Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/528

 494 Collectanea.

Togoland (Spieth, Die Erve-Stdmtne, Berlin, 1906, p. 728), the Wichita, a tribe of the North American Plains belonging to the Caddoan stock (G. A. Dorsey, The Mythology of the Wichita, Washington, 1904, 123), the Cheyenne (Dorsey, Pub. Field Columbian Museum, Anthrop. series, Chicago, 1905, vol. ix,, p. 37). A story of the Ntlakapamux, or Thompson River Indians, has greater resemblance to that in tlie text. Two brothers start on adventures and fall into the hands of a cannibal. They steal from him his magical staff and run away. Reaching the river they throw it down and it forms a bridge, over which they cross. The cannibal pursues them, but cannot cross the river without his staff. The latter part of the story is concerned with the brothers' adventures at a white man's town, but so far as the adventure with the cannibal it seems a purely aboriginal tale (Teit, Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, Boston, 1898, pp. 93, 119). The adventures of children and adults among cannibals and other supernatural personages are well-known themes among the tribes of British Columbia. Some of them resemble the story in the text still more closely; but in a hasty search I have not been able to put my hand on them.]

XVIII. The Rat Princess and the Greedy Man.

One day a man was going to his field, and on the way he caught a rat. He brought it home and put it in a box, and when later on he went to look at it he found the rat had turned into a beautiful girl. When he saw her he said to himself: " If I could marry her to the richest man in the world I should become a rich man myself." So he went to find the greatest man in the world, and he came to the Chief. He said : " You are the greatest man in the world, and you had better marry her." But the Chief said : "I should like to marry her, but you say that she must marry the greatest man in the world. Now I am weaker than water, because if I go into a river in flood it carries me away. Hence water is stronger than I am." The man went to Water, and spoke to it as he had spoken to the Chief But Water said : " I am not the strongest, for when I am still Wind comes and blows me into waves. Wind is greater than I am." So the man went to Wind,