If blandishments fail, however, there is to be no doubt about the punishments in store for their wilful Highnesses: thus, a little later, we find the alternative, a thoroughgoing imprecation calculated to “convince” the most headstrong of birds:—
“I call you, I fetch you down,
If you come not down you shall be eaten by the Bear-cat,
You shall be choked to death with your own feathers,
You shall be choked to death with a bone in your throat.
If you perch on a creeper you shall be entangled by it,
If you settle on a leaf you shall be bitten by the ‘leaf snake,’
Come you down quickly to God’s fold and King Solomon’s.”
And an imprecation of similar import says—
“[If you do not come down, the Bear-cat shall eat you],