Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/98

 Tony finds them so, pulls off the cat's tail, and the dog swallows the cat, the wife the dog, the husband the wife-and the hearers are great fools if they swallow Tony and my tale. But, for all that, I would, in conclusion, heartily recommend this demonstrated series of transformations to Professor Sayce and Canon Taylor, who find it hard to believe that the Vedic Parkun’ya and the Slav Perkuna, the Vedic Pandu and the Homeric Pandarus, the Vedic Harites and the Greek Charites, the Vedic Gandharvas and the Greek Centaurs, etc., etc., are really one and the same thing.

We now see why the old woman in the Three Citrons is not invited to the wedding. She was the herald of the black Arctic winter night, symbol of death, and thus the temptress to its dark and sensual delights; but not for this was she banned from the festivities, but because the cold has no place in the marriage of the spring. All she could do to revenge herself for the slight was, like the Christian superstition of which she and the rest of the Arctic legends are the more genial origin, to condense a black cloud, and with it for awhile to obscure the sun.

We now see also why the three Frost Kings of the Sun-horse story, substituted in the Bethlehem legend as three Magi for the three white-robed winter Fates of Father Know-All, bear caskets of precious jewels: they are the jewels of ice and snow which the three Frost Kings scattered in their Arctic kingdoms, transformed to gems and blended with spices and scents as the legend was carried into warmer southern climates.

6. The Fates appear in the first story as the godmothers of the hero, reduced to one in the famous Moravian legend of Godmother Death. They perfectly correspond to the three Norns seated under the tree, Igdrasil, of the Scandinavian legend. In two stories they take the form of dependents, and change sex, viz., as Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. In Golden Locks they become ants, ravens, and a fish and a fly. In the Three Citrons (in part), three giants. In another Slavonic fairy story they become identified with the four brothers themselves, and this change is beginning to manifest itself in Reason and Happiness. In the Scandinavian Norns we have the past, the present, and the future. It is not wonderful, therefore, to find them in the Three Citrons blended with three periods. Nor need we be surprised if they tend to merge in the hero or heroes of these folk-lore tales. It is only in our actions that the fates which rule our lives manifest themselves.

7. Charon only occurs in Father Know-All. He corresponds to the three damned spirits and his boat to the gallows in Right remains Right, and perhaps to the first flock of ravens in the Three Citrons, and his boat to the cottage of the seer in the Sun-horse. He represents the passage of the sun into the underworld of the Arctic winter night. The bridges, and perhaps the dumplings, represent the sunsets of the brief winter days on the return of the sun of the Polar winter night. In Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, the drawbridge which is represented as moving pari passu with the setting