Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/106

94 The story goes on to say that the queen gave Pauk Tyaing a riddle to guess, and that he was to die if he failed to give the right answer. But he guessed the riddle, having heard the answer from a crow. Afterwards the queen bore him two sons, whom the emanation of the dragon within her womb caused to be born blind. So they were set adrift on a raft down the river; but they recovered their sight, and founded the city of Prome. A succession of legends follows that of the dragon, and these are favourite subjects for the Burmese drama.

The legend appears in another form in the apocryphal book of Tobit, and is very fully dealt with (though the Burmese version is not mentioned) under the name of The Poison Maiden in a book called The Grateful Dead, published by the Folk-lore Society in 1907. The author thinks that the story, which in combination with that of The Grateful Dead reached several countries of Europe, came originally from India by way of Persia. He refers to parallels in Lai Behari Day's Folk-tales of Bengal and Knowles' Folk-tales of Kashmir, in both of which the snake comes from the queen's nostrils. The legend does not seem to have been traced further east than Burma, and the version I have given appears to be the fullest form of the story yet published.

The Dragon is not one of the Thirty-seven Nats. His status is indicated by four shrines I saw at a fishery higher up the river, for the former ruling prince, the Thirty-seven Nats, the Dragon, and the spirit of the founder of the fishery.

Among the Thirty-seven, however, is the Snake-woman Shwenăbe, whom the blacksmith Maung Tin Dè met during his wanderings in the mountains, and who on his departure laid two eggs and dropped them in the river. From these, according to one version of the story, came