Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/277

Rh connects the taboo laid on girls at puberty, which forbids them to see the sun, with this belief, and so explains the myth of Danae, comparing it especially with a parallel in Siberian legend, given by Radloff, ''Der türk. Stämme Süd-Siberiens, iii, 82 sq.''

Frazer also cites Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, No. 28; Bastian, ''Die Völker des ostl. Asien, i, 416; vi, 25; Turner, Samoa, p. 200; Panjab Notes and Queries'', ii, No. 797, for sun-impregnation. Traces of the belief exist in the ceremonial of marriage (Frazer, l. c.; in the old Hindoo marriages, the bride on the previous day was made to look upon the sun; and among the Turks of Siberia, in Iran, and Central Asia, the young couple are led out of their hut on the morning after marriage to greet the rising sun, whose beams are believed to ensure fertility; quoting Vambéry, Das Türken Volk, p. 112; Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, p. 354; Trans. of the Ethnological Society, iii, 327). May not our proverb, "Blest is the bride on whom the sun doth shine" (Herrick), go back to a like belief?

I have not been able to find other instances in which the sunbeam enters the mouth. A beam came out of Charles the Great's mouth, and illumined his head (Grimm, D. M., Eng. trans., p. 323, according to a story in the Galien restoré). Liebrecht (l. c.) compares with the Alankava story the passage of Pliny (xxxvi, 70, 204, Detlefsen) describing the birth of Servius Tullius as connected with the sacred fire on the hearth (so Dion. Halic., 4, 2).