NOTES ON LIU-KIU. 263 



water near his house. On going to draw '\\-ater one day he perceives a bright 

 light at the well, and discovers a woman washing, who has hung her clothes 

 on a neighbouring pine-tree. These he carries off, and in spite of her 

 entreaties, refuses to return. Being thus unable to resume her former con- 

 dition, she consents to remain and become Minglitsz's wife, telling him that 

 the gods have seen his irreproachable character, and wish to magnify his 

 family. She bears him two children, — ChinJcoh or True Heron, and Kwei-niue 

 or Tortoise Year, — and when the oldest has reached the age of nine, she feels 

 that her fate is fulfilled, and that she must go. She accordingly dresses her- 

 self in the original garments, mounts a tree, and disappears. The king hears 

 of the story, and confers favours on the children, at the same time making 

 a present of land to the bereaved widower, to console him for his loss. This 

 story, as Dr. Williams remarks, is almost identical with one related in the 

 " Arabian Nights," and legends of a similar nature exist in mam^ countries. 

 Castren ^ relates a story prevalent among the Samoyedes, in which a hunter 

 of that nation steals the feather dress of one of seven swan-maidens who are 

 bathing in a lake. The myth was a favourite one with Scandinavian peoples, 

 but Mr. Baring-Gould 2 shows that it was also Teutonic. That it should 

 exist in so remote a corner of the world as the Liu-kiu Islands is a fact as 

 curious as it is interesting. 



When at Napha-kiang I was unaware of the existence of two colossal stone 

 figures which have been described and figured by Mr. Halloran ^ in his diary 

 of a visit to the Liu-kius. They are twenty feet or more in height, and from 

 their being described as placed on either side of a gate leading to a temple, it 

 is probable that they correspond to the Ni-o, — the fantastic and hideous 

 images which guard the temples sacred to the religion of Buddha in Jaj^an. 

 Their appearance, however, as represented in the illustration aliove referred 

 to, does not much resemble that of these figures. Mr. Halloran speaks of them 

 as " very ancient idols, formed of a stone resembling quartz, and of so great 

 an age that all tradition of their original construction is lost, and their features 

 obliterated." The temple in the neighbourhood of which they stood was, for 

 a period of nearly eight years — from 1846 to 1854 — the residence of a 

 certain Dr. Bettelheim, whose labours as a missionary during that time were, 

 contrary to what might have been expected from the character of the natives, 

 an almost absolute failure. 



In the year 1845 some English naval officers formed themselves into a 

 society under the name of the " Lew-chew Naval Mission," the most prominent 

 member of which was Lieutenant Clifford, who had visited the islands with 



1 " Ethnologisclie Vorlesungen iiber die Altaisclieii Yulker," p. 172. 



- " Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," p. 573. 



^ " Eight Months' Journal during visits to Loochoo, Japan, and Pootoo," p. 19. 



