Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/222

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NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. XH. SEPT. is, 1915.

According to Landes, the Annamites hold a woman, who has lost five infants succes- sively and dies in her sixth confinement, to become the spirit Me-con-runh, which causes miscarriage by thrusting itself in a gravid woman's room. It appears as a woman clad in white, posting herself upon a lonely tree and dandling her departed infants (' Cochin- chine Frangaise : Excursion set Reconnais- sances,' vol. i. p. 448, Saigon, 1880). The people in Panjab believe in a woman who dies in her labour becoming a Churel, whose habitat is in ruined forts and burying- grounds. She has a face like a woman, but very hideous ; breasts pendent and carried over the shoulders ; heels turned to the front. She wears black clothes, has long black tusks, and eats children (Panjab Notes and Queries, Allahabad, vol. i. note 334). In T. F. Becker's ' The Mythology of the Dyaks,' in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, vol. iii. pp. 106, 113, Singapore, 1847, two evil-doing demons are described. One named Kamiak flies like a bird, and directs his malignity chiefly towards pregnant women, shutting up the foetus in the womb so as to make it never able to see the light. Another group of demons named Kloa resemble the Amazons, but differ from them in their long breast being placed in the midst, but not on the left side of the bust. They quietly lie in wait till the moment of the delivery of a child, when they quickly come forth to grasp the little crier by his neck and turn him into a monster birth. Though not stated by the writer, it is highly probable that these demons of the Dyaks were originally conceived as transformations of the women who had died in the act of travail.

From the quotations given above it will be evident that originally the Japanese Ubume was simply a female spirit using to hoax men with her illusory baby. But later on its stories were somewhat amalga- mated with those of the Chinese Ku-hwoh- niau, and it underwent a change from a ghost into a bird. Even nowadays some Japanese in Higo credit the story of a woman dead in labour becoming a spirit called Yasukaro, which makes its appearance in dark rainy nights, incessantly crying " Yasukaro, yasukaro (" Will be easy, will be easy"), which shows what excessive anxiety she had had about her childbearing before it proved fatal.

The idea that the bird emits phosphor- escence would seem to have been endemic to the Japanese, inasmuch as no Chinese authority has mentioned it.

The Japanese adversaria ' Baison Sai- hitsu,' commonly ascribed to Hayashi Doshun (1583-1657), tells us :

" Some one told me that he stealthily peered on the so-called Ubume, that utters babyish cries in the night, and discovered it was nothing but the ' blue heron ' (Aosagi, the common heron of England, Ardea cinerea, L)."

Kaibara's ' Yamato Honzo,' 1708, and Kitamura's ' Kiyu Shoran,' 1830, state the " blue heron " to emit phosphoric light in the night. But in Terashima's work quoted above, torn, xli., no mention is made of this phenomenon about the same bird, whereas the following words occur sub art. ' Goisagi ' (the night-heron, Nycticorax griseus, L.) :

" When it flies in the night, it sheds as much light as fire, and the light is strongest in the moon- lit nights, when it happens that one meets a big night-heron standing near a shady bank and resembling a man staying erect, and mistakes it for a ghost."

If this statement be correct, the nocturnal light of this bird, said to be brightest by moonlight, must have its cause more in reflection than in phosphorescence. Accord- ing to Kikuoka, ' Shokoku Rijindan,' written in the eighteeeth century, torn, iii., the so- called " Old Woman's Fire " used to frequent in rainy nights the villages about Hiraoka in Kawachi. It was popularly believed to- be the transformation of an old avaricious woman who had used nightly to steal the oil from the lamps of the Shinto temple of Hiraoka. Some time ago, a man was surprised by its fall just before him ; he fell down on the ground and cautiously looked on it, when it was discovered to be a cock-like bird uttering sounds by clattering its bills ; it immediately flew away, and became a round fire to the distant sight. It is said to have been really a night-heron. Because that the bird, according to the story, made noise by clattering its beaks, it would appear more correct to attribute the " fire " to a stork.

Some European peoples, too, were formerly the participants in such a belief, and some of them may continue in it even nowadays, as the subjoined quotations attest :

" In the Hercynian Forest, in Germany, we hear of a singular kind of bird, the feathers of which shine at night like fire." Pliny's ' Natural History,' trans. Bostock and JRiley, " Bohn's Library," vol. ii. p. 528.

" In Italy two kinds of these lights [the ignes \ fatui] are said to have been discovered, one in the- j mountains, the other in the plains. They are called by the common people cuJarsi, because they look upon them as birds, the belly and other parts of which are resplendent like the pyraustae or j fireflies." W. C. Hazlitt, 'Faiths and Folk-lore/ | 1905, vol. ii. p. 638.