Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/146

122 case of Penelope, only a promise which the abhorred lover is induced to make, that the marriage shall be postponed for a season in view of the possible rescue of the lady by her true husband.

Putting aside the solution of the comparative mythologists that the web is the Aurora, weft by day and unravelled at night, or Mr. O'Neill's cosmic speculations, neither of which seem very hopeful, we my find a solution of the riddle in a suggestion for which I am indebted to Mr. Sidney Hartland. He has not, I think, worked out the problem in detail; but I understand him to suggest that in our Odyssey the weaving of the web as a shroud for the hero Laertes is a comparatively late and clumsy addition to the Saga, and that the web in its earlier form was really the wedding dress which the bride has to prepare herself, and without which she cannot be married.

As regards this provision of a shroud in anticipation of death, the usual feeling is naturally that such an arrangement is ill-omened, and likely to hasten the death of the person for whom it is intended. This, for instance, is the case in India. In the Kashmir tale, "The Story of the Weaver," the weaver offers the king a piece of cloth to be used as his shroud. On this the king was wroth: "He thought that the man was wishing for his death. 'Keep it for my own funeral pall!' he repeated. 'The man is evidently plotting my death. Take the fellow and behead him. In China, however. Professor De Groot tells us: