Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/102

70 BOOK "Ah ! pretty Polly, so here is the end of you. This is the brain ^' that thought so cunningly and devised my overthrow; this the tongue that spoke against me ; this is the throat through which came the threatening words. Ha ! ha ! who is right now, I wonder? "

^Vith some little fear the parrot heard her words, for the loss of his wing feathers had left him unable to fly ; but at length he con- trived to find his way to a neighbouring temple, and to perch behind the idol. It was the favourite god of Champa Ranee, who, in her abject fear of death, had long besought him to translate her to heaven without the process of dying. So when she next came to offer her wonted supplication, the parrot spoke, and the nautch-girl at once took its words for the utterances of the god.

" Champa Ranee, nautch-girl, your prayer is heard, this is what you must do ; sell all you possess, and give the money to the poor, and you must also give money to all your servants and dismiss them. Level also your house to the ground, that you may be wholly separated from earth. Then you will be fit for heaven, and you may come, having done all I command you, on this day week to this place, and you shall be transported thither body and soul."^

The infatuated woman does as she is bidden, and after destroying her house and giving away all her goods, she returns to the temple, attended by a vast train of men and women whom she had invited to be witnesses of her glorification.

' This incident recurs in the Norse you in a sack ; and all your gold and version of the Master Thief. Here, your silver and all that you have of however, there is no real bird, but only this world's goods you must lay together the thief disguised as a bird, nor are in a heap in your dining-room.' Well, the victims of the trick actually killed, Father Lawrence fell on his knees be- but they are grievously mauled, and fore the angel and thanked him ; and are robbed as eflectually as the nautch- the very next day he preached a fare- girl. What is more to the point is, that well sermon and gave it out how there the property is in each case abandoned had come down an angel into the big by an act of their own free will. Having maple in his garden, who had told him undertaken to cheat the priest and his that he was to be taken up alive into clerk, the thief "dressed him.self up heaven for his piety's sake, and he like a bird, threw a great white sheet preached and made such a touching dis- over his body, took the wings of a course that all who were at church wept, goose and tied them to his back, and both young and old." — Dasent, Norse so climbed up into a great maple which Tales, " Master Thief." Here, as in stood in the priest's garden, and when the Hindu story, the time is fixad, and the priest came home in the evening the farewell sermon answers to the in- the youth Ijcgan to bawl out, ' Father vitations sent out by Champa Ranee to Lawrence, Father Lawrence,' — for that all her friends that they should come was the priest's name. ' Who is that and witness her ascension. Another calling me?' said the priest. ' I am an priest is deceived in the admirable angel,' said the Master Thief, 'sent Gaelicstory of the " Son of the Scottish from God to let you know that you Yeoman who stole the Bishop's Horse shall be taken up alive into heaven for and Daughter, and the Bishop Himself." your piety's sake. Next Monday night See also Mr. Campbell's excellent re- you must hold yourself ready for the marks on this story. Tales of the West journey, for I shall come then to fetch Highlands, ii. 263.