W eedah wanted to trick the people living next to him. So, he built a number of grass nyunnoos (huts) and before each of them he lit a fire. He made it seem as if all the nyunnoos were occupied. He would go from nyunnoo to nyunnoo making sounds like a baby crying, an old woman talking, someone laughing and so on. He was good at imitating and would do so in such quick succession that any passer by would think a lot of people lived there. He wanted to entice as many people from the neighbouring villages so that he could kill them and then he would take over the whole countryside.
His way of operating was that he would lure a single man into the camp with his many voices. The man would be curious to find out which tribe lived there and would come in and look into the nyunnoos . He would find Weedah standing inside one nyunnoo and approaching him would ask him about the people living there. To this Weedah would say, “And only I am here. The wind must have stirred the branches of the balah trees, and you must have thought it was the wailing of children, the laughing of the Goug gour gahgah (laughing jackass) you heard, and thought it the laughter of women and mine must have been the voice as of men that you heard. Alone in the bush, as the shadows fall, a man breeds strange fancies. See by the light of this fire, where are your fancies now? No women laugh, no babies cry, only I, Weedah, talk.” As he spoke he edged closer to the man and then would seize him and throw him into the fire.
Unravelling the mystery
Mullyan, the eagle hawk noticed that many people of his tribe, several of whom were his friends had disappeared. When Beeargah, his cousin disappeared, he decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. He followed Beeargah’s tracks as he chased a kangaroo to where he had killed it. Then he followed Beeargah’s homeward trail. He tracked him through sand, across plains and through scrub. While making his way through the scrub he heard the sound of voices. He followed the sounds and arrived at Weedah’s camp. He found Weedah alone in the camp and asked him about the voices.
Weedah said, “How can I tell you? I know of no people. I live alone.”
The conversation went on in regular lines until Mullyan asked, “What did you do with Beeargah my cousin? And where are my friends? Their trails lead to this camp but there are none leaving the camp.”
Weedah said, “What do I know of your friends? Ask the wind, or Bahloo , the moon or Yhi , the sun...” As he spoke, he edged closer to Mullyan. At precisely that time, Mullyan glanced at the fire and thought, “Ah, if only you could talk what would you have told me?” And it came to him at that moment what Weedah had been doing. He kept his face impassive and pretended to fall into the trap Weedah had laid out. Weedah grabbed him and dragged him to the fire, but before he could be thrown in, Mullyan seized him and said, “Just as you killed Beeargah, the hawk, my cousin and my friends, so will I now kill you.”
Mullyan threw Weedah into the fire and left. When he had gone some distance away from the camp, he heard the sound of a thunder clap. But it was not thunder, it was the bursting of the back of Weedah’s head. And when it burst, out of it came a bird — Weedah, the mocking bird.
Weedah, the mocking bird makes grass playgrounds, through which it runs imitating voices — the crying of a baby, the laughing of a woman, the mewing of a cat, the barking of a dog...
Retold by NIMI KURIAN
