THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.
{103}
Hitherto, dealing exclusively with _märchen_, or tales told for
simple amusement, we have found the incident of the Supernatural
Birth, outside the cycle of the Perseus myth, widely scattered in
Europe, in Asia as far east as Annam, southward among the Zulu kraals
of Africa and northward among the snows of Greenland. Nor does it
occur in modern folklore only. It formed one of the chain of events in
a tale of wonder carefully guarded for us through the long silence of
three thousand years by an Egyptian mummy, to whose arms it had been
intrusted at his burial, a precious fragment of the literature he had
known and loved in life, and therefore deemed a gift appropriate to
his service in his everlasting home. But the story of Perseus was, at
all events in early ages, believed as an actual occurrence by the
simple folk of Greece and wherever Greek influence extended the hero’s
cult. Has the possibility of a Supernatural Birth of this kind been
credited elsewhere and under other conditions of culture? In a land
dominated by Christian thought the question seems superfluous. The
mystery taught by the creeds of the Church, however, is believed to be
something apart from all the other beliefs of the world, something
altogether above {104} them, alike in its evidence and its
consequences. Christians in thus thinking overlook the fact that to
the believer in any religion its evidences are undeniable and its
claims are supreme. The fact is that the incident in question is part
and parcel of many other religions than the Christian, and is also
gravely accepted among what we may call the secular and
quasi-historical traditions of tribes in various parts of the Old and
New World. Beyond this, as we shall see in another chapter, pregnancy
is held actually producible by means analogous to those described in
the legends, means outside the ordinary operations of nature. Into the
bearing of these facts on the dogma of the Supernatural Birth of Jesus
Christ, or on the historical evidence on which that dogma rests, it is
not my purpose to inquire. This is a question of apologetics, not of
folklore.
Many stories of Supernatural Birth belong to the cosmogonic legends of
savage and barbarous tribes. These we may for the most part pass over.
What may have happened to the monsters that in the dawn of things were
the first to loom upon the horizon is hardly relevant. They may have
had reasons of their own for their extraordinary conduct. Our business
is with beings conceived in distinctly human terms and something like
human proportions. The distinction may be hard to define, seeing that
savage tribes hold savage opinions as to the power of men and brutes
(or of some men, at least, and some brutes) to change their forms at
will. In the same way _märchen_ have no clear dividing line in the
savage mind from sagas (or stories believed in as recording actual
events) nor religious narratives from secular histories. It is one of
the characteristics of savagery that these things are not as yet
differentiated. Intellectual evolution is going on; but until a {105}
much higher grade of civilisation be reached we cannot be sure that
the divergence is complete. If, therefore, some of the stories I am
going to refer to seem scarcely within the limits I have laid down,
these difficulties in the way of definition must be borne in mind.
We began our review of _märchen_ containing the incident of the
Supernatural Birth by examples of the results of eating a magical fish
or fruit. The fish is a means of impregnation comparatively little
known in sagas. A legend of the Tupis of Brazil, however, bearing
resemblances to stories of the type of _Beauty and the Beast_,
represents the hero, a supernatural being, as fertilising a young
virgin by means of a mysterious fish.[105.1] A curious piece of gossip
is recorded by John Aubrey concerning Archbishop Abbot’s mother, who
is said to have dreamed that if she ate a jack the son then in her
womb would be a great man. Accordingly, “she arose early the next
morning and went with her pail to the river-side (which runneth by the
house, now an ale-house, the sign of the Three Mariners) to take up
some water, and in the water in the pail she found a good jack, which
she dressed, and ate it all, or very near.” Her son in due time was
born, and grew up to be Archbishop of Canterbury.[105.2] If not
exactly a great man, he was an able and honest one and a patriot, who
suffered, by no means alone, from the superstition, or the malignity,
of his successor, the “martyr” Laud.
On the other hand, the eating of fruit is found in {106} both
hemispheres. In India it is told, as we might have expected, of the
birth of Râjâ Rasâlû. Rânî Lonân, one of the two wives of
Râjâ Sâlbâhan of Siâlkot, fell in love with her stepson Pûran,
and, because he did not return her passion, traduced him to her
husband, who cut off his hands and feet and threw him into a well.
Pûran, however, like the hero of the Bulgarian ballad, survived this
cruel treatment. After some years he was rescued by the Gurû
Gorakhnâth, a Brahman of great sanctity, and became a celebrated
fakir. Not knowing who he really was, the Rânî and her husband,
desirous of offspring, came to him to pray for a son. He induced her
to confess her crime; then, revealing himself, he gave her a grain of
rice to eat, and told her she would bear a son who would be learned
and brave and holy. That son was Râjâ Rasâlû, a monarch identified
with the historical Sri Syâlapati Deva.[106.1] Gogá, a favourite
Mahratta saint, is said to have been childless until his guardian
deity bestowed upon him two barleycorns, one of which he gave to his
wife and the other to his favourite mare. A son and the famous steed
Javadia were the consequence.[106.2] The ancestry of the present, or
Manchu, dynasty of China is traced to a heavenly maiden, who, having
bathed one day in a certain pool, found on the skirt of her raiment a
red fruit, placed there by a magpie. After eating it she found herself
pregnant, and was delivered of a son of remarkable appearance, who
spoke on the day of his birth. In obedience to a supernatural {107}
voice she called him Aisin-gioro, ‘the heaven-born to restore order to
disturbed nations.’ Having grown up, he embarked in a boat and drifted
down the river, until he reached a place where families of three
surnames were in constant broils. There he landed, and was breaking
off willow branches, when a warrior, coming to draw water, saw him.
Amazed at the hero’s aspect, the warrior fetched his people, who came
and inquired who he was. “I am the son of the heavenly maiden
Fokolun,” replied the youth, “ordained by heaven to restore peace
among you.” They took him and made him king; and he reigned there in
Odoli city, in the desert of Omohi, east of the mountains of
Ch’ang-pai-shan. A Japanese tradition, reported by Père Amyot,
appears to be a variant of the same story. It relates that three
heavenly maids, of whom Fokolun was one, descended to bathe. While
they were praying Fokolun saw a tree half-covered with black cherries.
She proceeded to eat of them, with the consequences we know. Being in
this condition, she could not return with her sisters until she had
brought forth her son and handed him over to a fisherman to be bred
up.[107.1] Fokolun is identified by Amyot with a goddess whom he calls
Pussa. It is quite possible that the present dynasty of China owes
this legendary origin to a similar feeling to that which dictated so
many of the mediæval miracle-stories in Europe. Fo-hi, the original
founder of the Empire, was said to have sprung from a virgin named
Ching-Mon, who ate a certain flower found on her garment after
bathing. The striking resemblance {108} to this tale of that of
Fokolun is due to conscious forgery as little, and as much, as the
achievements of Christian saints, equalling and surpassing the wonders
recorded in the Bible.[108.1]
The magpie mentioned in the Chinese version of the legend just
recorded is replaced by a crow in the analogous incident at the
opening of the _Volsungasaga_. A childless king and queen, we are
told, besought the gods for an heir. Frigg, the mother-goddess, heard
their prayers and sent them, in the guise of a crow, the daughter of
the giant Hrimnir, and with her an apple, of which when the queen had
eaten, she soon perceived that her wish would come to pass.[108.2] In
the fiftieth rune, that beautiful postscript to the Kalevala,
Marjatta, the fair and gentle virgin, is addressed by the red bilberry
and invited to pluck and eat. With the help of a staff she reaches
down the mysterious fruit; but from the ground it climbs her shoe and
then her knee, and so upward to her mouth, into which it slips and is
swallowed. In this way she conceives. Her parents’ reproaches are met
by the assertion that she is the paramour of none unless it be of
fire, and that she will bear a hero who will rule the mighty, albeit
Väinämöinen himself. In her extremity she applies to Ruotus for the
vapour-bath which Finnish women are accustomed to take to facilitate
delivery; but from him and his loathsome wife she gets nothing better
than a contemptuous recommendation of a stable in the fir-forest.
