Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/339

Rh boy, replies that honey had trickled from the clouds down under its bark. The boy therefore plucks some of its branches, peels off the bark, and boils it, with other ingredients, to make ointment. Another example is Water (51c). 21. L. S. grew from O. ''A statement of natural fact. The narrative describes the circumstances under which the event took place.'' In the origins of flax (21a, b, c), the plant always grows from a natural seed sown in a bed of ashes, though the circumstances under which the ashes are obtained differ in each case. In the last of these stories there is an obscurity. It says that a black jade died on a meadow, that by its bones the meadow, a rake, and an old woman were burnt, and thus the requisite ashes were obtained. How could its bones cause incineration? The following riddle seems to give the solution of the difficulty : "A horse died on a sandy heath ; a foal kicks in her belly." Answer: "A charcoal-pit or kiln." (Arvoituksia, No. 2111.) The black jade therefore must mean a pile of charcoal, and the bones are the sticks of which it is composed. In the riddle, the kicking colt seems to be the fire under the pile, but in the story we must understand the charcoal to be hot. Trees, too (23a, b), grew from seed sown by some mythological personage, such as Sampsa Pellervoinen, Ahti, Väinämöinen. The oak either springs up from an acorn (22a, e), or from a sapling which four maidens find and plant on an island, where it grows into a dreadful oak-tree. The Mississaguas of Ontario relate that Indian corn originates from a damaged head of maize found in the bed of a fasting-boy, but which had seemed to come to him in the form of a little old man, with only a little hair over the forehead. The boy's father carefully planted every kernel, hoed it well, and was, in time, rewarded with a good crop, which enabled him to give corn to his neighbours.