CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTEBN ANALOGIES. 583 



women are grim aud evil-hearted creatures, sometimes darkening the 

 whole sky with their raven wings, and again lapping the blood of the 

 slain, while in the Shetland Islands a similar myth brings the women 

 to the bathing beach in the guise of seals. 



The feather-dress w^^^?/ reappears in western Asia, with abundant 

 adornment, in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, as a basis of the 

 "Story of Hasan of el-Basrah." Here the hero, while idling in a 

 wonderful garden, beheld ten great birds, among them one more beau- 

 tiful than the rest, alight; and as he concealed himself to watch at 

 greater advantage ''they seated themselves upon the couch, and each 

 of them rent open its skin with its talons and came forth from it, and 

 lo, it was a dress of feathers. There came from the dresses ten dam- 

 sels, virgins, who shamed by their beauty the luster of the moon; and 

 when they had divested themselves, they all descended into the pool 

 and washed, and proceeded to play and to jest together, the bird who 

 surpassed the others throwing them down and plunging them, and 

 the}'^ fleeing from her and unable to put forth their hands to her." 

 Hasan becomes violently enamored, but is unable to detain them until, 

 on a subsequent visit, he is told to secure the dress of the leader. The 

 girl is wild with terror at first, but eventually turns into a pretty good 

 wife and becomes the mother of two boys. The dress of feathers is 

 not destroyed, however, and during her husband's absence from home 

 she secures it by a ruse from his old mother and instantly flies off in 

 it with her children to the Islands of Wak-Wak. These islands, from 

 which Hasan eventually regains his wife, are supposed by commenta- 

 tors to be either Japan or the Sunda islands, and it has been reasonably 

 suggested that their name is derived from the cry "Wok- Wok" of the 

 great Bird of Paradise which abounds there. A similar encounter with 

 bird- women occurs also in the Arabic romance of Seyf-Zu-1-Yezin.' 



Returning now to eastern Asia we again meet, in the islands of Lew 

 Chew, a member of the mysterious company, who is as beautiful as her 

 sisters of Siberia. A respectable young man— goes the story as related 

 by a Chinese enovy to Lew Chew— was scandalized to find a female 

 bathing in his spring. After the old, old fashion, which boys the 

 world over know, he sought her clothes on a neighboring bush, but 

 was amazed to find as he confiscated them that they were of gossamer, 

 ruddy and gay with sunset hues, altogether unlike any dame\s dress 

 he had ever seen. The young woman, finishing her plunge, discovered 

 her loss and threw herself on the ground before him begging tor her 

 garments; but he was obdurate and insisted upon her remaining with 

 him. At the end of ten years of married life, during which she bore 

 him two children, her fate was fulfilled and she drifted away one day 

 on a fleecy cloud. In one of the German variants of the myth most 

 closely approachin g this version, the huntsman who has secured his 



^Lane's Arabian Nighte;7ol. HI, chap. xxv. C Gould's Mythical Monsters, p. 140. 



