Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/361

Rh once seen the sun?‘ ‘The land upon which (after the creation) the waters were gathered, and (the bed of the sea on) the day when the sea was divided.’ (7) ‘There is an enclosure with ten doors, when one is open, nine are shut; when nine are open, one is shut.’ ‘That enclosure is the womb: the ten doors are the ten orifices of man—his eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, the apertures for the discharge of the excreta and the urine, and the navel; when the child is in the embryonic state, the navel is open and the other orifices are closed, but when it issues (from the womb) the navel is closed, and the others are opened.’ (8) ‘(There is something which when) living moves not, yet when its head is cut off it moves?’ ‘It is the ship in the sea’ (the living tree has no motion, the trunk from which the crowning branches have been severed supplies the material for the moving vessel). (9) ‘Which are the three that neither ate, nor drank, nor had breath put into them, yet saved three lives from death?’ ‘The seal, the thread and the staff (of Judah)] are those three, and the lives they saved were Tamar, Pharez, and Zarah.’ (10) ‘Three entered a cave, and five came forth therefrom?’ ‘Lot and his two daughters, and their two children.’ (11) ‘The dead lived, the grave moves, and the dead prays: what is that?’ ‘The dead one was Jonah; the moving grave, the fish; Jonah was also the one that prayed.’ (12) ‘Who were the three that ate and drank on the earth, yet were not born of male and female?’ ‘The three angels who revealed themselves to our father Abraham, peace be unto him.’ (13) ‘Four entered a place of death and came forth alive, and two entered a place of life and came forth dead?’ ‘The four were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; and the two who entered a place of life and came forth dead were Nadab and Abihu.’ (14) ‘Who was he who was born and died not?’ ‘Elijah and the Messiah.’ (15) ‘What was that which was not born, yet life was given to it?’ ‘The (golden) calf.’ (16) ‘What is that which is produced from the ground, yet man produces it, while its food is of the fruit of the ground?’ ‘A wick.’ (17) ‘A woman was wedded to two, and bare two sons, yet these four had one father?’ ‘Tamar was married by two, Er and Onan; she bore two (sons), Pharez and Tarah; and the father of (all) four was Judah.’ (18) ‘A house full of dead: no dead one came among them, nor did a living one come forth from them?’ ‘It is the story of Samson and the Philistines.’ (19) She next ordered the sawn (trunk of a) cedar tree to be brought, and asked him to point out which (end) the root had been and at which the branches. He bade her cast it into the water, when one end sank and the other floated upon the surface of the water. That part which sank was the root, and that which remained uppermost