Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/74

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64
Parthenogenesis.

to-night for our supper.” So St. Sava took it; and when they came home, St. Sava put the heart on the fire to roast it. Now there was a girl in the house, and as the heart was roasting she fancied the smell of it, and kept on asking St. Sava: “Is it done yet?” And suddenly she deceived St. Sava, for she swiftly took up the heart and ate it. Then the Lord asked: “Is it done yet?” St. Sava did not dare to say that the girl had eaten it, but said: “It was burnt.” And the Lord replied: “It does not matter; I am not hungry.” So they went away. But when the girl became pregnant, the Lord, knowing when her child should be born, came that same evening to the house to sleep there. When the child was born, the Lord said: “Go, Sava, and christen it.” Sava asked: “What name shall I give it?” And the Lord replied: “You know. For his first name call him Andrija (Andrew).” So they went away, and the girl brought up the child and when he died he was made a saint; and ever since then Sveti Andrija (St. Andrew) has been worshipped.

The second book of folk-tales collected by R. Strohal[1] contains a tale from Karlovac, entitled: “Of Milutin, the Count’s Son,” from which the following passage is quoted verbatim:

Once upon a time there lived a rich and powerful Count who had a beautiful wife, and they lived very happily together. They had only one grief, which was that they had no children. Thus they continued for many years until the Count received the command to go to war. He did not return for many years. Once, as his wife was going for a walk, she longed greatly for a child. And at that moment a snowfiake fell from the sky upon her breast, and by that flake she immediately conceived and in due course gave birth to her son Milutin.[2]

  1. Hrvatskih narodnih pripovjedaka kujiga II. (Second Book of Croatian Folk Tales), collected by R. Strohal, Karlovac, 1911, pp. 17-19.
  2. Parallels to this tale are quoted by Gjuro Polivka (“Paralele narodnim