84 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I42 



2. Strange- form gods. These include what he calls a chicken-claw 

 god, with the upper part like a man and the lower part like a chicken ; 

 Uncle A-pu, who has a beard 7 feet long and can cause wind by blow- 

 ing hard ; A-ta-la-nieh, who is so tall that his head touches the sky ; 

 the noise of his whistle is as loud as thunder. There is a god who is 

 the son of an eagle, sometimes identified with Lung-yin-hsiu-ts'ai, 

 famous among border tribes, and said to have been born in Tzu-tsou. 

 Miraculously born as the son of an eagle, many are the marvelous 

 deeds that he performed. The Lolo story says that there were nine 

 suns and nine moons, which so scorched the earth that all vegetation 

 and all vegetable and animal life were threatened with extinction. 

 With his bow and arrows he shot down eight suns and eight moons, 

 and the ninth sun and the ninth moon retreated and hid, so that for 

 a long time all on earth was dark and gloomy. The legend tells how 

 later they were persuaded to come out again, the sun by day, and the 

 moon by night on half the days of a month. He also captured and 

 tamed the god of thunder. Another god is Ch'u Nieh, the ancestor 

 of the bi mus or priests. Numerous other gods are mentioned. 



This author also names many different demons, which he also di- 

 vides into three different classes : First, demons who died by un- 

 usual deaths, such as drowning, being struck by rolling stones, from 

 swooning, from the overturning of boats, from falling over cliffs, 

 from pain in the abdomen, or of women who died in childbirth. 

 Second, curious-form demons, such as demons of chickens who had 

 double heads, of a man who died and turned into a leper-snake, and 

 the demon of a man who turned into a chicken. Third, curiously 

 acting demons, among them begger demons, for the Lolos have no 

 beggars and regard beggars as very curious ; demons who eat human 

 beings ; and demons of long-tailed chickens who can fly. 



The stories, myths, legends, and folktales of any people are of great 

 interest because they throw much light on the social and religious 

 ideals and customs of the group. The following are two folktales of 

 the Lolos : 



I. The flood. — Two brothers were cultivating a field. Every day 

 with their hoes they would turn the soil over, and every morning when 

 they returned to their work they found the soil turned back as it had 

 been before. They finally decided to watch during the night and see 

 what was happening. About the middle of the night they saw an 

 old man turning the soil back as it had been before. The older brother 

 wanted to beat the old man, but the younger brother urged that they 

 first ask him for the reason of his conduct. The old man said, "The 



