Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/356

 34^ Miscellanea.

349. Bansi. — To keep worms off the rice, feed a Kayasth on rice, and throw the leavings in the fields. The worms eat these in order to become as deceitful as the Kayasths are.

350. Those who die in Ramnagar become asses.

381. A haunted mountain and Indian Walpurgisnacht.

388. A certain kind of snake kills the buftalo if it meets its glance.

392. Legend of Cain and Abel, who quarrel over a woman. Cain is puzzled what to do with the body, till he sees some crows burying a fellow crow whom they had killed ; he does the same.

394. Putting salt on a man's hand makes both sworn foes.

396. Tibet. — Marriage by capture. In Central Tibet the maie7-nal uncle must give consent.

399. Palamau. — Well ceremony. (Daubing with red-lead.)

400. Spirits of those killed in a certain railway collision haunt the spot. [This belief about battle-fields is common.]

403. A funny tale of a hill-bird and valley-bird that quarrelled as to when the sun rose ; and why the one of them goes lame.

404. A lizai'd falling to the r/^/// of a man and the left of a woman is lucky.

405. If you cut oft" the scalplock of the ghost of one who has died a violent death, he is your slave for life.

415. Kttlti customs at the rice planting. — A rude dough image of a man is made and thrown away as a sacrifice to the household deity.

425. The Banjaris always move their grass huts after a death. At first an opening is made in the back of the hut, and no one enters by the ordinary door. Afterwards the hut is pulled down and set up elsewhere.

430. Legend of two kings who agreed to marry their children if of opposite sex. Both proved to be girls ; but one of the men kept up a pretence that his child was a boy. The pair were married ; but when the fraud was found out quarrels ensued. The disguised girl tried to drown herself, but "came out changed into a boy ; so all were content.

431. Faizabad. — A tribe lives here who will not grow sugar-cane and will not allow tiles for their roofs (the Bhale Sultan Rajputs).

451. A tale including three helpful beasts (one is "the cow of plenty"), how the clever girl outwitted Indra.

452. The Faithful Son of the Wazir (Mirsapur). — "When a bride approached her husband, she put on her finest clothes, and brought in various things as an offering to wave over the head of her lord." A man restored to life after his head has been cut off. The Wazir's son hears the parrots' talking how that his party must die, and learns from them how to prevent it. He discloses the fact that he had learnt this from the parrots, and is turned into stone. He is quickened