Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/61

 occurs in the introduction to the whole cycle, and then later when Sigfrid (Sigurðr) wins Brunhild (Sigrdrífa) for Gunther (Gunnar). The idea of mutual exchange of the body is based on the conception of the body being similar to removable clothes (Icel. hamr, "skin"; cf hamramr or eigieinhamr, "able to exchange one's form"); a witch or magician can change the appearance of another man by putting the hamr on him, and it is the task of the hero to destroy this magical hamr. The swanmaidens cannot resume their bird-shape if their hamr is stolen from them. This belief is based on primitive conceptions of life. To primitive man there is no difference between an animal and a human being; their external form is only a casual accident: "the bear whom the savage meets in the woods is too cunning to appear and to battle with him as a man, but he could if he chose" (Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, 26). Our motive is only a logical consequence of this ancient savage belief: if shape-shifting is possible, why cannot two human beings also exchange their shape one with another? This motive is also very closely connected with the motive: the wife is changed into an animal and the sorceress or her daughter takes her place. In most of these stories the impostress maintains her position by disguise; in some stories the quid pro quo can be explained by the social conditions of the indigenous culture (cf M‘Culloch, Childhood of Fiction, pp. 24 ff.), but some at least must belong to our group, so e.g. the Bushman story, "The Wife of the Dawn's Heart Star" (Bleek & Lloyd, Bushman Folklore, pp. 89 ff.), where a hyena takes the place of Kó-ginu&#805;iń-tára, the wife of Jupiter star. But is this belief commensurate with the belief that the soul retains the characteristics of the body (man's double)? To this we can answer that it is not necessary that those ideas should coincide ; we find many such discrepancies which may be due to different culture-strata. As regards the different conceptions concerning