Before time began, [58] an old woman (Tuglibung) and an old man (Tuglay) lived in a town at the centre of the world.  There came a season of drought, when their bananas spoiled, and all their plants died from the hot sun.  Tuglibung and Tuglay were very hungry, and looked skinny, because they had nothing to eat.

One night as the old man slept, he dreamed that a little boy with white hair came close to him, and said, “Much better it would be, if you wouldstay here no longer; much better, that you go to the T’oluk Waig [59] (’water-sources’), where there is a good place to live.”

So the old folks started on their journey to the source of the rivers.  On their way, they stopped at one place that seemed good, and staid for about a month; but there was little to eat, and they were always hungry.  At last, one day, the man climbed up into a tall tree, whence he could see the whole earth, even to the border of the sky.  Far away he could see a little smoke, just like a cigarette.  Then he climbed “down the tree in a hurry, and told his wife what he had seen.

“I will go and find out where that smoke comes from,” he said, “and see if I can get some bananas and things,—­all we can eat.”

So the man started out and travelled a long way, leaving his wife at home.  As he approached the place where he had seen the smoke, he found himself in a vast field full of fruit-trees and sugarcane-plants.  The sugarcane grew as big as trees; the bananas were as huge as the trunks of cocoanut-palms; and the papaya-fruit was the size of a great clay jar.  He walked on until he reached a very large meadow, full of long wavy grass, where there were many horses and carabao and other animals.  Soon after he left the meadow-grass, he could make out, some distance ahead of him, a big house with many smaller houses grouped around it.  He was so scared that he could not see the houses very well.  He kept his eyes on the ground at his feet.

When he came up to the big house, he saw lying under it piles of human bones.  He then knew that the Datu of the Buso [60] lived there.  In all the other houses there were buso living too.  But he went bravely up the steps of the big house, and sat down on the floor.  Right away, while he sat there, the children of Buso wanted to eat him.  But Tuglay said, “No, no! don’t eat me, because I just came to get bananas of many different kinds.”

Then the man made a bargain with the Datu of the Buso, and said, “Give me some bananas, and I will pay you two children for them.  Come to my house in nine days, and you shall have one boy and one girl for the bananas.”  But Tuglay had no children.

Then the Buso gave Tuglay a basket of bananas, and let him go away.

Now, while her husband was away, the woman gave birth to twins,—­a boy and a girl.  And when the man got home he was pleased, and said, “Oh! that’s fine!  You got some babies while I was away.”