There, in a vapour-bath of the breath of horses, her child is born,
and cradled in a {109} manger. She cares for him as a mother; but
after a while he suddenly disappears, and she goes seeking him
everywhere. In her wandering she meets a star, and, sinking before it
on her knees, she asks:
“‘O thou star, that God created!
Of my son dost thou know nothing,
Where my darling son abideth,
Where my golden apple tarries?’
And the star made haste to answer:
‘If I knew I would not say it;
He it is who hath created
Me to gleam thro’ cold and evil,
Me to sparkle in the darkness.’”
The moon gives her the like answer. Then she meets the sun; and the
sun tells her:
“‘Well I know thy little loved one.
He it is who hath created
Me thro’ all the hours of daylight
In the sheen of gold to dazzle,
Me to glint in sheen of silver.
Well I know thy little loved one.
Yonder, woman, is thy darling,
Plunged in marshes to the girdle,
In the moor e’en to the armpit.’”
Thus directed, Marjatta found her son and brought him home. He grew up
beautiful but nameless. His mother called him Floweret, but strangers
dubbed him Idler. An old man named Virokannas came to baptize and
bless him, but hesitated to do so ere he had been examined and proved.
Then came Väinämöinen old and trusty, who sentenced the boy, as he
had been taken from the marsh and was sprung from a berry, to be laid
upon the ground of the berry-bearing meadow, or taken to the marsh,
and {110} his head crushed with a tree. But the son of the berry
replies:
“‘O thou old man without insight,
Without insight, full of folly!
Thou hast given a foolish sentence;
Ill thou hast the laws expounded!’”
Väinämöinen himself had taken the child of his own mother and
thrown it into the water to redeem his own life. The boy reminds him
of this, and hints that he will have to pay the penalty of his deed.
Virokannas then quickly baptizes the boy, and blesses him to become
king of Karjala and guardian of all powers.
I have narrated this incident somewhat at length, to exhibit the
obvious mixture of heathen and Christian elements which it contains.
Marjatta, there can be little doubt, is the Virgin Mary; Ruotus has
been identified with Herod; and the discomfiture and departure of
Väinämöinen, which follow the cited passages, point very clearly to
the expulsion of paganism as typified by the mighty figure of the
great sorcerer. Lönnröt’s method in the compilation of the epic from
fragmentary songs leaves much to be desired in the certainty of
traditional origin of many of its verses, perhaps of entire episodes;
and the one before us may not be free from suspicion. Yet it is hardly
likely that the poet would have had recourse to the savage conceit of
the berry, had he not found it already in the legend he has presented
to us. It would be difficult to match it in the sagas of modern
Europe. As we saw just now, the analogous conceit of the fish is found
in the case of Archbishop Abbot in no bolder shape than a dream. So
the Irish _Life of Saint Molasius of Devenish_, preserved to us in a
manuscript, written, probably from dictation, in {111} the sixteenth
century--that is to say, not long before the English tale became
current--presents the holy man’s mother as dreaming “that she got
seven fragrant apples; and the last apple of them that she took into
her hand her grasp could not contain it for its size; gold (as it
seemed to her) was not lovelier than the apple.” Her husband
interprets the dream of “an offspring, excellent and famous, with
which the mouths of all Ireland shall be filled:” an interpretation of
course justified by the saint’s birth.[111.1] We may conjecture that
the legend in an earlier form related that impregnation took place by
means of an apple; but before it was put into writing, perhaps long
before, the incident had been modified by the slowly growing
intelligence of the folk who related it.
To the aborigines of North America, however, this unusual mode of
generation has always been within the limits of belief. Yehl, the
famous hero of the North-west Coast, effected one of his numerous
births by transforming himself into a spear of cedar or a blade of
grass, or, as it is told in a variant, a drop of water, and being
swallowed by his principal opponent’s daughter, or sister, as she was
drinking. Most legendary heroines have been satisfied with one such
miracle. This lady seems to have been {112} specially unfortunate; and
we do not wonder at the suspicions of her natural guardian, when we
are expressly told that she was not allowed to eat or drink anything
until the chief had examined it, as she had become pregnant from
eating certain things many times before. One man cannot know all
Yehl’s adventures, as the Thlinkit very truly assert; for all their
accounts differ. The adventure we are now dealing with was undertaken
for the purpose of rescuing the sun, moon and stars, which his
antagonist, whose favourite grandson he thus became, had stored away
in three mysterious chests. On a previous occasion he had assumed the
unlikely form of a small pebble on the sea-shore. A woman whose sons
had all been slain by her brother was pacing the beach and weeping for
the dead, when a large fish--it is equally credible whether a dolphin
or a whale--pitied her and spoke to her, telling her to swallow the
pebble and drink some sea-water. She did so, and bore a child, Yehl,
who avenged her on his uncle. After all his various achievements on
behalf of mankind, Yehl became the totem of the Raven Clan of the
Thlinkit.[112.1] When America was discovered, the Aztecs, though they
had not emerged from the Stone Age, were, compared with the Thlinkit,
a civilised people. Yet they continued to believe in the generation of
their famous god Quetzalcoatl in a similar manner to that of Yehl. One
{113} account relates that he owed his birth to a precious green
stone, identified by Captain Bourke with the turquoise, which his
mother Chimalma found one day while sweeping, and swallowed.[113.1]
I shall have to recur to American traditions; but I must first mention
other instances of pregnancy from eating or drinking. Heitsi-Eibib,
the Hottentot ancestor-god, owed his birth to this cause. In one of
the legends a young girl picks a kind of juicy grass, chews it and
swallows the sap. Thence becoming pregnant, she gives birth to the
hero. In another legend it is a cow that eats of a certain grass, and
Heitsi-Eibib is consequently born as a bull-calf.[113.2] In the saga
of _Ardshi-Bordshi_ we are told that a childless queen procured from a
hermit a handful of earth to be boiled in sesame oil in a porcelain
vessel. On boiling it, behold! it was changed into barley porridge,
which she ate, but neglected to eat the whole of it, as the hermit
commanded. When she had eaten she found herself “in blessed
circumstances,” and bore Vikramâditya, a Bodisat and a king of
renown. Her maid, having finished what was left of the porridge, was
also delivered of a boy, who became the Bodisat’s faithful
companion.[113.3] Here, as M. Cosquin remarks, we are reminded of the
_märchen_ in the _Pentameron_, already cited. The material eaten
bears us back to a story alleged to be part of the Siamese cosmology.
