THE STORIES 19 



front of her and disappeared ; from that shadow the 

 child was born. 1 



Conception takes place sometimes by the hand or 

 the foot. Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, the twin divinities 

 honoured by the Quiche of Central America, were born 

 in consequence of the head of their murdered father 

 spitting into a maiden's hand. 2 A similar incident is 

 told by the people of Annam concerning an historical 

 personage who was put to death in the year 1443 of 

 our era. 3 In China the Skih-King relates of Hau-^fi, the 

 ancestor of the kings of Aan, that his mother Alang- 

 Ylian was childless until she trod on a toe-print made 

 by God. That instant she felt moved ; she conceived 

 and at length gave birth to a son. The poet does not 

 mention her husband, and the common Chinese tradi- 

 represents her as a virgin. 4 



Impregnation by an unusual part of the body is 

 in fact by no means a rare incident in sacred and 

 historical traditions. During the Middle Ages it seems 

 to have been seriously believed at all events the idea 

 was current respecting the conception of Jesus 

 Christ. The Fathers had dwelt upon the physio- 

 logical details of the Incarnation with prurient 

 rudeness. They were as familiar with at least the 

 negative results of the miracle, as minute and positive 



1 Dames, 138. 



2 Popol Vuh, 89. ; Journ. Am. F. L., xx. 148. 



3 Landes, Annam. 63. In two Yana myths from California a 

 child originates directly from masculine spittle without female 

 intervention (Curtin, Creation Myths, 300, 348). 



4 Sacred Books, iii. 396. There seems some ambiguity in the 

 word translated God (see Rev. Hist. Rel. xli. n ; xliii. 137). The 

 historian Se-ma-thsien, who flourished in the middle of the second 

 century B.C., relates that A3ang Yuan became pregnant by walking 

 on the footsteps of a giant (De Charencey, 199). 



