THE STORIES 17 



and was turned out of the house. In a stable on the 

 straw she gave birth to a magnificent boy who was no 

 other than Saint Philip born again. 1 



In tales of both hemispheres women are represented 

 as conceiving by smell or by simple contact of the 

 magical substance. When from the blood of the 

 mutilated Agdestis a pomegranate-tree sprang up, 

 Nana the nymph gathered and laid in her bosom some 

 of the fruit wherewith it was laden, and hence in the 

 belief of the Greeks, Attis was born. 2 Danae conceived 

 Perseus through the shower of gold. The ancestress 

 of one of the clans of the Lyringams in the Khasi Hills 

 of Assam was conceived by the touch of a flower which 

 fell on her mother as she slept, 3 A legend of the 

 island of Tanah- Papua relates that the hero Konori 

 owed his birth to a marisbon-fruit flung on the breast of 

 a maiden. 4 Coatlicue, the serpent-skirted, was the 

 mother of Huitzilopochtli, one of the great Aztec 

 deities. A little ball of feathers floated down to her 

 through the air. She caught it and hid it in her 

 bosom ; nor was it long before she found herself 

 pregnant. 5 Further north, in a Wichita tale, a man of 

 extraordinary powers contrives that a maiden shall 

 pick up and put in her bosom a small bone-cylinder or 

 pipe-bone, such as used to be worn round the neck. 

 It disappears and she becomes pregnant without 



Luzel, Leg. Chret. i. 44. 



Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, v. 6; Pausanias, vii. 17 (5). According 



to 



he latter the tree was an almond-tree. 



Gurdon, 195. 



Bastian ? Indonesien, ii. 35 ; cf. Featherman, Papuo-Mel. 43. 



Bancroft, iii. 296, quoting Torquemada ; Brinton, Essays, 94; 

 G. Raynaud, Rev. Hist. Rel. xxxviii. 279, 280, quoting a hymn 

 preserved by Sahagun. 



I B 



