Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/441

 The Folklore in the Legends of the Panjah. 40 1

natural incident in everyday life. Miracles are always oc- curring ; every village has instances of them ; everyone has knowledge of some that are notoriously within the ex- perience of acquaintances. Even Europeans can hardly become intimate with the thoughts and customs of native neighbours without being cognisant of supposed miraculous occurrences around them. They are frequently believed to have happened to Europeans themselves. Sir Henry Lawrence is thus believed at Firozpur in the Pan jab to have been compelled to compliance with a saint's behests by terrifying occurrences, induced by the saint during sleep. Almost precisely the same story has been current in the AmbalaCantonment about myself; and I have also conversed with the son of the child supposed to have been raised from the dead by the long deceased saint, Sakhi Sarwar, for Dani Jatti, now the heroine of a popular Panjabi Legend widely sung all over that Province. That personage and his neigh- bourhood had no sort of doubt as to the truth of the tale about his father and grandmother. It would never have oc- curred to them to doubt it. The once notorious Ram Singh Kuka, whom the present speaker knew personally while a political prisoner in consequence of his raising a petty religious rebellion against the British Crown, was credited with miraculously lengthening the beam of a house for a follower at Firozpur, by way of helping him to preserve his property. This beam was shown to me in all good faith within ten years of the date of the supposed miracle. Such being the conditions, one can hardly be surprised at what has been noted on the subject of the miraculous doings of saints and holy personages.

So far we have been dealing with miracles, whose value lies in their publicity ; but the bards and tellers of the marvellous stories have by no means overlooked the im- portance to them, as a means of turning the popular imagination to their own benefit, of hidden or undisclosed miracles. In the Legends, among the tales that have

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