Balder the Beautiful, Volume I.: A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The; Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External SoulFrazer, James George
Religion
Balder the Beautiful, Volume I.: A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The; Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
[170] Laura Gonzenbach, _Sicilianische Märchen_ (Leipsic, 1870), No. 28,
vol. i. pp. 177 _sqq._ The incident of the bone occurs in other
folk-tales. A prince or princess is shut up for safety in a tower and
makes his or her escape by scraping a hole in the wall with a bone which
has been accidentally conveyed into the tower; sometimes it is expressly
said that care was taken to let the princess have no bones with her meat
(J.G. von Hahn, _op. cit._ No. 15; L. Gonzenbach, _op. cit._ Nos. 26,
27; _Der Pentamerone, aus dem Neapolitanischen übertragen_ von Felix
Liebrecht (Breslau, 1846), No. 23, vol. i. pp. 294 _sqq._). From this we
should infer that it is a rule with savages not to let women handle the
bones of animals during their monthly seclusions. We have already seen
the great respect with which the savage treats the bones of game
(_Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_ ii. 238 _sqq._, 256 _sqq._); and
women in their courses are specially forbidden to meddle with the hunter
or fisher, as their contact or neighbourhood would spoil his sport (see
below, pp. 77, 78 _sq._, 87, 89 _sqq._). In folk-tales the hero who uses
the bone is sometimes a boy; but the incident might easily be
transferred from a girl to a boy after its real meaning had been
forgotten. Amongst the Tinneh Indians a girl at puberty is forbidden to
break the bones of hares (above, p. 48). On the other hand, she drinks
out of a tube made of a swan's bone (above, pp. 48, 49), and the same
instrument is used for the same purpose by girls of the Carrier tribe of
Indians (see below, p. 92). We have seen that a Tlingit (Thlinkeet) girl
in the same circumstances used to drink out of the wing-bone of a
white-headed eagle (above, p. 45), and that among the Nootka and Shuswap
tribes girls at puberty are provided with bones or combs with which to
scratch themselves, because they may not use their fingers for this
purpose (above, pp. 44, 53).
[171] Sophocles, _Antigone_, 944 _sqq._; Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_, ii.
4. I; Horace, _Odes_, iii. 16. I _sqq._; Pausanias, ii. 23. 7.
[172] W. Radloff, _Proben der Volks-litteratur der türkischen Stämme
Süd-Siberiens,_ iii. (St. Petersburg, 1870) pp. 82 _sq._
[173] H. Ternaux-Compans, _Essai sur l'ancien Cundinamarca_ (Paris,
N.D.), p. 18.
[174] George Turner, LL.D., _Samoa, a Hundred Years ago and long before_
(London, 1884), p. 200. For other examples of such tales, see Adolph
Bastian, _Die Voelker des Oestlichen Asien_, i. 416, vi. 25; _Panjab
Notes and Queries_, ii. p. 148, § 797 (June, 1885); A. Pfizmaier,
"Nachrichten von den alten Bewohnern des heutigen Corea,"
_Sitzungsberichte der philosoph. histor. Classe der kaiser. Akademie der
Wissenschaften_ (Vienna), lvii. (1868) pp. 495 _sq._
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