{114} After a gradual degeneration of the human race, we are assured,
the sea will be dried up and the earth destroyed by fire. Converted
into dust and ashes, it will be purified by a wind, which will carry
off all remains of the conflagration. So sweet an odour will then
exhale from the purified soil that it will draw from heaven a female
angel, who will take of this sweet-smelling substance and eat. The
pleasure will cost her dear; for she will no more be able to ascend to
her native home, and by means of her strange food she will conceive
and give birth to twelve sons and daughters, who will repopulate the
world. For an inconceivably long period this new race will remain
gross and ignorant, until in the fulness of time a god will be born to
dissipate the darkness by teaching the true religion, the virtues that
must be practised, the vices that must be shunned and all other
sciences needful to be known, giving to the people scriptures where
all these things are explained, and writing upon their hearts the holy
law, so long effaced from the mind of man.[114.1]
The _Shih King_, one of the sacred books of the Chinese, contains an
ode intended to be recited at a sacrifice in the ancestral temple of
Shang. It refers to the origin of Shang’s father Hsieh. His mother was
a concubine of Khû, a ruler who flourished in the twenty-fifth
century before Christ. She was bathing, as these Chinese heroines
frequently are on such occasions, when a heaven-commissioned {115}
swallow dropped an egg, which she took and gulped down, becoming in
this way the mother of Hsieh.[115.1] The lady is not here, as in the
case of other founders of Chinese dynasties, represented as a maiden.
Yu’s mother, for instance, appears to be thus regarded. A pearl, a
substance not more unpromising than a pebble, fell in her bosom, and
she swallowed it. According to one version the boy was born from her
breast.[115.2] A Mongolian tale traces the origin of the Chinese
nation to a Khan’s daughter, who compelled a poor Bandé to disgorge a
precious stone as big as a sheep’s eye, which he had stolen from two
men, and swallowed. As soon as he brought it up, she seized and
swallowed it in her turn. It rendered her pregnant. The Bandé, by
reading a charm, turned her into a she-ass; and in this form she gave
birth to twin boys, one good, the other evil. From them the Chinese
nation is descended.[115.3] Several Tartar tribes ascribe their
lineage to Alankava, the virgin daughter of Gioubiné, son of Bolduz,
king of the Mongols. One night a great light awakened and embraced
her, entering her mouth and passing through her body. As this peculiar
proceeding was repeated every night, in order to dissipate suspicions
of her virtue (for she had become pregnant) the chiefs of the national
assembly were introduced into her chamber to witness the occurrence.
When her time was come she gave birth to three boys, each of whom was
the ancestor of a tribe, and from one of whom Genghis Khan and
Tamerlane descended.[115.4] An Irish tradition more modestly (probably
{116} for reasons discussed on a previous page) presents the mother of
Kieran, the first saint born on Hibernian soil, as only dreaming that
a star fell into her mouth.[116.1]
The heroic traditions of Ireland--at least those of Ulster--do not
stick at a dream. Both Conchobar and Cuchulainn were of supernatural
birth. Cathba, the noble Druid, was thirsty one night; and Ness, his
wife, finding nothing in the house, went down to the river Conchobar
and drew from thence, filtering the water through her veil. When she
brought it to her husband and a light was struck, lo! there were two
worms in the water. Thereupon Cathba drew his sword and forced his
wife, under threat of death, to drink what she had brought for him.
She drank two mouthfuls, and swallowed at each mouthful one of the
worms. She soon found she had conceived; and it was of those worms she
had conceived, though later times discredited this, asserting that the
king of Ulster was her lover and the father of her child
Conchobar.[116.2] This mode of conception was a family failing, for
Cuchulainn, Conchobar’s nephew, was born in the same way. His mother,
Dechtire, Conchobar’s sister, returning from the funeral of a
foster-son of whom she had been very fond, asked for a drink in a
bronze cup. As she put the cup to her lips she felt a little creature
enter her mouth with the drink. After drinking she lay down to sleep,
and a man appeared to her in a dream, telling her, among other things,
that {117} he had been her foster-son, that now he had entered her
womb and she was pregnant of him, and that he was to be called
Setanta. This man was Lug, one of the ancient Celtic divinities,
identified with the grandson of Balor, the mythical warrior of Tory
Island.[117.1]
The manuscripts in which both these stories are preserved are much
older than those that record the dreams preceding the births of Saints
Kieran and Molasius. Yet the life of Saint Molasius, modern though it
be in the recension we possess, attributes to its hero the power so
often wielded by an Indian fakir. When he was journeying, with certain
of his clerics, in the land of Carbery he saw a woman milking, who
replied courteously and even generously to a request for a drink for
his attendant. In return, she prayed for the saint’s intercession to
be relieved of her barrenness, for hitherto she was childless. Then
Molasius bade her: “Call thy husband; let him take my cup to the well
and bring us back its fill of water in it.” When the water was given
into his hand he blessed and consecrated it, and passed it to the
woman to drink, prophesying that henceforth she should be pregnant and
bear a son, who was to be “good, miraculous, saintly, wonder-working,
righteous.” Thus was born “the very noble bishop Finnacha,” so named
by Molasius when he gave his mother to drink.[117.2] The _Book of the
Dun Cow_ at the end of the eleventh century gives a similar incident
in a much more savage form. Dermot, king of Ireland, had {118} several
wives, of whom Mughain was unhappy, because she had no children and
the king was purposing to dismiss her. So she sought out Finnian and
bishop Aedh, and implored their succour. They blessed water and gave
it her to drink; but the result was nothing more encouraging than a
lamb. Finnian consoled her as best he could for the mishap, and
blessed more water. The next time she brought forth a salmon literally
of silver. This, of course, was appropriated by the holy man for the
service of the church as material for a reliquary and other sacred
objects. Then he and bishop Aedh made another and supreme effort. They
blessed her, and one of them put water into his cup and gave it to the
queen, who both drank of it and washed in it. She ought perhaps to
have done this before, for “by this process she found herself with
child, and, this time, had a son, who was Aedh Sláine.”[118.1]
Before considering other stories of impregnation by drinking, let me
refer to one more Irish tale. It concerns the birth of Boethíne, son
of Cred, the daughter of Ronán, king of Leinster, and is found in the
_Leabhar breac_, a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth
century. The maiden gathered cress on which the _sperma genitale_ of a
certain robber, Findach by name, had just fallen, and ate it, “and
thereof was born the everliving Boethín.”[118.2] This unsavoury story
reminds us of the Princess Chand Ráwati in the Sanskrit romance. It
bears even a closer resemblance to two legends from opposite quarters
of the globe. One of them relates to a Peruvian goddess, Cavillaca.
She {119} was a beautiful maiden who spurned the advances of the gods.
One day she sat down to weave a mantle at the foot of a lucma-tree.
The wise Coniraya Uiracocha thereupon turned himself into a beautiful
bird, and sat in the boughs of the tree. He took some of his semen,
made it into the likeness of a ripe and luscious lucma, and dropped it
at the maiden’s feet. She picked it up, ate it with much relish, and
immediately conceived. In due course she gave birth to a son. When the
boy could crawl, she called an assembly of the gods, and, indignantly
protesting her virginity, demanded which of them was the father of the
child. As nobody came forward to claim the honour, she put the little
one on the ground, saying: “Doubtless his father will be the one to
whom he crawls, and at whose feet he rests.” The child crawled to the
feet of a ragged beggar, who sat humbly in the lowest place of all.
