Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/172

164 the third remained at home, and from him came a man. The triplet is varied in No. 279. The squirrel, the cuckoo, and the frog came from three daughters of a king. One had wished to become such that all would listen to her—she became a cuckoo. The second wished to become such that all young men would run after her—she became a squirrel, which every young man hunts. The third desired to become such that all would be astonished at her, so she became a frog. Though these do not exhaust the human being-frog stories, they are sufficient to illustrate the belief that a relationship, based on superficial likenesses, existed between man and frog.

The dispersal of man through the world is really owing to the pig. "In days of old men lived together, and had their houses side by side. They had already begun to keep pigs, but these became mischievous, and learnt how to visit the neighbours in strange places. Otherwise men would not have got angry with each other, for every one that found living near the village unsuitable had to remove to such a distance that the pigs could not get there to rout up where work was being carried on. And they made their houses in the deep forest, and abandoned their original abodes. And in that manner men have been completely dispersed over the world. They would otherwise have built their houses with their ends abutting in the same district." Before leaving the pig it is well to know why it has a cylindrical snout. "When God made the pig he had to go off to a fire. God was in a great hurry, and the pig was just finished, all but the head, which was in process of formation. It was just the cylindrical part of this pig's snout that remained unfinished when he started for the fire. And hence comes the saying, 'Of that form is the pig's snout, because it was once left unfinished.' It is not known what it would have been like if it had been completed."

The story of the Creation of the World is very different from that found in the Kalevala and is probably of Tatar origin, as both the Mordvins and the Altai Tatars have a legend that tallies closely