356 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 



Tell what her d'ameter to an inch is, 



And prove that she's not made of green cheese."^ 



Here, of course, "green cheese ^^ means, like Tvpo<; T^Xwpo?, 

 fresh, white cheese. In the Higliland tale the Fox shows the 

 Wolf the moon on the ice, and tells him it is a cheese, and he 

 must cover it with his tail to hide it, till the Fox goes to see 

 that the farmer is asleep. When the tail is frozen tight the 

 Fox alarms the farmer, and the Wolf leaves his tail behind 

 him." 



" The tailless condition both of the bear and the hyeena," 

 Dr. Dasent remarks, " could scarcely fail to attract attention in 

 a race of hunters, and we might expect that popular tradition 

 would attempt to account for both." The reasonableness of 

 this conjecture is well shown in the case of two other short- 

 tailed beasts, in a mythical episode from Central America, 

 which bears no appearaiice of being historically connected 

 with the rest, but looks as though it had been devised inde- 

 pendently to account for the facts. When the two princes 

 Hunahpu and Xbalanque set themselves one day to till the 

 ground, the axe cut down the trees and the mattock cleared 

 away the underwood, while the masters amused themselves 

 with shooting. But next day, when they came back, they 

 found the trees and creepers and brambles back in their 

 places. So they cleared the ground again, and hid themselves 

 to watch, and at midnight all the beasts came, small and great, 

 saying in their language " Trees, arise ; creepers, arise \" and 

 they came close to the two princes. First came the Lion and 

 the Tiger, and the princes tried to catch them, but could not. 

 Then came the Stag and the Rabbit, and them they caught by 

 their tails, but the tails came off, and so the Stag and the Eab- 

 bit have still but " scarce a stump" left them to this day. But 

 the Fox and the Jackal and the Boar and the Porcupine and 

 the other beasts passed by, and they could not catch one till 

 the Rat came leaping along ; he was the last and they got in 

 his way and caught him in a cloth. They pinched his head 



1 ' Hudibras,' part ii. canto iii. 



- Campbell, 'Popular Tales of the West Highlands;' Edinburgh, 1860, vol. i. 

 p. 272. 