The beggar was Coniraya; but Cavillaca, not recognising him, disdained
the thought of being mated with such dirt and squalor; and, catching
up her boy, she fled from his pursuit, though he assumed magnificent
golden robes and divine splendour, until she came to the sea-coast of
Pachacamac, where she and the child, entering the sea, were changed
into two rocks, yet visible long after the Spanish Conquest, and
doubtless to the present day.[119.1] The other legend is that of the
nymph Adrikâ in the _Mahâbhârata_. Being by the curse of some god
metamorphosed into a fish, Adrikâ feeds on a leaf dropped into the
water by the favourite agency of a bird--in this instance, a hawk.
{120} Upon the leaf was the sperm of her lover, King Uparicharas. The
fish is then caught by fishermen and brought to him. When it is opened
the nymph resumes her proper form, and two fish, a male and female,
are born of her.[120.1] The same incident is the substance of a
folktale slightly less loathsome in form among the Gipsies of southern
Hungary. They say that a rich peasant’s wife repulsed Saint Nicholas,
who appeared to her as a beggar, and was transformed by him into a
little fish and condemned to remain in that state until impregnated by
her husband. Her husband threw the fish into the brook; and there it
abode a long time, until one day the goodman sat before his door and
thought of his wife, and how he could deliver her. So as he sat there
he spat, and the spittle fell on a green leaf at his feet. Then a
magpie, so often a go-between in these matters, snapped up the leaf in
her beak and flew away with it. But as she flew she met another who
would have torn the leaf from her; and in their struggle it fell into
the water and was devoured by the little fish. Thereupon the heroine
returned to her true woman-form and to her husband, for she had been
fertilised by his spittle.[120.2] The Gipsy version appears to be
derived from the _Mahâbhârata_, or more probably from the saga
whence the poet fashioned the episode in question, and was doubtless
brought from the East by the remote forefathers of the tribe.
We might linger long on the supernatural might of Indian {121} kings
and rishis, as well as the equally chaste and pious saints and reavers
of Irish legend; but we must tear ourselves away from their edifying
and veracious histories to seek the magical potation and the magical
food elsewhere. The most illustrious birth by the former means was
that of Zoroaster. A Parsee tradition preserved in the _Selections_ of
Zâd-sparam, who wrote shortly before the year A.D. 881, ascribes the
conception of the great Iranian teacher to his mother’s drinking of
homa-juice and cow’s milk infused with his guardian spirit and
glory.[121.1] The lark, it is said in Roumania, was a maiden born of
Gheorghina, the consort of an emperor named Titus. The imperial pair
were childless; but an old woman in a dream directed the emperor that
his wife should drink of the brook which watered a certain forest. She
did so, and gave birth to a lovely daughter, who fell in love with the
sun, but was cursed by his mother and changed into a bird.[121.2] Two
divinities worshipped in a country temple in Annam are thus accounted
for. A childless man and wife dwelt in the village. One rainy autumnal
night the woman put an earthen vessel to receive the drippings of the
roof, and she saw a star fall into the vessel. Astounded at the
occurrence, she called her husband and told him what had happened.
They resolved to say nothing about it, but to drink the water. The
woman became pregnant, and after going three years in that state she
was at length delivered of three blue eggs. The storyteller considered
it necessary at this point to observe that the husband was very much
surprised, and carefully kept {122} the adventure to himself. However,
they hatched the eggs, and three serpents crawled out, which followed
their father about whithersoever he went. One day he had the ill-luck
to cut off the tail of one of them. The wounded serpent forthwith was
transformed into a fair youth, who said: “My brothers and I are
heavenly genii who committed a sin, and were sent upon earth to
succour the kingdom. They will stay, but I reascend to heaven in a
tempest which will be a sign of the truth of my words.” The two other
serpents remained. Sometimes they were changed into men of
extraordinary powers; they rendered signal service against China, and
ultimately were deified.[122.1] According to a Finnish song, the
lovely maiden Kasaritar was also three years in a state of pregnancy.
An ogress had spat upon the waves, and Kasaritar had swallowed the
bubble of froth. When at length she brought forth, it was an evil
brood, the lizard.[122.2] The Kotons are a Mongolian tribe. They say
that the daughter of one of their khans went with forty of her maidens
to a field to gather _djemuis_ to eat. Becoming thirsty, the girls all
went to the water and drank. In the midst of the water was a drop of
blood, which was imbibed by the khan’s daughter and caused her to
conceive. Her father drove her away; but her son afterwards became
khan.[122.3]
{123}
We are not told here whether the blood was human. The analogy of some
other sagas, and of several _märchen_, would lead to the supposition
that it must be understood to be a man’s blood. Almost any portion of
a man may be possessed of fructifying power. One of the _märchen_
already passed in review attributes it to a man’s heart, and another
to the ashes of a burnt skull. A story current among the Serbs is
parallel to the latter. The emperor, hunting, finds a skull and causes
his horse to step on it. The death’s-head cries out: “Why dost thou
tread upon me? I am able to injure thee yet.” The emperor, hearing
this, picks it up, burns it and collects the ashes in a casket. His
daughter opens the casket and discovers the ashes. To ascertain what
the contents of the box are, she wets her finger, dips it in the ashes
and licks it. A boy is the result, who after a variety of adventures
becomes the founder of Constantinople. This saga is found also in
Ukrainia attached to the name of a national hero, Paliq.[123.1] As M.
