the echoes moaning about the lake. What sound so grievous as a loon's complaint? Lampman has put into verse their legend:
Once …
Wherever Glooscap's gentle feet might stray
… ye lay
Floating at rest; but that was long of yore.
He was too good for earthly men; he bore
Their bitter deeds for many a patient day,
And then at last he took his unseen way.
He was your friend, and ye might rest no more.
And now …
… among the desolate northern meres
Still must ye search and wander querulously
Crying for Glooscap, still bemoan the light
With weird entreaties, and in agony
With awful laughter pierce the lonely night.
The Indians attribute to these birds miraculous powers of prophecy and believe they give notice of a change in the weather by their scream. In the Micmac legend, The Loon Magician, many untoward things occur or are avoided through disobedience or obedience to the warning of a loon. In appearance, these great water-fowl are eerie as their cry. Their long white-feathered necks are wound with a band black and soft as ebony velvet. They live entirely on or under the water. They can stand erect only by using their tail "like the third leg of a tripod," and they cannot walk at all. Their wings they use under the water as in the air, to propel them forward. They are master divers and of all the creatures that live
