Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/35

 Tvashtar, the autumn woodcutter-god, and Indra, the storm-god, are closely connected together in the Vedic legends. According to one of the legends, Indra was thrown into a well, where he fought a dragon and let loose the autumn floods; and in this legend Gubernatis suspects the legend of the first, that is to say, of the Old Testament Joseph thrown into the well by his brethren. Now, in another form of the legend, Indra, in the form of an ant, stings the serpent, which, distracted by the pain, allows the escape of the autumn floods. In the limping little ant which rolls up the last pearl, therefore, it is possible that we have, in an exceedingly abridged form, the limping carpenter, Tvashtar, the limping blacksmith, Vulcan, the limping Asmodeus of the Genovese-Slovenian “We Three Brothers.”

We have seen that the black sea of these stories must have been a fresh water lake because there were pike in it; the golden fish was therefore most likely a golden carp. When the Polish story of Hloupy Piecuch reached Venice, the wonder-working pike was exchanged for an eel, another proof that the stories drifted from Central Europe to Venice and not the other way, for there are plenty of eels both in the Central European lakes and in the lagoons, but no pike in the lagoons. The more primitive character of the Polish variant of the story also appears from Piecuch’s fondness for kvas and redcaps, the former symbolising the torpid cold, the latter the red sun of winter. When, by the help of the pike, he wins his princess, these eccentricities cease, and he becomes a commonplace human being. In the Venice variant, El Mezo (the Half), a pregnant woman, having eaten all the parsley in a witch’s garden, is made to promise to give the witch half the child when it is seven years old. The other half has much the same adventures as Piecuch, and when he marries his princess the two halves come together again and form “un belissimo zovine.”