Birth of the Butterflies

A Dreamtime Myth

When the world was new, all the animals and birds had one common language and there was no death. One day a young cockatoo fell from a tree and broke its neck. All the animals and birds gathered around but failed to awaken the creature they thought was sleeping.

There was a meeting; the wise-ones speculated and then decided the spirits had taken back the cockatoo to be changed into a different form. Everyone accepted this as a reasonable explanation, but to prove the theory the leaders asked for volunteers to imitate the dead cockatoo by going up to sky for a whole winter.

During that time they would not be allowed to see, hear, smell or taste anything, in the spring they would return to relate their experience to the others. The caterpillars offered to try the experiment and went up in the sky in a huge cloud.

The winter passed and on the first day of spring a pair of excited dragonflies announced to the assembled animals and birds that the caterpillars were returning with new bodies. Soon more dragonflies arrived leading back into camp myriads of white, yellow, red, blue and green creatures --- the first butterflies; proof that the spirits had changed the caterpillar’s bodies into another form.

The butterflies clustered on the trees and bushes, everything looked so happy and colourful that the wise-ones decreed it must always be so, and so the caterpillars spend winter in cocoons preparing to change into beautiful butterfliesat at the first sign of spring.