The Ebesoana race among the Arawaks of Guiana, take their name from "Ebesotu," the transformed heroine of the following legend:—
A love-sick maiden prayed her father, a sorcerer, to transform her into a dog, so that she might follow her lover, who had been utterly indifferent to her charms.
Her father treated the affair very practically indeed, in spite of the fact that he thought his daughter very foolish.
"Take this skin," he said sadly, "and draw o'er thy shoulders,
A dog in the eyes of the loved one to be,
Its wonderful magic deceives all beholders!
Be rid of thy madness—then come back to me!"
The young lover, who was a huntsman, used to start out every morning into the woods, followed by four dogs, but when he returned in the evening only three of them were at heel, for one always ran home when it came to the point of slaughtering the prey. When the hunter reached his cottage he found it swept and clean, the fire burning, and bread freshly baked, and he imagined a kind neighbour had done this for him.
"When they all denied it, he said, ''Tis some spirit,
Who seeing me lonely, thus strives to be kind,'
Then he saw gazing at him that dog void of merit,
Whose look was so strange it puzzled his mind."
Next day, when he noticed there were only three dogs instead of four, he tied the hounds to a tree and went in search of the missing animal. Peeping through a crack in the door of his cottage he saw a lovely maiden, and the dogskin lying over a chair close by. Making a sudden dart into the room, he seized the skin and thrusting it into the fire, claimed the maiden as his bride.