Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/68

 PARTHENOGENESIS.

In Serbian Popular Tradition.

is the scientific term for the phenomenon of virgin birth. The first to draw attention to the occurrence of this phenomenon in bees was Gerson, but since then it has been definitely estabhshed not only in the case of bees but also in that of other insects, by K. Th. v. Siebold, who recognizes it as a scientific axiom. In Serbian tradition we likewise find traces of this belief in the possibility of virgin birth.

The Serbian National Ballad Smrt Grozdane Kceri Dušanove (The Death of Grozdana, Dušan’s Daughter), from Sarajevo in Bosnia, relates how the Serbian Tsar Stjepan Dušan (1331-1355) went a-hunting in the mountains, where he remained for a whole week without succeeding in killing anything. On his way home from his fruitless expedition, he came to a pool from which he desired to drink. While he was drinking, his horse impatiently pawed the ground among the beech-leaves, and in so doing laid bare a skull. When the Vizier Theodore caught sight of the skull, he pushed it with his foot; but the skull spoke and said: “Do not push me with your foot. Vizier Theodore! Thou, Theodore, hast not been Tsar, but this skull has, and as it has been, so shall it be again.” When Tsar Stjepan heard this, he commanded that the skull should be removed and brought away. On his return to