Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/156

 146 Myths of Origin and

placed in a tree : it is, as it were, returned to the place which it has lately left." If a pregnant woman be troubled by bad dreams, and if the Behabei state that they are caused by the child, " then at its birth the child is rejected by returning it to the tree. This act of rejection consists of making a hole in the trunk of a large tree of a certain kind, and in it the child, even if alive, is placed in a stand- ing position, the hole being afterwards closed up."^^

There is evidence to show a correspondence between the myth of origin and the disposal of the dead when they are placed in trees or on tree-platforms, but until we know more about the nature of platform-burial it will not be possible to establish this correspondence fully. I have unfortunately only been able to collect two more cases where there is a correspondence between the myth of origin and the mode of disposal, and in these two cases the correspondence is not definite. The Mentawi islanders have one mode of dis- posal in which the dead are placed on a platform in the branches of a tree.^* They also have an origin myth which relates that two evil spirits were fighting one day and one of them started to break off a bamboo to use as a cudgel, v/hen out of the root crept the first men.^^ In Timorlao the dead are put in canoes which may be placed in the branches of a tree.^'' Corresponding to this is a myth that the first men came out of a bamboo.^"

It will be noticed that, in these last two cases, the first men came out of a bamboo, and that the place of disposal is a tree. There is thus not a direct correspondence of place

2" J. W. Tromp, " Uit de Salasali van Koelei-," Tijd. taal land- en volk., Ser. V. 3, 1888, pp. 92-3.

^*H. A. Mess, " De Mentawei-ellanden," Tijd. taal land- en volk., xxvi., 1880, p. 93.

35 Mess, Ibid., p. 76: C. M. Pleyte, "Die Mentawei Inseln und ihre Bewohner," Globus, Ixxix., 1901, p. 3.

36 C. V. Hoevell, op. cit., p. 207.


 * ^ Riedel, Slnik- en hroeshaarige rassen, p. 275.