Dragomanov, who has brought these Serbian and Ukrainian legends under
the notice of Western students, remarks, the tale is found as a
_märchen_ in the Turkish _Tuti-Nameh_, where it appears under the
name of “The story of the skull through which eighty persons lost
their lives.” There the man who picked up the skull was a merchant;
instead of burning it, he ground it to powder; his daughter’s son had
a reputation for wisdom, and was called in to say why a fish laughed
when the vizier’s over-modest slave-girl refused to look at it, lest
it should be a male. The youth, thus called on, reveals to the vizier
the presence in his harem of forty men disguised as women, the lovers
of his forty slave-girls; and the slaves and their {124} lovers are
all put to death, to the number of eighty.[124.1] I mentioned in the
last chapter a Lithuanian story of a hermit who was burned, all but
his heart, which was afterwards eaten by a maiden and caused her to
give birth to a son. In a Sicilian legend this holy man is identified
with Saint Oniria, or Neria. The maiden’s son is a new birth of the
saint, who proves his sanctity when a child of only five years by
convincing his grandfather and his mother’s godfather of the salvation
of a poor, despised, dead beggar, and the damnation of a wealthy
sinner, though borne to his grave upon a costly bier and accompanied
by monks with burning tapers, and by revealing the existence of a
hoard of gold beneath a dunghill. He is then taken up to heaven, and
only appears again to save his grandfather’s life when accused of
murder.[124.2]
A Gipsy tradition from Transylvania derives the origin of the Leïla
tribe from a king’s daughter who was thrust out by her brother and his
wicked wife, because the latter envied her that she was the fairer. In
her wanderings she was pitied by three Keshalyi, or Fates; and one of
them dropped some of her hairs, which the lovely maiden ate and
brought into the world a son. From this child sprang the tribe, and he
gave his descendants the name of his mother.[124.3]
{125}
But the Supernatural Birth comes about in _märchen_ by other means
than eating or drinking. It is the same in sagas. The sense of smell
has been known to possess this marvellous virtue. The spirit of the
pole-star, if we may credit a Chinese tale, visited a girl and gave
her a fragrant herb called Hêng-wei, which caused her to become the
mother of Chang, who was appointed about the year 25 of our era to the
office of Master of Heaven.[125.1] The Gurû Gorakhnâth, whom we have
already found performing wonders, once gave a queen desirous of
offspring two flowers. Two sons were born to her; but because she had
deceived him she was doomed to die at their birth.[125.2] According to
a poem written in Old French by a priest at Valenciennes about the
middle of the thirteenth century, Abraham planted in his garden the
Tree of Knowledge, flung by God out of Paradise after the Fall. His
daughter became pregnant by the scent of a blossom broken off from it,
and bore Phanuel, from whom the Virgin Mary descended.[125.3]
Or it is enough for the magical article to be placed in the
predestined maiden’s bosom. When from the blood of the mutilated
Agdestis a pomegranate-tree sprang up, Nana the nymph gathered and
laid in her bosom some of the fruit wherewith it was laden, and from
hence, in classical belief, Attis was born.[125.4] In a Latin myth,
Cæculus, the son of Vulcan and Præneste, was conceived by means of a
spark {126} which leaped into his mother’s bosom. The forty companions
of the khan’s daughter, in the Koton legend already cited, were
quickened by laying stones on their bosoms; and in this way from them
multiplied the Sarabash tribes of the Altai mountains. On the western
continent, one of the great Aztec deities, Huitzilopochtli, the
brother and rival of Quetzalcoatl, had a similar origin. Coatlicue,
the Serpent-skirted, was already the mother of many children. She
dwelt on the mountain of the Snake, near the city of Tulla, and, being
very devout, she occupied herself in sweeping and cleansing the sacred
places of the mountain. One day, while engaged in these duties, a
little ball of feathers floated down to her through the air. She
caught it and hid it in her bosom; nor was it long before she found
herself pregnant. Thereupon her children conspired to put her to
death; but Huitzilopochtli, issuing from her womb all armed, like
Pallas from the head of Zeus, speedily destroyed his brethren and
sister and enriched his mother with their spoils.[126.1]
The Dorahs of New Guinea trace their parentage to a solitary old man,
who caught the Morning Star in the act of stealing his palm-wine. As
ransom he obtained from the felon a magical wand. This wand possessed
the property of making a virgin a mother, by simply touching her
bosom. The old man put its virtue to proof at once upon the loveliest
girl of his island-home. She gave birth to a son {127} called Konori,
who proved his miraculous descent, as these children alone know how to
do, by pointing out his father.[127.1] This calls to mind a well-known
passage of the _Mabinogion_ of which Lady Charlotte Guest’s modesty
made nonsense. I venture to quote her charming English, with the
needful correction. Math, the son of Mathonwy, is taking counsel with
Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, the sons of Don, what maiden he shall seek for
a wife. “‘Lord,’ said Gwydion, the son of Don, ‘it is easy to give
thee counsel; seek Arianrod, the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy
sister’s daughter.’ And they brought her unto him, and the maiden came
in. ‘Ha, damsel,’ said he, ‘art thou _a_ maiden?’ ‘I know not, lord,
other than that I am.’ Then he took up his magic wand and bent it.
‘Step over this,’ said he, ‘and I shall know if thou art _a_ maiden.’
Then stepped she over the magic wand, and there appeared forthwith a
fine chubby yellow-haired boy. And thereupon some small form was seen;
but before any one could get a second glimpse of it Gwydion had taken
it and flung a scarf of velvet around it and hidden it. Now the place
where he hid it was the bottom of a chest at the foot of his bed.” The
yellow-haired boy was baptized by the name of Dylan. “As Gwydion lay
one morning on his bed awake, he heard a cry in the chest at his feet;
and though it was not loud, it was such that he could hear it. Then he
arose in haste, and opened the chest: and when he opened it, he beheld
an infant boy stretching out his arms from the folds of the scarf, and
casting it aside. And he took up the boy in his arms, and carried him
to a place where he knew there was a woman that could nurse him. And
he agreed with the woman that she should take charge of the boy. And
that {128} year he was nursed. And at the end of the year he seemed by
his size as though he were two years old. And the second year he was a
big child and able to go to the Court by himself.” This second boy was
afterwards named Llew Llaw Gyffes, and the rest of the story deals
with his adventures.[128.1] It is clear that the wand is credited with
phallic power. A saga of the Warraus of British Guiana is unambiguous
in the ascription of such power to the stump of a tree. This stump was
half-submerged in a pool where two Indian women were bathing, when one
of them touched it and it promptly made her its wife. To her brothers’
indignation, a child was born; and after it died, a second interview
with the stump resulted in a second child. This child, a boy, was
slain by his mother’s brothers, who cut his body into small pieces.
But from the grave arose a man stronger and fiercer than any Warrau.
He was the first Carib; and hence there has always been enmity between
the Caribs and the Warraus.[128.2]
We have found several cases, both of _märchen_ and of sagas, where
the masculine saliva and other secretions, if swallowed, produced
pregnancy. The same consequence is believed to result from the
spittle’s being received into the woman’s hand. The twin divinities,
Hun Ahpu and {129} Xbalanque, honoured by the Quiché of Central
America, were thus begotten. Hunhun Ahpu and Vukub Hun Ahpu having
been put to death by the two kings of Xibalba, a mysterious
subterranean realm, the head of the former was placed between the
withered branches of a calabash-tree of the kind afterwards called
Hunhun Ahpu’s head; and immediately the tree became laden with fruit;
the head turned into a calabash, and was indistinguishable from the
rest. Thereupon the kings tabooed the tree as sacred. Xquiq, the
daughter of a prince named Cuchumaquiq, broke the taboo. As she
approached to pluck the fruit, Hunhun Ahpu’s head spat into her hand,
and she thereby conceived. Her father, perceiving her condition,
condemned her to death; but she persuaded the executioners to deceive
him, and gave birth in due time to twins of extraordinary power, who
avenged themselves on the rulers of Xibalba after the manner of Medea
upon Pelias.[129.1]
A similar incident is told in the Far East by the people of Annam
concerning an historical personage who was put to death in the year
1443 of our era. He was, according to one account, the parent of the
king’s wife. According to another account, this lady was a serpent who
had taken the form of a young girl and been adopted by the hero of the
legend, and given by him in marriage to the king. At all events, she
slew the king by biting off his tongue; and she, with her father (or
guardian) and all his family, was put to death. Her father was buried
alive with one of his soldiers. The soldier’s wife succeeded in
penetrating the grave, but only to find her husband already dead. His
chief, however, was still living, and, protesting his innocence, he
spat in {130} the woman’s hand, wherefrom she became pregnant and bore
a son who founded a new dynasty.[130.1]
Conception has taken place in legend not only by the hand but by the
foot, as in some of the _märchen_ reviewed in the preceding chapter.
