; it is too much. Be easier
with your wings!" The Giant Bird replied,
"I have been here since ancient times; in the earliest days, ere aught
else spoke, I first moved my wings; mine was the first voice, — and I will ever
move my wings as I will." Then Glooskap rose in his
might; he rose to the clouds; he took the Great Bird-giant Wuchowsen as though
he were a duck, and tied both his wings, and threw him down into a chasm
between deep rocks, and left him lying there. The Indians could now go out
in their canoes all day long, for there was a dead calm for many weeks and
months. And with that all the waters became stagnant. They were so thick that
Glooskap could not paddle his canoe. Then he thought of the Great Bird, and
went to see him. As he had left him he found
him, for Wuchowsen is immortal. So, raising him, he put him on his rock again,
and untied one of his wings. Since then the winds have never been so terrible
as in the old time. The reader will find the main incident of this story
repeated in "Tumilkoontaoo, the Broken Wing," from the Micmac, in which
there is no mention of Glooskap. This of Wuchowsen is from the
Passamaquoddy manuscript collection by Louis Mitchell. It is unquestionably the
original. Glooskap, as the greatest magician, most appropriately subdues the
giant eagle of the North, the terrible god of the storm. No one who knows the Edda
will deny that Wuchowsen, or the Wind-blower, as he appears in the
Passamaquoddy tale, is far more like the same bird of the Norsemen than the
grotesque Thunder Bird of the Western tribes. He is distinctly spoken of by the
Indians of Maine as a giant and a bird in one, sitting on a high cliff at the
end of the sky, the wind — not thunder — coming from his pinions: — "Tell me ninthly,
(The Lay of Vafthrudnir. Since thou art called wise, Whence the wind comes, That over ocean passes, Itself invisible to man. "Hraesvelg he is called Who at the end of heaven sits, A Jotun (giant) in eagle's plumage: From his wings comes, It is said, the wind. That over all men passes." The Edda, trans. by B. Thorpe.) |