“I am tired of you.” So he took a bow and broke the skull in pieces, and
he said to the woman:—
“Get down and gather up these pieces. Pile them up, and set them on
fire. After you set them on fire, whatever you see, don’t you touch it.
You will be punished if you do.”
When the woman saw the fire going down she espied a comb.[7] She picked
it up and hid it in her blanket, but it burned her side so badly that
she died. The old man said:—
“I told you not to pick up anything, but you did so. I punish you.
Disobedience brings its own punishment.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“When Carey told it to me, he said the old man hit the skull and it went
into the air; when it came down it turned into knives, forks, thimbles,
threads, awls, wax, needles, and scissors. The man told the woman to
come down from his hair but not to pick up anything that was on the
ground; if she did he would punish her. And the old man went off and sat
down under a tree. She tried to pick up a pair of scissors; when she did
so her hands dropped off. That is the way Carey told it.”
“Carey did not get it right. This is a very old story, and at the time
it was first told we never knew of such things as knives, forks, awls,
or scissors. Carey has added that, or some of the younger people have
told it that way because they now use these things. But I have told it
to you the old way, and that is the right way.”
_George Truman Kercheval._