Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/93

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house, and it was with the ashes of his house that he swindled the old woman and her son.

In the end, the people caught the rogue and having tied him up were about to throw him into the river. They left him there for a short time, and he began to sing. A cowherd came up and said : •' What a beautiful song ! " " Let me loose and allow me to tie you up, and I will teach you how to sing it." So he tied up the boy, and when the people returned they flung him into the river, but the rogue escaped.

[This tale of the cunning rogue appears in many different forms throughout Northern India. It probably came to the Nagas from the Hindus.

Mr. E. Sidney Hartland writes :

" I was disposed at first to think this a story introduced from Europe, since it is well known in the west of Europe. But on further consideration I do not feel quite so sure. The story of the deceiver who is ultimately caught but escapes by cunning and puts his enemies to confusion is found in many savage tribes. This often includes the incident of the man tied up, generally in a sack, who induces someone else to change places with him. The Uraons have a tale of a man who had captured a boy for human sacrifice and put him in a bag. While he was in a house drinking rice-beer the young women of the village heard the child crying in the bag. They took him out and substituted earth and thorns. The man came and took the bag on his shoulder and went off. The child was adopted in the village {British Association Report^ 1896, p. 660). I have a note that there is also a variant in Anderson's Report on the Yufian Expedition, pp. 37, 249; but I have not the book at hand and cannot refer to it.

" Perhaps the best-known variant is that of Hudden and Dudden (Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales, 47). Jacobs refers to a number of variants, but I have others noted from Greenland and South Africa."]

XXIII. The Origin of the Kukis and Lusheis.

There was an old man named Thado, and he begat Shit-hloh, the ancestor of all the Kukis. Lushei, the ancestor of the Lusheis, was born of an egg. There was a place in Thado's house where