The _Shih King_ relates of Hâu-_k_i, the ancestor of the kings of
_K_âu, that _K_iang Yüan, his mother, was childless until she trod
on a toe-print made by God. The instant she did so she felt moved; she
conceived, and at length gave birth to a son.[130.2]
Impregnation, however, by an unusual part of the body is often
attended by the inconvenience of birth by other than the natural exit.
In the Sanskrit books kings are mentioned as born from hand, or right
arm, or from the thigh or the top of the head, just as Bacchus was
born from the thigh, and Athene from the head, of Zeus. The divine
Parvati herself was conceived by a look and spit forth upon the world.
The old French poem already referred to represents Saint Anne, the
mother of the Virgin Mary, as born from her father Phanuel’s thigh,
which he touched with a knife after cutting an apple, and thus caused
it to conceive.[130.3] Buddha, in the form of a white elephant, {131}
entered his mother’s right side, and from her right side he was
born.[131.1] Cases like these are frequent in cosmogonic myths which
we need not discuss.
But, before we leave the subject of impregnation by an unusual part of
the body, it is not unimportant to observe that, during the Middle
Ages, a similar idea was current respecting the conception of Jesus
Christ. Sometimes painters represented the Holy Ghost as entering his
mother at her ear in the shape of a dove. In the Church of the
Magdalen at Aix, in Provence, is a picture of the Annunciation
attributed to Albert Dürer, wherein waves of glory descend from God
the Father, and in the midst of them a microscopic babe floats down
upon the Virgin. During the fifteenth century the opinion seems to
have been common that Our Lord entered already completely formed into
the Virgin’s womb--an opinion which orthodox theologians, in their
perfect acquaintance with the divine arrangements, were able summarily
to pronounce heretical. But a remarkable parallel to the story of
Buddha’s conception is presented by a picture of Fra Filippo Lippi,
painted for Cosmo de’ Medici and now in the National Gallery. The
Virgin is seated in a chair with her Book of Hours in her hand, and
the angel Gabriel bows before her. Above is a right hand surrounded
with clouds. A dove, cast from the hand amid circling floods of glory,
is making for the Virgin’s navel, which it is about to enter; while
she, bending forward, curiously surveys it. The picture is well worth
{132} studying, not merely for its exquisite grace, colouring and
finish, as one of the masterpieces of Tuscan art in the earlier half
of the fifteenth century, but also as an exposition of the ideas which
were prevalent at that time under the sanction of the Church, and for
the purpose of comparing them with Buddhist legends and other stories
of supernatural birth, such as we are now considering. Mohammedan
tradition ascribes the miraculous conception by the Virgin to
Gabriel’s having opened the bosom of her shift and breathed upon her
womb.[132.1] Parallel with this is a legend concerning Quetzalcoatl.
Tradition varied much as to his life. This probably means that his
worship and story were ancient and widespread among folk of the
Mexican stock. One version, as we know, records his birth from a
precious stone swallowed by his mother Chimalma. In a variant the Lord
of Existence, Tonacatecutli, appears to Chimalma and her two sisters.
The sisters were both struck dead by fright; but he breathed upon
Chimalma, and by his breath quickened life within her, so that she
bore Quetzalcoatl. Her son cost her her life. Having thus perished on
earth, she was translated to heaven, like the Virgin Mary in the
traditions of the Church, and was thenceforward honoured under the
name of Chalchihuitzli, the Precious Stone of Sacrifice.[132.2] But
there is a world of difference between this apotheosis and that of the
Virgin Mary. The latter is true, being guaranteed by the authority of
the Church; while the former rested only on the testimony of heathen
priests and peoples, deceived of course by the Tempter of Mankind.
{133}
It will be remembered that Mughain, before she bore Aedh Sláine, did
more than drink of the consecrated water: she washed in it. Stories of
conception by bathing have been seriously believed alike in the Old
and New Worlds. A Zulu saga represents a king’s daughters as bathing
in a pool in the river. The youngest, a mere child, comes out with
breasts swollen as large as a woman’s. By the advice of the council of
old men she is driven away. After wandering from place to place she
gives birth to a boy who grows up a wise doctor. From what is said of
his beneficent deeds it has been conjectured that we have here a
corrupted account of Our Lord’s birth, derived possibly from the
Portuguese.[133.1] If this be so (which is quite uncertain) it is
important to note that the story has coalesced with native tradition
as completely as the fiftieth rune of the _Kalevala_ with the
adventures of Väinämöinen. The main incident was apparently in
harmony with native thought, and therefore easily attracted to itself
the details of native life and discarded its own proper details, which
would be incomprehensible. In the Hindu mythology Parvati, the spouse
of Siva, justified her own irregular entrance upon the world by
conception through bathing, without intercourse, and thus brought
forth Ganesa.[133.2] A story is told, in a work attributed to
Plutarch, of Bacchus in the shape of the river Tigris carrying away
the nymph Alphesiboea and begetting on her a son, Medus. If
Aristonymus, who seems to have been originally responsible for it, was
reporting a genuine tradition, it must, so far as we can penetrate its
Greek disguise, have referred to a similar adventure on the part of
Alphesiboea. Medus was the {134} eponym of the Medes.[134.1] Some of
the Algonkins of North America traced the lineage of mankind from two
young squaws who, swimming in the sea, were impregnated by the foam
and produced a boy and girl.[134.2] So the black Kirghiz pretended to
have for their great foremother a princess who became pregnant by
bathing in a foam-covered lake.[134.3]
The ancient Persians held a curious belief anent Saoshyant, the future
hero who was to come from the region of the dawn to free the world
from death and corruption before the Resurrection. Three drops of the
seed of Zoroaster, we are told in the sacred books, fell from him.
What was bright and strong in it has been preserved by the agency of
angels. At the appointed time a maid, bathing in the lake Kâsava,
will come in contact with it, and will conceive by it and bring forth
the Saviour. Indeed, the orthodox view appears to be that she will
triple the miracle, by thrice conceiving in this way and bringing
forth three sons, of whom the two elder will be forerunners of the
third. He will come with authority to reduce all peoples under the
yoke of the true religion; and the general Resurrection will follow
his conquest of the world.[134.4] The Middle Ages, which believed that
Antichrist, in rivalry with Christ, would declare himself born of a
virgin,[134.5] would have seen nothing impossible in the kind of birth
foretold for Saoshyant. Averrhoes, in fact, put forward as having
actually occurred a case of a woman who became pregnant {135} in a
bath, by attracting the semen of a man bathing near. The admirable
common sense of Sir Thomas Browne rejected this, with many more
absurdities current in his day.[135.1] But he failed to convince those
who stood by tradition. A singular little book, refuting “Doctor
Brown’s _Vulgar Errors_, the Lord Bacon’s _Natural History_ and Doctor
Harvey’s Book _De Generatione_, Comenius and Others,” was published in
the year 1652. The writer, conscious no doubt of powers commensurate
to the task he had undertaken, too modestly concealed his name, and
has left the world baffled at the mystery of his identity. Admitting
Averrhoes’ story to be a strange one, he reproves Sir Thomas Browne’s
incredulity by saying: “Hee that denyeth a matter of fact, must bring
good witnesses to the contrary, or else shew the impossibility of the
fact.” This, he declares, had not been done. Then, after arguing in
favour of the “fact,” he goes on to uphold the belief in Incubi, “for
to deny this, saith Augustine, doth argue impudence;” and moreover it
is “to accuse the ancient Doctors of the Church and the Ecclesiastick
Histories of falshood,” and “to contradict the common consent of all
Nations, and experience.”[135.2] This is crushing, though assuredly an
appeal to “the ancient Doctors of the Church” has always been
successful in putting to shame the wisdom of the world; and Bacon, Sir
Thomas Browne and the rest will for ever lie under the stigma of
impudence, impiety and egregious folly.
