Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/41

 The Legends of Krishna. 31

and to have been recovered from thence by some favoured votary. Such is the famous Madonna la Trouche, that found in the Cullen bog near Tipperary, the Madonna of Ballyvourney in the county of Cork, and that of St. Molaise at Innismurray.^

Blackness is the characteristic of images other than Madonnas, such as the rag images of the Italian Befanas, which take the place of our Santa Claus and have blackened faces.^

The question of the explanation of the origin of these black gods is extremely complex.

In some cases we may suspect that they represent a racial type familiar to the people who first introduced this form of worship. We must remember that among some races blackness of complexion is not alone considered not unbecoming, but is even admired. One of the titles of the Zulu kings, for instance, was " You who are black ; " and the lady in the Canticles says, " I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem." ^ We find the Egyptian queen, Nofritari, consort of Ahmosis, identified with Isis and depicted as a black-skinned goddess.'^ Hence we can explain why St. Benedito, a black negro saint is wor- shipped on the Amazon, and on the Gold Coast the white man^s God is said to be black, and he appears at the foot of the fetish-tree in the form of a black dog.^

Now it has been often noticed that some of the forms of the Indian Buddha and other black Hindu gods are of a distinctively negroid type, representing the deity with thick lips, long hanging ear lobes, and black curly hair

' Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, 102; O'Curry, Manners and Customs, iii., 20b note; Borlase, Dolmens of Irelajid, m., "j^S, 11 15; Southey, Common- place Book, iii., 1 74.

'^ 6th Series Notes and Queries, ii., 409.

^ Darwin, Descent of Man, 579; Canticles, i., 5 ; Jouriial of the Anthropo- logical Institute, XV., 56 ; Featherman, Negritoes, 584 note.

^ Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, 96, 98.


 * Bales, Amazon, i., 310 seqq. ; Featherman, loc. cit., 160 note.