Yé.
409
Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose ; but he had to g o and see the Bon-Dié again. T h e Bon-Dié said to him :— — " A h ! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool !— you are certainly the biggest fool in the whole world ! . . . Still, I must try to do something for you,;—I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose ! . . . I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and take a big taya [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I, the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a good bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for yourself out of the heap of bills there." Poor Y é did just as the G o o d - G o d told h i m ; and while the birds were bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,—and left his own refinery-pot in its place. The nose he took was the nose of the coulivicou* And that is why the coulivicou always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day. III. Y é !—you still live for me only too vividly outside of those strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly reveal the long slave-hunger of your race. For I have seen you cutting cane on peak slopes above the clouds ;—I have seen you climbing from plantation to plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watching for snakes as you wander to look for work, when . . . POOR
* T h e coulivicou, o r " C o l i n V i c o u , " is a M a r t i n i q u e b i r d w i t h a l o n g m e a g r e b o d y , a n d an e n o r m o u s b i l l .
I t h a s a v e r y tristful a n d
taciturn expression. . . . Maig conm yon coulivicou, ' ' thin as a c o u l i v i c o u , " is a p o p u l a r c o m p a r i s o n f o r the a p p e a r a n c e o f a n y b o d y m u c h r e d u c e d b y sickness.