give up her clothes, while without them she could not get away. The
result was that they were married. She lived with him for ten years,
and bore him a son and a daughter. At the end of that time her fate
was fulfilled: she ascended a tree during the absence of her husband,
and having bidden his children farewell, glided off on a cloud and
disappeared. [157]
In South Africa a parallel myth, in its demonological aspect, bears
no trace of a cloud origin. In this case a Hottentot, travelling with
a Bushwoman and her child, met a troop of wild horses. They were all
hungry; and the woman, taking off a petticoat made of human skin,
was instantly changed into a lioness. She struck down a horse, and
lapped its blood; then, at the request of the Hottentot, who in his
terror had climbed a tree, she resumed her petticoat and womanhood, and
the friends, after a meal of horseflesh, resumed their journey. [158]
Among the Minussinian Tartars these demons partake of the nature of
the Greek Harpies; they are bloodthirsty vampyre-demons who drink
the blood of men slain in battle, darken the air in their flight,
and house themselves in one great black fiend. [159] As we go East
the portrait of the Swan-maiden becomes less dark, and she is not
associated with the sea or the under-world. Such is one among the
Malays, related by Mr. Tylor. In the island of Celebes it is said
that seven nymphs came down from the sky to bathe, and were seen by
Kasimbaha, who at first thought them white doves, but in the bath
perceived they were women. He stole the robe of one of them, Utahagi,
and as she could not fly without it, she became his wife and bare him
a son. She was called Utahagi because of a single magic white hair
she had; this her husband pulled out, when immediately a storm arose,
and she flew to heaven. The child was in great grief, and the husband
cast about how he should follow her up into the sky.
The Swan-maiden appears somewhat in the character of a Nemesis in
a Siberian myth told by Mr. Baring-Gould. A certain Samoyed who had
stolen a Swan-maiden's robe, refused to return it unless she secured
for him the heart of seven demon robbers, one of whom had killed
the Samoyed's mother. The robbers were in the habit of hanging
up their hearts on pegs in their tent. The Swan-maiden procured
them. The Samoyed smashed six of the hearts; made the seventh robber
resuscitate his mother, whose soul, kept in a purse, had only to be
shaken over the old woman's grave for that feat to be accomplished,
and the Swan-maiden got back her plumage and flew away rejoicing. [160]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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