LEGENDS OF THE
THE AMERICAN

INDIAN

BY EDNA WAHLERT MCCOURT

THE CLOUD WOMAN

I found in the forest a white mist-
White like faint foam, a white mist.

And I said, "I have looked for you all my life,
Looked through the world for my wife."

The white mist became a white woman

Like a lily, a tall white woman.

And I said, "We will dwell together in my home,
You and I together, you and I alone.

But my lily became a white shadow

Melted in the flame of my love to a shadow.

I cried, "Not through the clod!
Go not through the grim ground to God!"

I lie in the sun, for the sky holds me-
As the flow'r holds the bee, the sky holds me.
And I say, "Within that warm white cloud
Is my Beloved. I am seeing her shroud."

My lover has left me!

SCARLET WINGS

Tell me, Traveller, have you seen my lover?

In his eyes there was the call of the sea to the stream,

And the call of time to the tide,

And the call of the raw earth to the rain.

I saw a bird with scarlet lips caress your lover on the lips

"Follow me! Follow!"

Your lover hid his eyes within his hands

But not the scarlet wings

Or "Follow me!

Follow!"

My lover followed the bird with scarlet wings

WENEWELIR

I was a maiden

A beautiful maiden,

My skin like the summer, my hair like the dawn;
I was a maiden

A beautiful maiden,

My voice was the honey, the willow my form.

I had a lover

A warrior lover,

Strong as the thunder and light as the deer;
I had a lover

A warrior lover,

Brave as the lightning and gay as the mere.

She was a hag

A thousand year old hag,

Her body was like the dead roots of a tree;
She was a witch

The devil's own witch,

With powers as deep and as black as the sea,

In the top of my head,

Ah, my beautiful head,

She bored a deep hole and through it she blew

She blew and she blew

She blew and she blew

Till all my fair body from off me she blew.

Over her bones

Her hideous bones,

She fitted the fair form that once had been mine;

Patting it, smoothing it,

Preening it, soothing it,

The witch stood arrayed in my beauty divine.

She and my lover

My strong, my gay lover,

Dwell in the teepee that he meant for me;

Croon to the children that God meant for me.

THE WATER LILY

A silver star stared from a satin sky
Upon the pretty world below,

And from her heart there came a cry,

"I must become a man, or die,

I must touch the pretty world below!"

So she swam down and dressed like any man,
Living as we who live and die.

She felt the foul of winter and its ban,

She heard the woe that through the nations ran, "I cannot be a man-to die!"

She then became a bird that built in tops of trees, But O the weary rain that ran

The withering wind born from the balmy breeze, The constant call to Come from overseas

"I cannot live a bird's frail span."

Then she became a lily in the water
And laughed to the moon from her blue throne.
Every man that longed for beauty sought her,
And in the winter she was slumber's daughter,
Smiling in her dreams upon her throne.

"I beheld a maiden with heavy hair In the arms of her lover,

Smiling a smile than the flowers more fair, In the Valley of Doom with her lover."

The father hurried to the Valley of Doom
And beheld what had not been before,-
Two lithe trees in the light of the moon
That no man had marked before.

Side by side,

Their branches blending together,

As wet waves blend with the tangent tide, Their branches blended together.

Through one the wind played a song

Like rippling water

The father looked full long,

But never found his daughter.