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address a rock with these words: "Stone of my ancestors, divide for us!" The rock divides and they pass through, but when the elephant addresses it in the same manner, the rock opens, only to close upon him and kill him.
The rock-house, Itohe-likantum-jambali, opens and shuts at the voice of its master.[1] So also when Kurangutuku said to the rock: "Open for me, open!" it obeycl, and he hid himself in it.
Afanasieff in the observations to the first book of his Russian Stories, refers to a Slavonic tale, in which a hare shuts up a bear in the trunk of a tree[2].
The following is one of the most interesting of the Jabuti stories, and the Indians always relate it with much gusto:—
HOW THE TORTOISE PROVOKED A CONTEST OF STRENGTH BETWEEN THE TAPIR AND THE WHALE.
One day a jabutí went down to the sea to drink. A whale saw him and called out:—"What are you doing, jabutí?" To which the latter responded:
"I am drinking, because I am thirsty."
- ↑ Calloway. Zulu Nursury tales, Vol. I, p. 143.
- ↑ Grey. Polynesian Mythology, p. 188. Longfellow relates how the Manito of the mountain
"Opened wide his rocky doorways
Giving Pawpukkeewis shelter."
