Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/363

Rh To the same category as the above belongs the legend of the hoop-snake. This creature, when pursuing its prey downhill, puts its tail in its mouth and rolls away, like a child's hoop, with incredible velocity. Hardy story-tellers have seen the creature skipping along "faster than a horse could gallop".

Snakes, however, do not have it all their own way, for there was once upon a time a doctor, who, when called to exercise his art at any place, could summon all the reptiles in the neighbourhood to appear before him, and then set them to fight one another for the purpose of mutual extermination. Less successful than St. Patrick, he has left a plentiful crop behind him for his successors to practise upon.

There are legends connected with all the wild creatures found in the country. The crocodile "has no tongue", nothing but jaws and teeth; and this is how leviathan is condemned to go tongueless: When it and the iguana, a species of land lizard measuring three to four feet when full grown, and with a long forked tongue, were made, two tongues were made and placed at a distance from them. They were then told to run a race, and the first to arrive was to have both. The iguana won, and his larger and more savage rival had to be content "with a stump in its throat".

Baboons are the emblems of treachery; tis the foot of a baboon," being the universal proverb for unfair dealing. Still, baboons are supposed to protect females from lions and other beasts of prey; and a legend is told of a woman who was lost in a forest; night came, and lions roared. Then the baboons gathered round her and protected her, bringing her to a place of safety where they provided an ample supply of milk and corn for her use. She lived a long time with her strange companions, her friends supposing her dead. She was at last restored to her home, but, having learned the language of the baboons, she went often to talk to them in the forest at night. At