e ancestress of
the Bantiks, a tribe inhabiting the Celebes Islands, came down from the
sky with seven companions to bathe. A man who saw them took them for
doves, but was surprised to find that they were women. He possessed
himself of the clothes of one of them, and thus obliged her to marry
him. In a story told by the Santals of India, the daughters of the sun
make use of a spider's thread to reach the earth. A shepherd, whom they
unblushingly invite to bathe with them, persuades them to try which of
them all can remain longest under water; and while they are in the river
he scrambles out, and, taking the upper garment of the one whom he
loves, flees with it to his home. In another Indian tale, five apsaras,
or celestial dancers, are conveyed in an enchanted car to a pool in the
forest. Seven supernatural maidens, in a Samoyede _maerchen_, are brought
in their reindeer chariot to a lake, where the hero possesses himself of
the best suit of garments he finds on the shore. The owner prays him to
give them up; but he refuses, until he obtains a definite pledge of
marriage, saying: "If I give thee the garments thou wilt fare up again
to heaven."[193]

In none of these stories (and they are but samples of many) does the
feather dress occur; yet it has left reminiscences which are
unmistakable. The variants hitherto cited have all betrayed these
reminiscences as articles of clothing, or conveyance, or in the
pardonable mistake of the Bantik forefather at the time of capture. I
shall refer presently to cases whence the plumage has faded entirely out
of the story--and that in spite of its picturesqueness--without leaving
a trace. But let me first call attention to the fact that, even where it
is preserved, we often do not find it exactly how and where we should
have expected it. Witness the curious Algonkin tale of "How one of the
Partridge's wives became a Sheldrake Duck." A hunter, we are told,
returning home in his canoe, saw a beautiful girl sitting on a rock by
the river, making a moccasin. He paddled up softly to capture her; but
she jumped into the water and disappeared. Her mother, however, who
lived at the bottom, compelled her to return to the hunter and be his
wife. The legend then takes a turn in the direction of the Bluebeard
myth; for the woman yields to curiosity, and thus deprives her husband
of his luck. When he finds this out he seizes his bow to beat her. "When
she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran