Tales for Sleep: What the Birds Taught Him
Tonight's tale is "The Boy Who Learned the Songs of Birds," a Seneca tale of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), collected by Jeremiah Curtin and published in his Seneca Indian Myths (E. P. Dutton, 1923). Settle in, and listen.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Two brothers live alone in the woods, and the younger — a little fellow who does the thinking for both — learns the songs of the birds, dancing for the feathers in his head-dress until, wrapped in the turkey skin his brother made him, he slowly becomes Turkey himself: wise, watchful, and able to warn his brother of the woman full of witchcraft who comes to lead him west. Two turkeys are killed at the boy's request along the way — one for the two feathers of his head-dress, one for the skin that becomes his pouch — each in a single summarised line, for craft and subsistence, never as a scene. The witch-women's intent to kill the elder brother is reported, never enacted; Turkey follows, and with Moose's help the brother is carried home unharmed, and the two live together ever after, still learning the songs of birds — for from birds, the tale says, came all the songs and dances.
The tale:
00:11 — The Boy Who Learned the Songs of Birds
Source: Jeremiah Curtin (1835–1906), Seneca Indian Myths (New York: E. P. Dutton, ©1923), pp. 179–184. Curtin's public-domain English read as printed; the tale was screened in full and passed at the shelf's gate — record: catalogue/iroquois-canon.md. Billed as a Seneca tale of the Haudenosaunee, collected by Jeremiah Curtin; no completeness claim is made for Curtin's collection.
Narrated by Magnolia
A dry-voice telling — no music, by the Sleep Season's design.
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