Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/198

 1 88 Some Mythical Tales of the Lapps

ray of sunlight gets into it, and then we can stop there." The lazy man did not make the house quite sun-proof, and in the morning one bright beam of sunshine poured through a chink. Up jumped the Sun's Daughter. " Ha ! Ha ! " she exclaimed. " I can see the eyes of my father and mother." Then she called to him, " Follow me ! Don't look behind ! Hear what you hear, but don't look round ; only follow me ! " The herd of reindeer leaped forth violently, boggarts and ghosts howled shrilly and threaten- ingly, nearer and nearer. The lazy man was frightened, and looked back. In a trice a third part of the herd disappeared. Again she cried, " Follow ! Follow ! But don't look back ! " He followed ; but the spirits came so close that he thought they would seize him, and he looked back again. In an instant the remaining two-thirds of the herd disappeared. Then the Sun's Daughter ex- claimed, " Follow them yourself, and let the reindeer which have galloped off be wild reindeer ! " And this is why everyone who watches reindeer must be alert and wakeful ; for the Sun's Daughter is looking on hard by, " glad to reward, swift to punish." ^

According to another tradition, w^hich is recorded by Ovigstad and Sandberg, Attjis-ene, or Hatsjaedne, as she is there called, became herself a beetle.

The silpha lapponica, or sexton beetle, which lives on carrion, was once, as the tale runs, a human being, who had a fine house and was rich and prosperous. But she was ugly and malicious, and skilled in witchcraft, and able to transform herself into many different shapes. Hatsjaedne was her name ; and she had a daughter who was no better than herself. They both lived by stealing, and as long as they kept on earth, their business prospered, but when

^ Cf. Stioinen Kansan Satuja ja Tarinoita, vol. i. (Helsingfors, 1852), p. S, where Lippo {Lappa), whose son is said to have been the ancestor of the Laplanders, marries a daughter of Tapio, the Forest God of the Finns. In this tale Lippo is told to build a hut which must exclude the light, and the tliird night fails to do this, and conseciuently loses his wife.