#canadian wonder tales

On the bank of a stream he saw four beautiful maidens sitting on the ice braiding their long hair. He knew that they were the nymphs or fairies of the stream, and he watched them from behind a tree. He had long desired to win a stream fairy for his bride, but up to that time he had found it an impossible task…

FromThe Partridge and His Drum, a story of the Mohawk people, recounted in Canadian Wonder Tales by Cyrus MacMillan (“somewhere in France with our McGill Batteries”),1918.

Partridge married one of the fairies but she was killed and eaten by an evil sorcerer. Though he successfully sought revenge, Partridge remained addled with grief, barely able to finish his task of building a fleet of boats for the birds who lived along the shores of the Great Lakes.

Finally came the day when all were to be launched, and Glooskap and all his people gathered to see the fleet go by. It was a very wonderful sight on a great inland sea. The eagle had a large canoe which he paddled with the ends of his wings; all the birds of the sea and the river had very wonderful boats—the crane and the duck, the snipe and the curlew, the plover and the gull, the wild goose and the loon and the kingfisher. And the boats were all of different colours, each colour the same as that of the bird for whom the boat was made. All the birds were supplied with boats. Even the humming-bird had a tiny canoe of many wonderful colours, and he had a little paddle not larger than a small pin.

Partridge built his boat last. Heartbroken, he made it directionless, a saucer that turned endlessly in circles and caused the other birds to laugh.

Having lost both his wife and his reputation, Partridge fled deep into the forest, forever hiding from the creatures of the water. He kept only one remnant of his old life: the drumming noise of the hammer he wielded when he built his beautiful boats.

(The illustration is by George Sheringham.)