Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/248

236 goats, deer, horses, hares, eagles, foxes, magpies, moths, pigs, swans, toads, and weasels. On the authority of Giraldus we may add the wolf in Ireland, and on that of Saxo, the walrus in Norway. The facts admit, however, of another explanation, to which I shall refer later.

(iii.) Widely distributed also is the correlative of this belief. In some cases animals are regarded as human beings under a curse.

In the Isle of Man the wren is said to be a transformed fairy; so, too, the toad in Sicily, the gull, lizard, cuckoo; mole, magpie, and squirrel in Germany, the woodpecker in Scandinavia, and the peewit and owl in England.

(iv.) In the Faroe Isles the seals appear, like the wren in the Isle of Man, once a year in human form.

In other cases the belief takes the form that animals can assume human shape. In Perthshire this was believed of cats, hares, and magpies.

In a third form of the belief, certain animals — the stork, for example — are men in other countries.

(c) The Animal as Life-index.

(i.) Some animals, usually domestic or semi-domestic,