The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)Frazer, James George
ReligionComparative
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
him a pot of beer and it bubbled, and they gave him a jug of wine and it
grew turbid. Then he took his staff and his sandals and hied him to the
Valley of the Acacia, and there he found his younger brother lying dead in
his house. So he sought for the heart of his brother under the Acacia. For
three years he sought in vain, but in the fourth year he found it in the
berry of the Acacia. So he threw the heart into a cup of fresh water. And
when it was night and the heart had sucked in much water, Bitiu shook in
all his limbs and revived. Then he drank the cup of water in which his
heart was, and his heart went into its place, and he lived as before.(842)
In the story of Seyf-el-Mulook in the Arabian Nights, the Jinnee declares,
“When I was born, the astrologers declared that the destruction of my soul
would be effected by the hand of one of the sons of the human kings. I
therefore took my soul, and put it into the crop of a sparrow, and I
imprisoned the sparrow in a little box, and put this into another small
box, and this I put within seven other small boxes, and I put these within
seven chests, and the chests I put into a coffer of marble within the
verge of this circumambient ocean; for this part is remote from the
countries of mankind, and none of mankind can gain access to it.” But
Seyf-el-Mulook got possession of the sparrow and strangled it, and the
Jinnee fell upon the ground a heap of black ashes.(843) In a modern
Arabian tale a king marries an ogress, who puts out the eyes of the king’s
forty wives. One of the blinded queens gives birth to a son whom she names
Mohammed the Prudent. But the ogress queen hated him and compassed his
death. So she sent him on an errand to the house of her kinsfolk the
ogres. In the house of the ogres he saw some things hanging from the roof,
and on asking a female slave what they were, she said, “That is the bottle
which contains the life of my lady the queen, and the other bottle beside
it contains the eyes of the queens whom my mistress blinded.” A little
afterwards he spied a beetle and rose to kill it. “Don’t kill it,” cried
the slave, “for that is my life.” But Mohammed the Prudent watched the
beetle till it entered a chink in the wall; and when the female slave had
fallen asleep, he killed the beetle in its hole, and so the slave died.
Then Mohammed took down the two bottles and carried them home to his
father’s palace. There he presented himself before the ogress queen and
said, “See, I have your life in my hand, but I will not kill you till you
have replaced the eyes which you took from the forty queens.” The ogress
did as she was bid, and then Mohammed the Prudent said, “There, take your
life.” But the bottle slipped from his hand and fell, the life of the
ogress escaped from it, and she died.(844)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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