No Subject

From: Bernuetz, Oliver: WPG <bernuetz.oliver_at_cbsc.ic.gc.ca>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 18:06:53 -0500


This is a story (adapted from an Algonquin myth) that Eiritha worshippers like to tell when their husbands get too full of themselves.

It is true that Waha is the mightiest warrior of all. He is the Lord of Men and Beasts. He has mastered the ghosts of the night and the spirits of the day. Long ago, having achieved many great feats during his wanderings he decided to return home. But when he entered his house, Eiritha barely gave him so much as a glance.
She was looking at a creature on the floor. Waha had battled ghosts and devils and chaos of every sort, but he had never seen anything like it.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It is the mighty Wasis," she replied. "And I warn you, if you meddle with
him, you will be in trouble. I must serve him night and day."
"I wouldn't put up with such a tyrant," said Waha.
"You would have no choice," said Eiritha. "Mighty Wasis holds the past in
one hand and the future in the other. He is master of all the world."
"Not of me," cried Waha. "I am Lord of Men and Beasts. Nothing can defeat
me!"
He walked right up to mighty Wasis.
"I am not afraid of you," he said.

The Wasis gurgled.
Waha took up his fighting stance. "I am the strongest," he said. The Wasis sat and sucked on a honey comb.
"I am Lord of Men and Beasts," thundered Waha. "Come here!"
But the Wasis howled back. He screamed and screamed and screamed until Waha thought his head would split.
"Stop that!" he shouted.

But the mighty Wasis just kept on screaming. Desperate to quiet him, Waha danced his ghost dance and sang songs that raise the dead.
Then Waha danced his spirit dance and sang songs that scare away devils. And, at long last, the Wasis stopped screaming, looked at Waha, and smiled, a big smile as wide as the world. "Goo!" he said. Totally exhausted by his heroic efforts to stop the Wasis's screaming and howling, Waha collapsed in a dead faint. So whenever you see a baby sitting on the floor with a big smile all over its face, chuckling "Goo! Goo!" for no reason at all, you may be sure it is remembering the day it defeated the great Waha, the Lord of Men and Beasts, who had conquered the whole wide world.
Of all the beings that have ever been created since the beginning, a baby is the only one that nobody has ever got the better of - nor ever will until the end of time.


Powered by hypermail