Not only water but wind has been deemed sufficient to cause the birth
of gods and heroes. The examples most {136} familiar to us are those
of Hera, who conceived Hephaistos without male concurrence by simply
inhaling the wind, and of the maiden (in Longfellow’s poem, called
Wenonah) who was quickened by the west wind and bore Michabo, the
Algonkin hero better known as Hiawatha.[136.1] To these we may add the
blind Loujatar, source of all evils, ugliest and most hateful of
Mana’s daughters, fructified by the east wind and bearing at a birth
nine sons--nine several diseases to decimate mankind. Nor was she the
first in the Finnish mythology to conceive in this manner, for
Väinämöinen himself was the son of the virgin Ilmatar, who in the
beginning, while as yet there was neither earth nor sun, moon nor
stars, lay down upon the waters and was fecundated by the east wind.
She bore her child for seven hundred years before she could bring him
to the birth.[136.2]
Montezuma, the culture-hero of the Pueblos of New Mexico, was the son
of a maiden of exquisite beauty, but fastidious and coy. When the
drought fell on her people she opened her granaries and fed them out
of her abundance. “At last, with rain, fertility returned to the
earth; and on the chaste Artemis of the Pueblos its touch fell too.
She bore a son to the thick summer shower, and that son was
Montezuma.”[136.3] The Chinese and the Tartars appear {137} able as
usual to match all these traditions of parthenogenesis. The historian
Ma-twan-lin has recorded that the king of the So-li, or northern
barbarians, having been absent on a journey, found one of his
concubines pregnant at his return. He would have put her to death, had
she not asserted that a vapour about the size of an egg descended on
her from the sky and caused her interesting condition. He shut her up,
however, and she bore a son, who was thrown by the king’s orders into
the pigsty. The pigs warmed the babe with their breath. He was thrown
into a stable, and the horses did the same, reminding us of the birth
of Marjatta’s child. The king then was persuaded of his slave-girl’s
truth. He brought up the boy; but he feared him as he grew and became
a skilful archer, and sought therefore to destroy him. The youth fled
southward until he reached a certain river. There was no way over; so
he struck the water with his bow, and the fishes and turtles,
gathering together, formed a compact mass, that served as a bridge for
the hero. He crossed dryshod, and, reaching a land to the north of
Corea, founded there the nation and kingdom of the Fou-yu.[137.1]
The following seems a Corean variant of this legend. A king held
captive in his palace a daughter of the river Ho. She was fertilised
by the rays of the sun and laid an {138} enormous egg, which the king
caused to be thrown successively to the swine and to the dogs, to the
horses and to the cattle. None of these would touch it; and it was
flung out into the desert. There the birds of the air flocked to it
and covered it with their wings. The king then tried to break it, but
failed; and it was restored to the captive maiden. She wrapped it up
and warmed it for some time, until it burst and a boy came forth. The
people became attached to him; but the king’s ill-will was excited,
and, warned by his mother, the youth deemed it prudent to flee.
Announcing himself as the sun’s son and the grandson of the river Ho,
he was assisted to cross that river by the turtles and fishes as
above; and he at length arrived at the town of Ke-ching-ko, which he
called Kao-kin-li, and became the founder of the kingdom of that
name.[138.1] As late as the latter years of the sixteenth century,
Hideyoshi, the Taiko of Japan, was not too civilised to make similar
pretensions. They were, however, veiled, after the manner of the Irish
saints we have already mentioned, as a vision. He told the ambassador
of the king of Corea: “I am the only remaining scion of a humble
stock; but my mother once had a dream in which she saw the sun enter
her bosom; after which she gave birth to me. There was then a
soothsayer, who said, ‘Wherever the sun shines, there will be no place
which shall not be subject to him. It may not be doubted that one day
his power will overspread the empire.’”[138.2] A Jesuit father who
visited Siam in the seventeenth century reports concerning
Sommonocodon, the Siamese deity, that he was born of a virgin who had
retired to the depths of a certain forest, there to live in holiness
and austerity pending the {139} advent of God, then speedily expected.
One day while she prayed she conceived by the prolific rays of the
sun. The innocent maiden, ashamed to find herself with child, flew to
a solitary desert, in order to hide herself from the eyes of mankind.
Upon the banks of a lake, and without any sense of pain, she was
miraculously delivered of the most beautiful babe in the world; but
having no milk wherewith to suckle him, and being unable to bear the
thought of seeing him die, she jumped into the water, where she set
him upon the bud of a flower, which blew of itself for his more
commodious reception, and afterwards enclosed him as in a
cradle.[139.1] With these instances of sun-pregnancy may be compared
the Chinese tale of the Emperor Yao’s mother, who was rendered
fruitful by the splendour of a star that flashed upon her during a
dream.[139.2]
The Kirghiz Tartar tradition of the birth of the celebrated Genghis
Khan is perhaps a refinement of some such legend as these, due to
change of religion or other civilising influence. As it has more than
one resemblance to that of Danae I venture to give some of the
details. A khan named Altyn Bel had an only son. At length his wife
became pregnant a second time, and bore a daughter so beautiful that
the khan commanded that no man was to see her; and to conceal her from
all human eyes she must be brought up hidden beneath the ground.
Wherefore her mother gave her in charge to an old woman, who nourished
her in the dark. The babe grew to maidenhood; and one {140} day she
asked her nurse: “Whither dost thou go from time to time?” The nurse
told her in reply that there was a bright world where her father and
mother and all sorts of people dwelt; and thither she herself went.
The maiden prayed to be shown this bright world; and under promise to
tell no one of it the woman took her secretly out into the open air.
As soon as the maiden came forth and looked upon the world she
staggered and fainted; for at the same moment God’s eye fell upon her,
and at His command she became pregnant. When this was known to the
khan he ordered her to be put to death; but, being dissuaded from so
extreme a course, he allowed his wife to lock the maiden in a golden
chest, together with some food, and to fling the chest into the sea,
first binding the key on the outside. Two heroes, hunting, see the
chest on the water. Agreeing between themselves that the one should
take the chest and the other its contents, whatever they were, they
capture and drag it ashore. On opening it they find the girl, who
tells them her tale, and after her babe’s birth weds one of them. Her
son is Genghis. He grew up renowned among the youth for his
uprightness and excellence; and when the ruler of the town died
childless the people chose Genghis in his place, and swore obedience
to him. So Genghis ruled the folk in justice and peace; and theft and
lying vanished from among them. But his mother had borne to his
stepfather three sons, who envied him and said: “This is a fatherless
child; we cannot suffer him as ruler. We have a father; make one of us
prince.” When Genghis knew it, he resolved to flee, lest they should
put him to death. He told his mother he would go to the source of the
waters whereon she had come floating thither; to the place where his
father dwelt he {141} would go, and live. “O mother, I will let thee
know whether I am alive or dead. I will throw feathers into the water:
when you see the feathers floating by, you will know I am well; if the
feathers do not float by, I shall be dead.” Then he went upwards along
the stream. (It was called the sea just now; but the Tartars are
inlanders.) He shot game. Out of the fells of the beasts he made a
house; the feathers of the birds floated down to his mother, and she
knew that he lived. The people made one of his half-brothers prince.
