It may have had connection with the _As_warnedha or horse sacrifice (Cunningham, p. 363.) Boulanger (i. 109) says, "That after the winter solstice the ancient inhabitants of India descended with their king to the banks of the Indus; they there sacrificed _horses_ and _black bulls_, signs of a funeral ceremony; they then threw a bushel measure into the water without their assigning any reason for it." Compare the throwing the cakes into the gulf at Athens, and the hatchets into the water at the Mandan custom. Could it be that at the Dahoman ceremony the horses were redeemed because the wretched victims were substituted, carrying out the idea of vicarious sacrifice and expiation? Sir John Lubbock ("Origin of Civilization," p. 199) says, speaking of _water_ worship, "The kelpie or spirit of the _waters assumed_ various forms, those of a man, woman, _horse_, or _bull_ being the most common." Compare _supra_, pp. 196, 202, 204, Manou, Bacchus. Homer (Hom. Il., Heynii, xxi. 130, Lord Derby, 145), says-- "Shall aught avail ye, though to him (the river Scamander) In sacrifice, the blood of countless _bulls_ you pay, And living _horses_ in his waters sink;" and (210) Asteropoeus is called "river-born," because the son of Pelegon, who "to broadly flowing Axius owed his birth." Remembering the belief of certain tribes of Indians (supra, p. 137) that they were "created under the water," which I have construed to mean, that they were created on the other side of the Deluge, so we may take in a similar sense the traditions of these Homeric heroes that they were "river-born;" and does the expression, son of Pelegon (compare "son of Prometheus," _supra_, p. 232), imply more than that he was the descendant of Phaleg, or, if not in the line of descent, the descendant of progenitors who had retained the tradition that Phaleg was so called, "because in his days the earth was divided"?--Gen. ch. x. 25. Compare ancient Welsh ballad (Davies' "Mythology of British Druids," p. 100)-- "Truly I was in the ship With Dylan (Deucalion), son of the sea.... When ... the floods came forth From heaven to the great deep."