Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/92

 according to which death and life are not so strictly separated one from another as in our modern ideas: the dead man is not really dead; he could live again. This old belief is reflected in many motives, one group of which is the most important for us, i.e. the dead takes the form of an animal or a plant (M‘Culloch, The Childhood of Fiction, pp. 108 ff.); this group is connected with the old belief that the dead man assumes the shape of his clan totem. In our case the question is still simpler, as Llew is transformed into an eagle, and the soul has, according to the wide-spread belief, a bird's shape. The rest is only a logical consequence of this belief: if the dead continues living in another shape, there must exist some means to restore his original shape and he can live again. Usually the relatives and friends of the dead know what to do, and this of course is known also to Gwydyon, who in this episode plays the rôle of the relative, for he strikes Llew with his magic wand to restore his form (R.B. 768, Ac yna y trewis Gwydyon a hutlath ynteu yny vyd yn y rith e hunan). This results from Gwydyon's general magic nature (cf. Skene, ii 302, Neu Leu a Gwydyon a vuant gelvydyon | neu a wdant lyvyryon? "Or Llew and Gwydyon were they creators (artists), or did they know books?") So in a Basuto tale: a girl is devoured but her heart escapes as a bird, and when the wings are pulled off the girl assumes again her own shape. We might define this belief as follows: the dead gets only another hamr (skin), and it is his rescuer's task to get this hamr off.

It is worth while considering the tales in which this motive occurs; it is either the dead mother who takes the shape uf some animal (Cinderella motive) or a slain person seeks his revenge on his murderers (jealous sisters or cruel stepmother), or, finally, a woman is transformed by another woman who seeks to take her place. This motive is rarely connected with the motive of the Treacherous Wife, and yet we have a very old instance of this combination,