DEAD BELL BIRD OF HAUNTED SKY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 138, 12 June 1926, Page 25

DEAD BELL BIRD OF HAUNTED SKY.

FARMER KILLS AVENGER OF BLOOD. A bird of sinister omen In the Southern States—the "belled buzzard"—has been killed at last. A farmer shot him, and the "bag" appears to be the original winged scavenger whose tinkling, as he hovered over the dismal swamps of Louisiana or the impenetrable everglades of Florida, has been the basis of many stories that for nearly half a century have caused the flesh of darkies to creep and their woolly polls to horripilate. This bird was what Uncle Remus would have called "a harnt." It "haunted" the evil-doer« For round the bird's neck was a bell— now on exhibition in a Jeweller's shop at Athens, Georgia. It bears the engraved description: "Joel Mine, Llanvllle, 1882," One of the firm beliefs of the Southern negroes, for years, has been that when a dead human body lay exposed in wood or swamp, the buzzards would gather for an inquest. If they found hat the man or woman bad been slain they., before disposing of the body ln their usual carrion way, would send the bell buzzard out to avenge the crime. And the pursuit would go on until the incessant sound of the bell drove the murderer insane or Impelled him to confess his guilt.