Aug. 24, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



115 



a serpent, and the grateful birds carried him until they 

 reached the jungle, where, the genii being overcome with 

 sleep by the heat, the eaglets swooped down. "Down jumped 

 the prince ; in an instant he had overthrown the chattees 

 full of water and seized the parrot, which he rolled up in 

 his cloak," then mounted again into the air and was 

 carried back to Punchkin's palace. Punchkin was dis- 

 mayed to see the parrot in the prince's hands, and asked 

 him to name any price he willed for it, whereupon the prince 

 demanded the restoration of his father and his uncles to 

 life. This was done ; then he insisted on Punchkin doing 

 the like to "all whom he had thus imprisoned," when, at 

 the waving of the magician's wand, the whole garden 

 became suddenly alive. 



" Give me my parrot ! " cried Punchkin. Then the boy 

 took hold of the parrot, and tore off one of his wings ; 

 and as he did so the magician's right arm fell off. He 

 then pulled off the parrot's second wing, and Punchkin's 

 left arm fell off'; then he pulled off the bird's legs, and 

 down fell the magician's right leg and left leg. Nothing 

 remained of him save the limbless body and the head ; but 

 still he rolled his eyes, and cried, " Give me my parrot ! " 

 " Take your parrot, then," cried the boy, and with that he 

 wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the magician, and as 

 he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and, with a 

 fearful groan, he died. Of course, all the rest " lived 

 very happily ever afterwards," as they do in the plays and 

 the novels. 



In the story of " Sodewa Bai," the Hindu Cinderella, 

 the heroine's soul is contained in a string of golden beads. 

 and in the Bengali tale, " Life's Secret," a Rajah's 

 favourite wife gives birth miraculously to a boy, whose 

 soul is bound up in a necklace in the stomach of a boal- 

 fish. In both instances the jewels are stolen, and while 

 they are worn by the thieves, prince and princess alike are 

 lifeless, whilst with the recovery of the jewels, life returned 

 to each. 



The family likeness of these Indian folk-tales to those 

 given above is explicable on no theory of borrowing, and 

 finds its sole and rational explanation in the possession of 

 a common stock of folk-lore by the several ancestors of the 

 Indo-European races. As Sir G. W. Cox remarks, " the 

 substantial identity of stories told in Italy, Norway, and 

 India can but prove that the treasure-house of mythology 

 ■was more abundantly' filled before the dispersion of the 

 Aryan tribes than we had taken it to be." 



'The Egyptian taleof the "Two Brothers" is of great value 

 on account of its high antiquity, and, moreover, specially 

 interesting as recording an incident similar to that narrated 

 in the life of Joseph. It is contained in the d'Orbiney 

 papyrus preserved in the Bibliothequc Imperiale, the date 

 being about the fourteenth or fifteenth century u c. 



There were two brothers, Anepou and Satou, joined as 

 one in love and labour. One day Satou was sent to fetch 

 seed-corn from Anepou's house, where he found his brother's 

 wife adorning her hair. She urged him to stay with her, 

 but he refused, promising, however, to keep her wickedness 

 secret. When Anepou returned at even, she, being afraid, 

 " made herself to seem as a women that had sull'ered 

 violence," and told him exactly the reverse of what had 

 happened. Anepou's wrath was kindled against Satou, and 

 he went out to slay him ; bvit Satou called on Plira to save 

 him, and the god placed a river between the brothers, so 

 that when day dawned Anepou might hear the truth. At 

 sunrise Satou tells his story, and, mutilating himself, he 

 says that lie will leave Ancpovi and go to the valley of the 

 cedar, in the cones of which he will deposit his heart, "so 

 that if the tree be cut, his heart would fall to the earth, 

 and he must die." 



Space forbids further outline of the venerable story, 

 which finally ends with the reconciliation of the two 

 brothers. 



For us the value of these folk -tales lies in the relics of 

 barbaric notions concerning the nature of man and his re- 

 lation to external things which they preserve. They have 

 amused our youthhood : they may instruct our manhood. 

 Not if we go to the solar mythologist for their interpreta- 

 tion. We shall learn from Sir G. W. Cox that "the 

 magician Punchkin and the heartless giant are only other 

 forms of the Panis who steal bright treasures from the 

 gleaming west," that " Balna herself is Helen shut up in 

 Ilion . . . the eagles the bright clouds,"* and from Pro- 

 fessor de Gubernatis that the duck is the dawn and the 

 egg the sun. 



These venerable tales have a larger, richer meaning than 

 tliis, expressive of the wonder deep-seated in the heart of 

 man. Like the beautiful prisms of topaz and beryl re- 

 vealed when a " drusy " cavity in granitic rock is broken 

 open, they hold within them the crystallised thought of the 

 past. The soul existing apart from the body, whether in 

 bird or casket, and determining its fate, is the relic of 

 barbaric belief in one or more entities in the body, yet not 

 of it — a belief extant among tribes still uncivilised, and 

 surviving in unsuspected forms among more advanced 

 races. 



SEA ANEMONES 



AT THE FISHERIES EXHIBITION. 



By Thomas Kimber. 



III. 



(^Continued frovi page 90.) 



" Fnll many a flower is bom to blush unseen, 

 And waste its fragrance on the desert air ; 



Full many a gem of purest ray serene 



The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear." 



THE adult animal dwells in the deep sea beyond low- 

 water mark, and in Torbay and ^Veymouth Bay is 

 found in great abundance, at depths varying from three to 

 thirty fathoms. The young, in large numbers, are met 

 with between tide-marks in pools, or suspended from the 

 roofs of rocky hollows, like white nipples, each with a 

 dependent globule of water, resembling a dew-drop. These 

 young dianthuses change their position spontaneously, and 

 remove into deep water as they approach maturity. They 

 are rarely ever met with between tide-marks exceeding, 

 when in button form, an inch in diameter. In early 

 youth the characteristic convolutions of the disk, with its 

 feathery aspect, are not displayed ; and incautious observers 

 are very liable to njistake a young dianthus for an anemone 

 of another species. Both Dalyell and Gosse confess to this 

 error of judgment. 



This species is gregarious ; the dredge and the trawl 

 constantly bring up clustered groups, and sometimes the 

 clusters are very numerous. A trawler (see Gosse, 

 "Action," p. 21) brought into Torquay a board, two feet 

 long and one foot broad, on which were crowded between 

 four and five hundred specimens of A. dianthus. " What 

 was curious was tliat all one side of the board were white, 

 all on the other orange." 



The reproduction of this anemone by spontaneous divi- 

 sion is very common. When ic chooses to change its posi- 

 tion it does so by moving the base slowly — too slowly, 



" Mythology of the Aryan Nations," Vol. I., p. 140, ii. 



