CHAPTER III 



TRANSFORMATION AND METEMPSYCHOSIS 



Birth is often a new manifestation of a previously 

 existing personage. Ballads and stories in which the 

 dead manifest themselves as trees. Corresponding be- 

 liefs and practices. Transformation after death into 

 brute-form. The converse. Transformation of brutes 

 and vegetables into human beings by birth. Buddhist 

 doctrine of Transmigration. Celtic doctrine. New birth 

 of human beings. Belief in multiple souls. Rites to 

 ascertain which of the ancestors has returned. Naming 

 a child after a deceased member of the family. Rites to 

 secure a transfer of life. Australian beliefs in re-birth. 

 Warehouse of children. Relation between Transforma- 

 tion and Transmigration. 



THE hero of many tales of Supernatural Birth is not a 

 new personage ; he is simply a new manifestation. 

 He had previously existed in other shapes, and by 

 undergoing birth (preceded sometimes, but not always, 

 by death) he was entering on a new career, he was 

 ascending a new stage of being. In the Egyptian tale 

 the persea-trees are expressly identified with the 

 murdered Bata ; and when they are cut down a 

 splinter flies into the heroine's mouth rendering her 

 pregnant of Bata once more. Yehl, the Thlinkit hero, 

 repeatedly became the son of ladies who were beguiled 

 into swallowing a pebble, a blade of grass or even a 

 drop of water, which was no other than the demi-god 



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