Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/426

 394 Revieivs.

and horns. When this is done the animal becomes sacrosanct, and is never sold, however tempting a price may be offered for it. From that time ghi is freely sold until the same season in the next year (p. 95 et seq.). At a place in Gilgit there is said to have been a golden chain hanging down to earth from the sky. Any persons suspected of wrong-doing or falsehood were taken to the place and forced to hold the chain while they swore that they were innocent or that their statements were true This suggests the Homeric reference {Iliad, viii., iS 1?/ seq.), and the Aurea Catena Homeri, which was handed down through the Neo-Platonists to the alchemists of the Middle Ages.

In one tale from Astor we have a fairy marrying a mortal husband on condition that he should not shoot markhor and ibex in the hot season. As usual, he violates his tabu, and he and his dogs are turned into stones (p. 112 et seq.). In another tale the queen falls ill and the people seek a strong man to succeed her. They know not where to find him till a cock crows out the words : " A king may be found in Baldas ! " When they search there they find a youth who turns out to be the long lost son of the queen : she had murdered her husband and flung her child into the Indus, whence he was rescued by his foster-parents (p. 164 et seq.). ^

In the tale of Adam-Khor, " Eater of Men," who claims to be invulnerable, his daughter induces him to tell his secret: "My soul is made of butter, and can be destroyed only by fire." So she tells the people, and they bring wood and straw and surround the fort with a girdle of fire. When the monster finds his heart melting within him he leaps into the air with a shout of rage, and escapes to the glaciers, where he lives to this day, busy cooling his damaged soul.

Enough has been selected to show the value of Captain Haughton's collection.

\\. Crooke.

1 For magical methods of selecting a king see E. S. Hartland, Ritual and Beliefs (1914), p. 290 et seq.