Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/60

 24 transformation is sometimes effected by a change of skins. If, therefore, the story be a foreign immigrant, it has contrived to masquerade uncommonly well in Karen dress. Perhaps we may venture to think it is indigenous among the Karens. But I am not arguing that here.

The Tjames, a people living on the borders of the French possessions in Annam, and descended from aborigines who intermarried with Malay invaders, relate a variant too lengthy now to examine minutely. I will only ask you to note that, among a number of widely varying details, the hero is in the form not of a tree-lizard, nor of any animal, but of a cocoa-nut, and that his bride burns his husk and persuades him to live with her in ordinary human shape.

Let us hasten on to another analogue found at the extremity of Africa. Unthlamvu-yetusi is the heroine of a Zulu tale. She wedded Umamba, who is said to have been wrapped by his mother at his birth in a snake's skin, and compelled always to appear as a snake. He requests his bride to anoint him with a certain pot of fat; but the first night she is afraid to touch him. The second night, however, she consents to anoint him; and then by his directions she is able to pull the snake-skin from off him, and finds him in human form. He afterwards discloses himself to every one at the marriage dance, and remains a man. I need not trouble you with the details of the Zulu customs referred to throughout the story; you will probably be willing to take them on trust. But as to the snake form assumed by the hero, it is interesting to know that the kind of snake referred to is one into which the Zulus hold that their chiefs turn after death. When these chiefs thus transformed enter a hut, they are believed not to enter by the doorway, but in some other mysterious manner; and a variant of the legend describes the hero (who, however, is there called Unthlatu, or boa constrictor) as entering and leaving the hut after the door had been closed by his bride, and without opening it. There seems some little doubt as to the meaning, and even the authenticity, of the incident of the wrapping of the hero, when a babe, in the snake-skin. Most likely it is only