Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/518

 484 Collectanea.

With regard to the Scandinavian tale given by W. C. Borlase {The Do/mefts of Ireland, 1897, vol. iii., p. 777 sq.) ISIr Hartland writes :

" I have not Adam of Bremen's History before me. But I think his statements (which are the basis of Borlase's argument) must be taken cum grafio salis, if they really identify the Amazons with "the giant maids of Jotunheim," the Valkyries, etc. Borlase's geographical and philological identifications are disputable, and even some of his statements are inaccurate. Saxo, for instance, does not speak of Conogardia as situated near Holgardhr. See the passage, Elton's trans., 197. On the other hand, the Voyage of Bran (Kuno Meyer's trans., i. Nutt, 30) describes the Land of Women, a place of much enjoyment, where Bran and his men experienced the supernatural lapse of time.

The Tami Islanders off the coast of N.E. New Guinea tell a tale of two men who found their way to an island inhabited only by women. They married two women there, and taught the inhabi- tants the natural method of childbirth, instead of the Caesarian operation previously practised (Neuhauss, Deutsch Neiv Guinea, Berlin, 191 1, vol. iii., p. 550). In the Gazelle Peninsula a man finds his way to a land inhabited entirely by women, whose husbands were said to be turtles. His advent put an end to that (J. Meier, Mythen imd Erzdhlufigen der Kustenl>e7voh?ier der Gazelk'Ualdinsei, JVeu-Poni7}ier?i, IMunster-i.-W., 1909, 85, 89). Mariner found among the Tonga islanders the belief in an Isle of AVomen existing somewhere to the north-west of f^iji {Tonga, Edinburgh, 1827, vol. ii., p. 116).

If we may believe the early accounts of the Spanish discoveries in America, Columbus discovered in the West Indies an island inhabited only by women called Matinina or Madanino, and others were said to have been found by his successors (Arber, The First Three English Books on America, Westminster, 1895,, 30, 99, 189)."]

IV. The Origin of Cholera : The Double-skifined.

There was once a tribe of men whose skin was double. They were formerly Nagas, but they separated from their kinsmen on