Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/58

46 nephew as co-ruler; and when he at last died, Hildeprand succeeded him. Of another king of the Lombards, Desiderius, a contemporary of Charles the Great, the story is told that the Lombard nobles were meeting to choose a king at Pavia, and Desiderius, a pious man of noble lineage who dwelt at Brescia, journeyed thither to be present, accompanied by a serving man. At Leno, between Brescia and Cremona, being weary, he lay down under a tree to sleep. As he slept his servant beheld a snake crawl forth and wind itself round his head like a crown. The servant was afraid to move, lest the snake might injure his master; but after a while it uncoiled and crept away. Desiderius, meanwhile had dreamt that the crown of the Lombards was placed on his head. When he reached Pavia, the dream was fulfilled.

Every one is familiar with the story told by Herodotus concerning the election of a successor to Smerdis the Magian, usurper of the throne of Persia, how it was agreed that the successful conspirators should meet at sunrise, and that he whose horse first neighed should be king. According to Herodotus, Darius won by a trick of his groom. That may or may not have been. What interests us in the story is that it was believed that the succession on this occasion to the throne of Persia was determined by an augury drawn from horses, and that the neighing of Darius' horse was instantly followed by the further manifestation of the will of Heaven in thunder and lightning from a clear sky. The elephant, the horse and the divine voice of Indian märchen here find their counterpart, if not in actual fact, at least in the serious belief of the venerable historian, and the people whose tradition he reports. In this connection it