Samoan, and in "The Red Horse of the Delawares," a story from Dacotah, as well as in India and elsewhere.[1] The difference is, that in the Egyptian conte, as it has reached us in literary form, the fugitive appeals to Ra to help him, instead of magically making a river by throwing water or a bottle behind him, as is customary. It may be conjectured that the substitution of divine intervention in response to prayer for magical self-help is the change made by a priestly scribe in the traditional version.[2]
(4.) Next morning the brothers parley across the stream. The younger first mutilates himself (Atys), then says he is going to the vale of the acacia, according to M. Maspero, probably a name for the other world.[3] Meanwhile the younger brother will put his heart in a high acacia tree. If the tree is cut down, the elder brother must search for the heart, and place it in a jar of water, when the younger brother will revive. Here we have the idea which recurs in the Samoyed märchen, where the men lay aside their hearts, in which are their separable lives. As Mr. Ralston says,[4] "This heart-breaking episode occurs in the tales of many lands." In the Russian the story is Koschchei the deathless, whose "death" (or life) lies in an egg, in a duck, on a log, in the ice.[5] As Mr. Ralston
- ↑ See Folk-Lore Journal, April 1886, review of Clouston's Popular Stories, for examples of the magic used in the flight.
- ↑ Maspero, Contes, p. 13, note i.
- ↑ Russian Folk-Tales, 109.
- ↑ Custom and Myth, London, 1884, pp. 99–101.
- ↑ In Norse, Asbjornsen and Moe, 36; Dasent, 9, Gaelic, Campbell, i. 4, p. 81. Indian, "Punchkin," Old Deccan Days, pp. 13–16. Samoyed, Castren, Ethnol. Vorles. über die Altaischen Völker., p. 174.
