TRANSFORMATION 189 



his death by a bite. 1 In Burgundy the Baroness de 

 Montfort wanders for her cruelties under the form of a 

 she-wolf that nobody can kill. 2 These are a few 

 specimens of a considerable body of European folklore 

 representing the dead under animal form. 



But if human beings can be changed by means of 

 death and a fresh birth into brute and vegetable form, 

 brutes and vegetables may equally be changed by the 

 same process into human beings. As I have already 

 pointed out at the commencement of this chapter a 

 large cycle of mdrchen displays this power. In the 

 light of the transmutations we have now passed in 

 review it is abundantly clear that the fisherman's sons 

 their horses dogs life-tokens and so forth are nothing 

 more or less than the ancestor-fish in new moulds. 

 Probably at one time this was explicitly stated in the 

 tale. A Pawnee saga states that before the heroine's 

 birth her father had killed a bear, and the bear's spirit 

 had entered the child : this accounted for her 

 mysterious ways. 3 A story from the island of Saibai 

 in Torres Straits reports that the hero got inside a 

 certain small shell called ui found in mangrove 

 swamps. It was gathered and swallowed by a 

 woman, from whom the hero was quickly born again 

 in consequence. 4 Not very long ago an Efik and his 

 wife were charged at Duke Town on the Calabar River 

 with murdering their child. It appeared that the child 

 was sickly from birth. Their story was that he 

 crawled about long after he ought to have been able to 



1 Woycicki, 7 note. 



2 Sebillot, F. L. France, iv. 209. Other cases noted by the same 

 author, Paganisme^ 196. 



3 Dorsey, Pawnee Myth. i. 346 (Story No. 91). 



4 Haddon, v. Rep. Torres Sir. Exped. 32. 



