Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/327

Rh dominion over the whole world, a race that could claim him as a father. He, therefore, ingerminated a stone and an elderberry bush at the same time. If the bush should happen to produce first, people would have nails on their fingers and toes, and would in time die ; if the stone, they would be covered with scales and would not die. The bush produced first, and consequently people have nails, are subject to sorrow and sickness, and finally to death. 3. L. S. is born of F. M. Inconsequentially its members are made of all sorts of contemptuous or ridiculous objects. Thus the bear's father and mother are called Bearworts, but yet the old wife of the North made his head out of a knoll, his back from a pine, his teeth from stone, his ears from the stuffing of a shoe (3d). Though the dog is the child of eight fathers and one mother, yet the Earth's wife made him a head from a knoll, his legs of stakes, his ears of water-lily leaves, his gums and nose of the East Wind (5b). So, too, the lizard, though its father and mother are both called Brisks, yet it is made of birchwood, of aspen fungus, etc., jumbled up together and poked under a pile of wood — its usual habitat (13c). 4. L. S. is born of F. M. A mere statement of fact. The cabbage-worm has a blue butterfly for its father and mother (18). The pig's mother is called Sow, and its father Snouty. The origins of the lizard (13d, e) are obscure, but seem to belong to this category. 5. S. is born of F. M. Descriptive poiyits in the narrative account for the nature and character of S. Sharp Frost is born near a lump of ice, of an ever-devastating father and a breastless mother, by reason of which he had to be suckled by a snake, nourished by hard weather, and rocked to sleep by the North Wind (49a). According to an Uigur legend, a famous hero, Pukia Khan, was born from a tree which seems to have been