Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/333

Rh daughters of nature (25a). Other examples are the Titmouse (16), Iron (25b). Under this heading may be grouped several foreign examples. The Swabians poetically imagine that the wild rose smells so sweet because the Mother of God (a symbol of sweetness and fragrance) once dried her veil upon such a bush. The modern Icelanders relate that Christ, while walking with Peter along the seashore, spat into the sea, and from his spittle a stone-grig developed. Peter also spat, and his saliva turned into a female stone-grig. Both these are excellent eating. The Devil, who was not far behind, saw this, and also spat into the sea. But his spittle changed into a jellyfish, which is fit for nothing. According to a Slavonian legend, God, while travelling to the earth, became hot and tired. A drop of His sweat fell on the ground and developed into the first man. The Mazurs of Bukovina and Galicia are, in the opinion of their neighbours, as ugly as owls, as filthy as pigs, as lazy as oxen, as ravenous as wolves, and as objectionable as the Devil, because the first Mazur was born from an egg laid by an owl, and successively incubated by a pig, an ox, a wolf, and finally by the Devil himself Some Mongols believe that the Marmot originates from a very skilful archer of the name of Marmot, who cut off his thumb and buried it with the words, "Be a Marmot." According to the same people, three evergreen trees sprang up where a crow, sitting on a cedar-tree, had upset some wonderful water. The crow had been given a cup of precious water by a lama to pour over the heads of men that they might become immortal. But it had flown to the cedar-tree, and had begun to croak, with the result that the water was spilt in the wrong place.