A Guide to MythologyClarke, Helen A. (Helen Archibald)
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A Guide to Mythology
Clarke, Helen A. (Helen Archibald)
Mythology -- Juvenile literature
One day when Waupee was absent, and all was in readiness, she went out
to the charmed ring, taking with her her little son. As they entered the
car she commenced her magical song, and the basket rose. The song was
sad, and of a lowly and mournful cadence, and as it was wafted far away
by the wind, it caught her husband’s ear. It was a voice which he well
knew, and he instantly ran to the prairie. Though he made breathless
speed, he could not reach the ring before his wife and child had ascended
beyond his reach. He lifted up his voice in loud appeals, but they were
unavailing. The basket still went up. He watched it till it became a
small speck, and finally it vanished in the sky. He then bent his head
down to the ground, and was miserable.
Through a long winter and a long summer Waupee bewailed his loss, but he
found no relief. The beautiful spirit had come and gone, and he should
see it no more!
He mourned his wife’s loss sorely, but his son’s still more; for the boy
had both the mother’s beauty and the father’s strength.
In the meantime his wife had reached her home in the stars, and in the
blissful employments of her father’s house she had almost forgotten that
she had left a husband upon the earth. But her son, as he grew up,
resembled more and more his father, and every day he was restless and
anxious to visit the scene of his birth. His grandfather said to his
daughter, one day:
“Go, my child, and take your son down to his father, and ask him to come
up and live with us. But tell him to bring along a specimen of each kind
of bird and animal he kills in the chase.”
She accordingly took the boy and descended. The White Hawk, who was ever
near the enchanted spot, heard her voice as she came down the sky. His
heart beat with impatience as he saw her form and that of his son, and
they were soon clasped in his arms.
He heard the message of the Star, and he began to hunt with the greatest
activity, that he might collect the presents with all dispatch. He
spent whole nights, as well as days, in searching for every curious and
beautiful animal and bird. He only preserved a foot, a wing, or a tail of
each.
When all was ready, Waupee visited once more each favorite spot—the
hill-top whence he had been used to see the rising sun; the stream where
he had sported as a boy; the old lodge, now looking sad and solemn, which
he was to sit in no more; and, last of all, coming to the magic circle,
he gazed widely around him with tearful eyes, and, taking his wife and
child by the hand, they entered the car and were drawn up—into a country
far beyond the flight of birds, or the power of mortal eye to pierce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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