_ 39 The Childhood of the World_, by E. Clodd, p. 62.
_ 40 Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales_, by
W. H. I. Bleek, 1864, p. 69. Dr. Theophilus Hahn, _Die Sprache der
Nama_, 1870, p. 59. As a curious coincidence, it may be mentioned
that in Sanskrit, too, the Moon is called _sasāanka_, _i. e._
“having the marks of a hare,” the black marks in the moon being
taken for the likeness of the hare. Another coincidence is that the
Namaqua Hottentots will not touch hare’s flesh (see Sir James E.
Alexander’s _Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa_,
vol. i. p. 269), because the hare deceived men, while the Jews
abstain from it, because the hare is supposed to chew the cud (Lev.
xi. 6).
A similar tradition on the meaning of death occurs among the Zulus,
but as they do not know of the Moon as a deity, the message that men
are not to die, or that they are to die, is sent there by
Unkulunkulu, the ancestor of the human race, and thus the whole
story loses its point. See Dr. Callaway, _Unkulunkulu_, p. 4; and
Gray, _Polynesian Mythology_, pp. 16-58.
41 According to a letter just received from an Esthonian lady,
_ämmarik_ does mean the gloaming in the language of the common
people of Esthonia. Bertram (_Ilmatar_, Dorpat, 1870, p. 265)
remarks that _Koit_ is the dawn, _Koido täht,_ the morning-star,
also called _eha täht_. _Ämarik_, the ordinary name for the dawn, is
used as the name for the evening twilight, or the gloaming in the
well-known story, published by Fählmann (_Verhandlungen der
gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat_, vol. i.) In Finnish
_hämära_ is twilight in general.