Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/93

76 possessed by the god of waters, till the sun dries her up and she disappears. The legend about her is not very edifying. It was she—to mention only a single feat—who prevailed over the pious hermit Yappan, when he had victoriously resisted all other temptations. After his fall he was changed into a scorpion; and that is why the scorpion, full of wrath at the memory of his fall and fleeing the daylight, is so poisonous and lives hidden under stones.

We have still to mention Mixcoatl, the cloud-serpent, whose name survives to our day as the designation of water-spouts in Mexico, and who was specially worshipped by the still almost savage populations of the secluded mountain districts,—Omacatl, "the double reed," a kind of Momus, the god of good cheer, who may very well be a secondary form of Tlaloc, and who avenged himself, when defrauded of due homage, by interspersing hairs and other disagreeable objects amongst the viands,—Ixtlilton, "the brown," a sort of Esculapius, the healing god, whose priest concocted a blackish liquid that passed as an efficacious