Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/94

 §4 Collectanea.

the sun used often to shine, and when they looked there one day they found two eggs. One of them they cooked, but it was so bitter they could not eat it. So they left the other egg, and one day they saw a baby come out of it, and this was Lushei, from whom all the Lusheis are descended.

[This is not a Naga tale, but its popularity among the Nagas shows how readily they adopt stories from abroad. Compare the Hindu legend of the creation of the world from an egg {The Laivs of Alanu, i., 5 sqq. ; and for other Indian parallels see J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, part v., 1863, p. 26 sqq.). In Burma the Southern Chins are forbidden to kill or eat the King-crow, which they regard as their parent, because it hatched the original Chin egg ; and the Palaungs of the same province trace their origin to a Naga princess, who laid three eggs {Census Report, Burma, 1901, vol. i., p. 133). For the legend of Thado and Shit-hloh, as told by the Lusheis and Kukis, see J. Shakespear, The LusJiei Kiiki Clans, 191 2, pp. 142, 190 sqq. Mr. E. Sidney Hartland compares a similar tradition from Pegu {Panjab Notes and Queries, iii., 192 ; Indian Atitiquary, xxix., 190). He adds: "On Kiwai Island in the Papuan Gulf ' the first man came from a bird's egg. The bird left the egg in the nest, and a maggot came out of it, which developed into a man.' Haddon, Torres Straits Expedition (Cam- bridge, 1904), vol. v., p. 17. In the Philippine Islands a MS. referring to the history of Magindanao relates that ' Sharif Maka- alang married Buli, a Bilan woman who was found by Parasab in a crow's egg' (Saleeby, Et/mological Survey Publicatiotts, Manila, 1905, vol. iv., p. 37). Magindanao was conquered by Moham- medans some time during the Middle Ages. The MS. is one of several recording the old traditional history.

Ehenreich {Die My then und Lege?iden der Sildamerikanischen Urvolker, Berlin, 1905, 48) refers to an. old Peruvian legend, according to which a mother dying bears two eggs out of Avhich the twins Apocatequil and Pigerao are born (citing Briihl, Die Kulturvolker Alt-Avierikas, Cincinnati, 1S75-87, 472)."]

XXIV. Head-Himting.

A famous Naga tells how the sister of a man whose head had been taken by an enemy got into the house of the murderer, slew