Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/350

 326 Collectanea.

the fact that they were told by men. Women are notoriously the best tellers of Mdrchcn ; and a woman would have been more likely to remember and reproduce the details. In the first story, for instance, the omissions are numerous. The singeing of the mare's tail is an incident I do not remember reading before ; but why did Habiyo adopt this method of causing the magical beast to disappear ? There must have been, as in other versions there is, a conversation with her. Probably she herself originally in- formed the hero of his stepmother's plot, and concerted with him the measures he was to take. Again, why did the sultan's youngest daughter choose the cripple for a husband ? We know from other versions that she had previously seen him and penetrated his dis- guise. But the incident, a necessary link in the story, is wanting here.

The curious incident in the second story of the hero's mutilation is paralleled in the ancient Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers. It is also worthy of note that in the Japanese variant of the Perseus and Andromeda legend the dragon drinks before attacking his prey. (See Campbell, Aly Circular Notes, vol. i., p. 326; Aston, Nihongi, vol. i., p. 52.) The fourth story depends on the incident of the hero's digging a tunnel from his residence to the heroine's apartments in her husband's house. It is obvious that this incident can hardly be natural among the Somalis. In fact, the story is well known in the Mediterranean area, and has doubt- less been brought, like several of the others, by Arabs to Somali- land. The modern phraseology of the originals, referred to by Lieutenant Kirk, strengthens the probability of importation.

E. S. Hartland.

Notes from the Upper Congo, III.

(Vol. xii., pp. 181, 458.)

I PURPOSE now to give you two of the legends told here about Libanza, the nearest equivalent we can get to God. It will be interesting to note, before passing on to the legends, some of the notions the natives have respecting God. Their ideas are very nebulous. To them apparently the Godhead consists of four