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Updated: May 16, 2025
When the women had satisfied their vengeance, Beeargah said: "You Ouyan shall have no more flesh on your legs, and red shall they be for ever; red, and long and fleshless." Saying which she went, and with her the other women. Ouyan crawled away and hid himself, and never again did his mother see him. But night after night was to be heard a wailing cry of, "Bou you gwai gwai.
Soon they heard him crying as if in pain: "Yuckay, yuckay, yuckay nurroo gay gay." When they came near they saw he was cutting the flesh off his own limbs. Before he discovered that they were watching him, back they went to the old woman, and told her what they had seen. Soon Ouyan came back, bringing, as usual, the flesh with him.
"Too lazy to hunt for emu, he cut off his own flesh, not caring that when we unwittingly ate thereof we should sicken. Let us beat him who did us this wrong." The three women seized poor Ouyan and beat him, though he cried aloud in agony when the blows fell on his bleeding legs.
As he neared the camp his mother cried out: "What have you brought us, Ouyan? We starve for meat, come quickly." He came and laid the flesh at her feet, saying: "Far did I go, and little did I see, but there is enough for all to-night; to-morrow will I go forth again." The women cooked the flesh, and ate it hungrily.
Goomblegubbon the bustard, his two wives, Beeargah the hawk, and Ouyan the curlew, with the two children of Beeargah, had their camps right away in the bush; their only water supply was a small dungle, or gilguy hole. The wives and children camped in one camp, and Goomblegubbon a short distance off in another.
Bleargah the hawk, mother of Ouyan the curlew, said one day to her son: "Go, Ouyan, out, take your spears and kill an emu. The women and I are hungry. You are a man, go out and kill, that we may eat. You must not stay always in the camp like an old woman; you must go and hunt as other men do, lest the women laugh at you."
Ouyan took his spears and went out hunting, but though he went far, he could not get an emu, yet he dare not return to the camp and face the jeers of the women. Well could they jeer, and angry could his mother grow when she was hungry. Sooner than return empty-handed he would cut some flesh off his own legs. And this he decided to do.
Afterwards they felt quite ill, but thought it must be because they had eaten too hungrily. The next day they hurried Ouyan forth again. And again he returned bringing his own flesh back. Again the women ate hungrily of it, and again they felt quite ill. Then, too, Beeargah noticed for the first time that the flesh Ouyan brought looked different from emu flesh. She asked him what flesh it was.
Bou you gwai gwai," which meant, "My poor red legs. My poor red legs." But though Ouyan the man was never seen again, a bird with long thin legs, very red in colour under the feathers, was seen often, and heard to cry ever at night, even as Ouyan the man had cried: "Bou you gwai gwai. Bou you gwai gwai." And this bird bears always the name of Ouyan.
He replied: "What should it be but the flesh of emu?" But Beeargah was not satisfied, and she said to the two women who lived with her: "Go you, to-morrow, follow Ouyan, and see whence he gets this flesh." The next day, the two woman followed Ouyan when he went forth to hunt. They followed at a good distance, that he might not notice that they were following.
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