TRANSFORMATION 157 



in disguise. What is expressly asserted in stories like 

 these may be inferred from others. In the most widely 

 diffused modern type of marchen belonging to the cycle 

 of Perseus, a fish being caught directs that its flesh 

 shall be given to the fisherman's wife, while the bones 

 and the scales and other offal are to be given to the 

 mare and the bitch or otherwise disposed of. The 

 woman becomes pregnant of the flesh, the mare and 

 bitch of the bones scales, and so forth. We can only 

 interpret the careful directions given by the fish as to 

 how it was to be cooked and eaten and how its re- 

 mains were to be disposed of, the exact correspondence 

 of the twins or triplets who are born of the woman 

 and their horses dogs and other property with these 

 directions when they are duly followed, and the mystic 

 connection between the offspring, as evidence that 

 they are a new birth of the fish. Nor are these 

 inferences to be confined to the stones. The belief 

 in birth as a new manifestation of a previously existent 

 personage appears from the practices, detailed in the 

 last chapter, in which portions of corpses are utilised to 

 promote conception. The subject is so important not 

 merely in the general study of savage ideas, but in 

 relation to the belief that conception is due to other 

 than the natural cause that it is necessary to discuss it 

 further. 



In so doing I do not propose to consider marchen. 

 Interesting as these are we must for reasons of space 

 pass them by. The reader will doubtless be willing to 

 assume their existence and wide diffusion. I shall 

 confine myself as far as possible to evidence of belief, 

 using even sagas as sparingly as possible. 



But we must begin with sagas and ballads. A 