But his rule was corrupt; liars and thieves and all sorts of criminals
abounded, and he could not protect his people. Wherefore they resolved
to depose him and to seek out Genghis again; and five-and-twenty of
their noblest went to find him. They came to the place where he dwelt,
and hid themselves, lest he should flee them again. He was absent.
When he returned they waited until he had eaten and lain down to rest.
Four-and-twenty men then seized him, bowing the head; but he flung
them all aside. They spake: “O Prince and Lord, we are thy servants
and come to thee as suppliants. Since thou hast left us our yourt has
broken up. Come back and take again thy seat as ruler.” He yielded and
went back with them. On their return a council was held, and it was
determined to submit the claims of Genghis and his three brothers to
their mother, who should choose the prince from among them. The mother
said to her sons: “You are all my children; do not quarrel, I will
decide the affair. Hang all your bows upon this sunbeam: whose bow
soever this beam bears, let him be ruler.” All four brought their bows
and hung them on the sunbeam. Only Genghis’ bow remained hanging; the
bows of the other three brothers fell to the {142} ground. And the
woman said to all the folk: “Behold! He became my child by God’s
decree; by God’s decree too the sunbeam bears his bow: make him your
prince. If these three offer him violence, put them to death. You, O
folk, are many: let no harm be done to him.” And again he ruled in
peace and justice. He took a noble wife, who bore him three sons and a
daughter. So renowned was he that a messenger came from the ruler of
the kingdom of Rome and prayed for one of his children to make him
ruler of Rome; and he gave one of his sons. From Crim-Tartary came
another to ask for another son as ruler; and he gave him his second
son. From the Khalif’s people came another on the same errand; and he
gave him the third son. Then came an embassy from the Russians and
asked for a child. As he had no more sons, he gave the Russians his
daughter; and they led her forth to make her their ruler. When he
died, as he had sent all his children away to rule other lands, his
brothers became forefathers of the evil sultans of his own
people.[142.1]
Phallic power is not infrequently exercised in the legends of the Far
East by the glances of divine, or quasi-divine, beings. After the
latest cyclic cataclysm, which preceded by about eighteen thousand
years the coming of Xacca, as the inhabitants of Laos call Buddha, a
genius descended from the highest of the sixteen worlds to repeople
the earth. With his scimitar he cut asunder a flower he beheld
swimming on the water. From the stem a beautiful maiden sprang, and he
grew enamoured of her. But such was her bashfulness that she refused
to listen to his suit. Accordingly he placed himself at a certain
distance from her, but directly opposite, where he could gaze upon
her; {143} and with the ardour of his gaze she became a mother without
ceasing to be a maiden. For the numerous issue that he had in this way
begotten he furnished the earth with mountains and valleys,
fruit-trees and animals fitted for the service of mankind, metals and
precious stones and every other convenience.[143.1] The Japanese
pretend that the ancestors of the present race which possesses their
empire were heroes or demi-gods, who in turn derived their origin from
celestial spirits, of whom seven ruled the empire. The first three of
these spirits had no wives, and three of the others impregnated their
wives merely by their looks.[143.2] The Marquesan islanders report
that Hina, the daughter of the god Taaroa, bore to him a daughter
named Apouvaru, who also became wife to her father. Taaroa and
Apouvaru looked steadfastly at one another, with the result that
Apouvaru became a mother. She brought into the world a son; and the
visual intercourse being repeated she brought forth a second son.
After repeating it again she brought forth a daughter. This seems to
have satisfied these divine beings, for no further experiments are
reported.[143.3] Taaroa, however, according to the Leeward islanders,
begot another son by shaking the shadow of a bread-fruit leaf over his
daughter-wife, Hina.[143.4] At Rome the birth of Servius Tullius was
by tradition imputed to a look. His mother Ocrisia was a slave of
Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus. The likeness of a phallos
{144} appeared on the hearth; and she, who was sitting before it,
arose pregnant of the future king. The household Lar was deemed his
father, in confirmation of which a lambent flame was seen about the
child’s head as he lay asleep.[144.1]
We have found a Zulu _märchen_ narrating the birth of a child from a
clot of blood placed in a pot and covered down. To similar effect is
the Melanesian tradition of Deitari, from Aurora Island. His father
Tari went into his garden to work, when he felt something cut him. He
put the blood into a bamboo vessel, returned to his house and set it
down by the hearth. After many days his wife, going to cook food for
him, was surprised to find food already cooked by somebody unknown.
When this had recurred several times, the woman told her husband, and
he bade her watch. Then she saw Deitari (Tari’s blood) creep out of
the bamboo vessel. He was exceeding fair to look upon; and she hid
him, and asked her husband what he had put in that bamboo vessel. Tari
remembered about his blood, and said: “My blood was in that bamboo.”
His wife replied: “I saw him come forth out of that bamboo that you
had put there.” And she brought him forth, and her husband rejoiced to
see him.[144.2] The Mexicans attributed the origin of the present race
of mankind to a bone of one of the previous races who had perished in
a cataclysm. The goddess Omecihuatl, having had many children in
heaven, was at length delivered of {145} a knife of flint. This knife
was flung by her elder children to the earth, and where it fell there
sprang up sixteen hundred heroes from the ground. By the goddess’
direction, one of these heroes, Xolotl, was sent to Hell to fetch a
bone of one of the men who had died. The god of Hell, having given it,
repented and pursued the messenger, who fortunately escaped, but in
his haste stumbled and broke the bone. He gathered up the pieces and
brought them to his brethren, who put them into a vessel and sprinkled
them with blood drawn from their own bodies. At the end of four days a
boy was formed from the bone, and at the end of three more a girl, who
became the ancestors of all nations.[145.1]
With these cases we may for the present close our long and monotonous
list of Supernatural Births. If anybody shall complain that it is not
exhaustive, he must be congratulated on his appetite for these
marvellous occurrences. Practically the subject is inexhaustible. I
have not attempted to deal with every story, nor with every kind of
story. I have limited myself so far as possible to narratives
analogous to those in the different forms of the Perseus myth, and to
little more than specimens of them. In treating of sagas we have been
able to show a range extended beyond that of _märchen_. The
Supernatural Birth, in the forms in which we have studied it, is known
throughout Europe, Asia, and America, and in large groups of the
Pacific Islands. It is repeated again and again in the Chinese and
other Mongolian traditions. We have found it among the Zulus in South
Africa; and although there may be some doubt as to the native
character of a portion of the story, there {146} can be none as to the
mode of impregnation. When we know more about the legends and beliefs
of the natives of the interior, we shall probably find the myth as
thoroughly at home there as it is in an Italian nursery-tale.[146.1]