“Té-k’ya-thla-k’ya
Í-ta-wa-k’ya
Äsh′-she-shu-kwa!
—As if food-stuff were made to make people afraid!” Whereupon they twitched the earrings off the pot and ate them up with all the mush that was in the pot, which they forthwith kicked to pieces vigorously.
Then the people crowded still closer around them, wondering to one another that they could vanquish all enemies by eating them with such impunity, and they begged the Twain to teach them how to do it. So they gathered a great council of the villagers, and when they found that these poor people were only half finished, ... they cut vents in them (such as were not afraid to let them), ... and made them eat solid food, by means of which they were hardened and became men of meat then and there, instead of having to get killed after the manner of the fearful, and others of their kind beforetime, in order to ascend to the daylight and take their places in men born of men.
And for this reason, behold! a new-born child may eat only of wind-stuff until his cord of viewless sustenance has been severed, and then only by sucking milk or soft food first and with much distress.
Behold! And we may now see why, like new-born children are the very aged; childish withal—á-ya-vwi[35];—not only toothless, too, but also sure to die of diarrhœa if they eat ever so little save the soft parts and broths of cooked food. For are not the babes new-come from the Shi-u-na[36] world; and are not the aged about to enter the Shi-po-lo-a[37] world, where cooked food unconsumed is never heeded by the fully dead?
[35] Dangerously susceptible, tender, delicate. [Back]