How Tig chose a Wife from among the Lake People

AFTER his first visit to the Lake Village Tig went sometimes to see his friends there, always taking care to carry with him a present of game of his own killing, a hare or some birds, for Eira and her mother; for he was glad that they should see what a clever hunter he was; and Eira showed him how well she could cook the meat that he brought, and was pleased when he praised her cookery. Dobran and Gaithel took him out fishing, but Tig did not care much for this. However, one day they promised to show him better sport, for a party was going up into their hunting-grounds to hunt deer in a manner of their own.

They all started very early in the morning and marched up into the hills. Then the men spread their party out into a long line, curved like the letter C, and swept across the hill-side with their dogs. Then they closed in, and beat the woods until the hunters on one side started a herd of deer. The deer dashed across the woodland valley and tried to escape on the other side, but the men of the further line turned them back and drove them into the woods again.

So the hunters kept the deer moving forward, always within the line, until they drove them to a narrow place near the end of the valley, where there was a big trap, a high double fence among the trees, made in the shape of a long V. The hunters closed in on the deer and drove them in at the broad open end of the fence, and then drove them on and on until the deer were enclosed in the narrow end, where the ground was soft and boggy, so that they could not leap out.

Then some of the hunters climbed over the fence, and speared or clubbed the poor animals that were standing up to their knees in the soft soil, panting and terror-stricken. In this manner in one day the hunters got eleven head of deer; but Tig thought it was not such fine sport as stalking a stag on the hills, though at the time of the drive, when they were heading the deer down through the woods, it was exciting work.

Then they carried home the deer that they had killed, and they all spent two or three days in feasting.

Another day when Tig and Gaithel were in the woods, they came to a valley where a stream flowed quietly along and the trees grew on the banks near the water’s edge.

“This is the beavers’ valley,” said Gaithel, “they have their village here. They are our brothers, for they build their houses beside the water even as we do; but we hunt them and kill them although we do call them our brothers.”

The beavers’ home was in a pond. They had made the pond by laying a dam of logs across the stream to hold back the water; and there they had built their huts with round tops of interlaced branches that showed above the water. Tig saw where they had cut down many tall trees on the banks and gnawed them into logs with their strong teeth.

“Do you set traps for the beavers?” Tig asked.

“Yes, we trap them; we bait the traps with fresh wood—fresh sweet bark is what they like. Sometimes we hunt them in the winter, when their ponds are frozen over. We go and batter at the huts with clubs. Then the beavers rush out of their huts under the ice and make for holes that they have in the banks; but we try to head them off from these by banging on the ice, and make them come up to breathe at holes in the ice. They must come up after a time to get breath. Then we stand at the holes and try to spear them. We often scatter dry husks over the holes: the stuff floats on the water, and then the beavers cannot see us waiting by the holes, and we catch them if we are quick.”

“Have you many beavers about here?” Tig asked.

“There are not so many as there were once. My grandfather can remember when there used to be nine or ten beavers’ dams in these valleys where there are only three or four now.”

“They are getting scarce in our woods too,” said Tig, “we have hunted them so much.”

The next day Tig went home to his own village and got some of his neighbours to help him build a new hut and bring into it the necessary things. Then he went again to the Lake Village, taking presents for Eira’s father and mother, and he asked Eira to be his wife. Then they were married according to the custom of her people, and there was a great feast at the wedding, and the men ran races, and they all danced many dances. And afterwards Tig took Eira home to the new hut in his own village.