Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/448

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410
Miscellanea.

543. The Cow of Plenty.—A helpful snake, who gives the man a flute and handkerchief. The cow provides him with milk and sweetmeats. His hair becomes the colour of gold. One hair floats down the river and a princess falls in love with it. In the end they marry. ("Lucky Herdsman": parallels given. This variant reverses the usual order of things in the hair incident.)

619. (Human sacrifice at a tank to fill it with water).—The boy grows up in the form of a lotus; and how he returned to life in the world.

622. A wife asks a riddle of her husband: "if you can't guess it I'll kill you!" A talking lamp. Allusion made to the Godhan, a woman's festival, N.-W. P., when women make clay figures of scorpions, snakes, &c., and beat them and abuse their friends to bring good luck on the house.

623. Women Rule the World.—How a clever girl got out of her difficulties. It contains the episode of the "Four Suitors," who are given assignations at successive times, and are discomfited.

625. Contains "three pieces of advice," a faithful crab, jewels concealed in the flesh of the thigh.

628. Story of a snake.


Mixed.

483. Crocodiles revered. They give offspring.

484, 510. Charms.

486. You cut your enemy's wall, that a similar cut may be made on his body.

494. Men with black lips or black tongues much dreaded.

495. Bear-dance song.

499. Visits of bride to husband's house after marriage: the deaths that result from staying there at certain times.

505. Jalandhar.—Ceremonies at well-sinking. A repast is one of them.

509. Bear's gall-bladder as a remedy.

544. Gurgaon.—A family is very fond of a certain shrine. The children's scalp-locks are cut off there. An ancestor loved it so much that, happening to die there, his body could not be moved till a finger was cut off and buried in the shrine.

545. Substitutes for Travellers.—If one cannot start on an auspicious day, something is sent on to represent him: for a Brahmin,