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I have often heard French fairy tales and Aesop's fables Indianized to perfection, but the narrator always knew that they were not N'Karnayoo, "of the old time." Glooskap is now living in a Norse-like Asa-heim; but there is to come a day when the arrows will be ready, and he will go forth and slay all the wicked.
He will arise at the last day, when Glooskap is to do battle with all the giants and evil beasts of olden time, and will be the great destroyer. Malsum is the Wolf Fenris of this the true Indian Edda. For a further comment on this birth of the twins and its resemblance to a passage in the Edda, the reader is referred to the notes on the next chapter.
While Glooskap is always a gentleman, Lox ranges from Punch to Satan; passing through the stages of an Indian Mephistopheles and the Norse Loki, who appears to have been his true progenitor. But neither is quite like anything to be found among really savage races.
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.
But the two, witches, looking one at the other, saw presently that their noses were both gone, and they screamed aloud in terror, but their faces were none the less flat. And so it came that the Toad and the Porcupine both lost their noses and have none to this day. Glooskap had two dogs. Of old all animals were as men; the Master gave them the shapes which they now bear.
Now Glooskap sang a magic song, which changes all beings, and the three brothers and their father became the chinahmess, a fish which is as long and large as a man, and they went headlong down on the flood, to the deep sea, to dwell there forever.
Then the brothers said, "Indeed, he is a great magician. But he shall be tried ere he goes, and that bitterly." When he had eaten, they brought in a mighty bone, the jaw of a whale, and the eldest brother, with great ado, and using both his arms and all his strength, bent it a little. Then he handed it to Glooskap, who with his thumb and fingers, snapped it like a pipe-stem.
So he told his brother that the blow of a ball, or handful of the down of feathers, would take away his life; and this was true, for it would stun him, but it would not prevent his returning to life. Then Glooskap asked the younger for his own secret. And he, being determined to give the elder no time, answered truly and fearlessly, "I can only be slain by the stroke of a cat-tail or bulrush."
No one can compare the story of Glooskap with that of Manobozho-Hiawatha and the like, as given by Schoolcraft or Cusick, and not decide that the latter seems to be a second-hand version of the former. In one we have the root of the bulrush, not the light, feathery rush itself. In this story, as in that of Balder and Loki, it is the very apparent harmlessness of the bane which points the incident.
Kitpooseagunow picks up the heavy canoe, with its oars and a spear, and carries them. "Thor went, grasped the prow quickly with its hold-water, lifted the boat together with its oars and scoop; bore to the dwelling the curved vessel." Glooskap asks which of the two shall take the paddle, and which sit in the stern. Hymir inquires,
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