12 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



remarkable son.' ' And the epithet was certainly 

 justified by the account which follows of that son's 

 adventures in the process of securing a harem. 1 The 

 Celtic saint Aidan or Maedoc was born of a star which 

 fell into his mother's mouth while she slept. 2 



In various parts of the world stories have been told 

 of women who have been fertilised by semen imbibed 

 through the mouth or even through the nose. An 

 Irish manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century tells us that Cred the daughter of Ronan, 

 King of Leinster, gathered cress on which the sperma 

 genitale of a certain robber Findach by name had just 

 fallen and ate it, " and thereof was born the ever- 

 living Boethfn." 3 We need not dwell on this unsavoury 

 subject. Let it suffice to say that stories containing 

 this incident are found among the Salish of North 

 America, among the ancient Peruvians, and repeatedly 

 in India. The Gipsies of Southern Hungary tell a tale 

 of a woman who was transformed into a fish as a 

 punishment for repulsing Saint Nicholas when he 

 appeared to her as a beggar. She was condemned to 

 remain in that form until impregnated by her husband. 

 This was effected by devouring a leaf on which some 

 of his spittle had fallen. 4 



The drinking of water or some other liquid is a 

 frequent cause of impregnation. The birth of 

 Zoroaster is attributed in a Parsee work of the ninth 

 century A.D. to his mother's drinking of homa-juice and 



1 Tawney, Kathdko^ 64. 

 1 Rev. Celt, v, 275. 



3 Prof. Whitley Stokes, Rev. Celt. ii. 199, translating the Leabhar 

 breac, a MS. now in the Royal Irish Academy. 



4 von Wlislocki, Volksdicht, 300. 



