THE STORIES 13 



cow's-milk infused with his guardian spirit and glory. 1 

 The mother of Nanabozho, the culture-hero of the 

 Lenape of the Delaware, became pregnant in conse- 

 quence of drinking out of a creek. 2 One rainy autumnal 

 night a woman of Annam put an earthen vessel to re- 

 ceive the drippings of her roof and saw a star fall into 

 the vessel. She drank the water and became pregnant. 

 She was delivered of three eggs from which three ser- 

 pents were hatched. They were heavenly genii, and 

 two of them are still worshipped as the tutelary divinities 

 of the village in which they were born. 8 



Almost any portion of a human body may be 

 possessed of fructifying power. The marchen attribute 

 it variously to a hermit's heart cooked and eaten, to 

 the gratings of a bone found in the churchyard or to 

 the ashes of a burnt skull. According to a manuscript 

 in the Khedivial Library at Cairo a bone crushed in 

 the hand of a man and thrown on the dungheap grew 

 up into so fine a tree that no one had ever seen the 

 like. His daughter desired to see this tree. Drawing 

 nigh to it she embraced it and kissing it took a leaf in 

 her mouth. As she chewed it she found the taste 

 sweet and agreeable and accordingly swallowed it. 

 At the same instant she conceived by the will of God. 4 

 The analogy of other stones leads to the belief that 

 the tree here is neither more nor less than a trans- 

 formation of the man from whose bone it grew. The 

 oldest known story wherein transformation of this kind 

 forms an incident is the Egyptian tale of the Two 



1 Sacred Books, v. 187. See a curious tradition concerning the 

 birth of St. John the Baptist, cited by Saintyves, Les Vierges Meres, 



* Brinton, Lenape, 131. 

 8 Landes, Annam., 12. * Oestrup, 26. 



