the other. The frog in the Andaman version is called a toad, and
he came to swallow the waters in the following way: One day a
woodpecker was eating honey high up in the boughs of a tree. Far
below, the toad was a witness of the feast, and asked for some
honey. "Well, come up here, and you shall have some," said the
woodpecker. "But how am I to climb?" "Take hold of that creeper,
and I will draw you up," said the woodpecker; but all the while he
was bent on a practical joke. So the toad got into a bucket he
happened to possess, and fastened the bucket to the creeper. "Now,
pull!" Then the woodpecker raised the toad slowly to the level of
the bough where the honey was, and presently let him down with a
run, not only disappointing the poor toad, but shaking him
severely. The toad went away in a rage and looked about him for
revenge. A happy thought occurred to him, and he drank up all the
water of the rivers and lakes. Birds and beasts were perishing,
woodpeckers among them, of thirst. The toad, overjoyed at his
success, wished to add insult to the injury, and, very
thoughtlessly, began to dance in an irritating manner at his foes.
But then the stolen waters gushed out of his mouth in full volume,
and the drought soon ended. One of the most curious points in this
myth is the origin of the quarrel between the woodpecker and the
toad. The same beginning--the tale of an insult put on an animal
by hauling up and letting him down with a run--occurs in an African
Marchen.[1]


[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 429, 430; Brinton,
American Hero Myths, i. 55. Cf. also Relations de la Nouvelle
France, 1636, 1640, 1671; [Sagard, Hist. du Canada, 1636, p. 451;]
Journal Anthrop. Inst., 1881.