Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/117

 forbidden chamber, and the finger remaining gilded, the Virgin Mary thereby discovers her disobedience. In the story of the Argonauts the copper-man Talos attempts to prevent the landing of the crew in Crete, but Pœas, father of Philokletes, managed to hit the copper-man’s single vein running from neck to heel, with the bow of the Sun-god Herakles (or Melcarth). Talos fell and died. In this Lapp legend the two brothers pursue the child of the Sun and their sister In a copper-coloured ship. All these yellow and copper-coloured objects seem to be symbols or reminiscences of the Arctic Aurora Borealis.

The next Lapp poem in length is called the Son of Pissa Passa. Pissa, we are told, was chief of the villages of the land of the sun; Passa, daughter of the chief of the lands of night. When they married they swore on the bear-skin that not a sparkle of the second world should shine on the one who broke his oath. Unluckily a statu (some sort of magician or ogre) killed Pissa, and stole his herds and wealth; and Passa fled, enceinte, with what remained. The son, when born, asked who his father was: the mother says he had none. “Bosh,” says the precocious youth, “everything has a father.” Then he goes and kills a bear, brings it home, and asks his mother for hot bread, and again: “Who is my father?” “Pissa Passa, my son!” “Where did he go?” “The old man of the black mountain slew him, and stole our herds and wealth; that’s why I don’t like you to go on the high, sparkling mountains.” The son begs to be armed with his papa’s stick and helmet of war; goes and challenges the old man of the mountain. One of his servants, Hurry, thunders; another, Hurry-skurry, lightens; and one, Ilmaratje, pours torrents of water. The old man asks what the hero is like? Hurry-skurry says: “He’s a head taller than anybody else, and very cock-a-hoop.” The old man orders a dinner of a whole young reindeer, his coat of mail, bows, arrows, spears, and lances. The youth approaches and sees a pointed skull encircled by poisonous snakes, from which boys are taking the venom for the arrows. The youth challenges the old man to combat (1) on the surface of the water (no answer); (2) to take headers (no answer); (8) to box (no answer). He then asks whose the skull is, and is told Pissa Passa’s. He then challenges the old man with the bow. The old man shoots; the youth catches the arrow and breaks the point against a stone, exclaiming: “Old man, what turned the point?” The old man replies: “The teeth of Pissa Passa.” The same happens with the bolt and the lance. The old man then issues for a hand-to-hand combat, and is soon disarmed. His life is spared, and the herald, in a magnificent speech, glorifying the power and mercy of the one invisible and spiritual God, urges him to repent. He does so, and soon after dies. The poem concludes: “He, the hero, had conquered the storm, and reconciled the dead, one with the other. He embraced his mother, he, the excellent man of the south, of the north, of the house of the reunion of the peoples.” Thus, in this noble Lapp poem, dating perhaps from the Neolithic epoch, the doctrine of the forgiveness of