Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/438

 39^ The Folklore in the Legends of the Panjab.

able to do this is surprisingly large. They can of course go unharmed through ordeals by fire, and can starve without injury. They can make themselves invulnerable by arrows, rocks, bullets, daggers, and what not, and can burst their fetters. They cannot be hanged, and can control and tame animals and slay them with ease. Even for matters of mere personal advantage and comfort they effect miracles. In one place the hero opens locked doors without keys in order to get at his mistress, illegitimately by the way ; after which one is somewhat surprised to learn in the Legends that it is wrong to work miracles for inadequate objects or for the mere pleasure of the thing. But the favourite miracle of the creation of a crowd of followers or wild beasts as a means of protection in a difficulty is probably an extension of that idea of invisible supernatural assistance in all severe struggles that has taken so strong a hold on the popular imagination all over the world. And this leads to the con- sideration that in the study of the actual miracles attributed to saints and the like it is something more than merely interesting to observe how much they follow the general notions of the people as exhibited in their folktales, how much they are based on folklore, how much on the desires and aspiration of the folk themselves. Thus we may class as belonging to the idea of immortality and its corollaries the frequently recurring miracles of restoration to life, the vivification of an idol, and the curious instances of a child- saint making a wooden horse run about and a wall into a hobby-horse when in want of a plaything. The restoration to the original form and life of human ashes, of a devoured bride and bridegroom, of an eaten horse and kid, are but extravagant extensions of the same idea. So also without the extravagance are the restoration to greenness and life of a dried-up garden, a dead tree, a withered forest. The odd miracles of making the dild-gvass evergreen and fruit-trees to bear fruit out of season are further developments of the main idea.