Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/126

94 ROOK Leaves.

not even his own mother knew him ; no one recognised him but his wife. For eighteen years he had been among the nautch-people ; his hair was rough, his beard untrimmed, his face thin and worn, sunburnt, and wrinkled, and his dress Avas a rough common blanket." Can we possibly help thinking of the wanderer, who in his beggar's dress reveals himself to the swineherd; or of his disguise, when Athene destroyed his golden locks and clothed him in tatters;^ and lastly of his recognition by his old nurse when she saw the wound made by the bite of the boar who slew Adonis ? So in the Vengeance of Chandra we see the punishment of the suitors by Odysseus, an incident still further travestied in Grimm's legend of the King of the Golden Mountain. So too as we read of the body of Chundun Raja, which remained undecayed though he had been dead many months, or of Sodewa Bai, who a month after her death looked as lovely as on the night on which she died, we are remmded of the bodies of Patroklos ^ and of Hektor " which Aphrodite or Apollon anointed with ambrosial oil, and guarded day and night from all unseemly things.

The Snake But though the doom of which Achilleus mournfully complained to Thetis lies on all or almost all of these bright beings, they cannot be held in the grasp of the dark power which has laid them low. Briar-Rose and Surya Bai start from their slumbers at the magic touch of the lover's hand, and even when all hope seemed to be lost, wise beasts provide an antidote which will bring back life to the dead. In the story of Panch Phul Ranee these beneficent physicians are jackals, who converse together like the owls of Luxman or the crows in the tale of Faithful John. " Do you see this tree ? " says the jackal to his wife. " Well, if its leaves were crushed, and a little of the juice put into the raja's two ears and upon his upper lip, and some upon his temples also, and some upon the spear-wound in his side, he would come to life again, and be as well as ever." These leaves reappear in Grimm's story of the Three Snake Leaves, in which the snakes play the part of the jackals. In this tale a prince is buried alive with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawling from the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going away soon returned with three green leaves in its mouth ; then, laying the parts of the body together, so as to join, it put one leaf on each

or strongholfl of Ihe robber demolished the Gaelic tale of the Sea-Maiden, than, like Odysseus, he begins to feel Campbell, i. loi. an irresistible longing to see his Auher ' Od. xvi. 1 75, 207 ; xiii. 435 ; xxi. and his home once more. 208. The story of Shortshanks is told in ' //. xix. 32. » lb. xxiv. 20.