Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/96

 86 Collectanea.

[For Echo as a wood-spirit Sir J. Frazer {Pmisanias, 1918, vol. iii., p. 296) compares the account of Ovid {Metamorphoses, iii., 356 sgq.). Some North American Indians beheve that echoes are the voices of witches who Uve in snake skins, and love to repeat mockingly the voices of passers by {First Annual Report American Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 45-47 ; cf. Gill, Afyths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 115 sqg.'\

XXVII, The Legend of the Origin of the JVdgas.

Ukepenopfu,^ ancestress of all men, had a husband with a big moustache and a long beard reaching to his feet, and he was very wise. If his children had seen him they would have been frightened, and would have run away without learning his wisdom. So he lived hidden in a wooden pot, waiting till his two sons should grow up. One day someone asked the boys whether they had ever seen their father, and they said : " No, we have no father." The man said : "Yes, you have. He has a long beard, and hides himself in a wooden pot. Go and say to your mother that unless she shows him to you, you will kill her." Their mother could not deny that they had a father, and said : "Very well, I will show you your father, but he who gets frightened will never learn his father's wisdom." The boys agreed, and taking them to the pot she showed them their father. The boy who was the ancestor of the Nagas got frightened and ran away, but he who begat the Hindus wished to go into the pot with his father. Then his father came out, and taking this son in his arms, said to his wife : " I had thought to teach both my sons all my wisdom ; but now my eldest son has run away. Keep him with you, and he shall take your name." The old man took his younger son to the plains, and this is the reason why the Nagas have less wisdom and cunning than the Hindus.

XXVIII. The Girl who ivedded a Spirit.

There was once an old woman who had a single daughter unmarried, and as she was going home from her field a spirit

' See above, vol. xxv. p. 479.