e name of the native land of the nightmare. Elsewhere a child
becomes a nightmare who is born on a Sunday and baptized on a Sunday at
the same hour, or one at whose baptism some wicked person has secretly
muttered in response to one of the priest's questions some wrong words,
or "It shall become a nightmare" (Lemke, p. 42). Similar superstitions
attached to somnabulism; see Lecky, "History of Rationalism," vol. i. p.
81, note 2.

[200] Jannsen, vol. i. p. 53; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 70, quoting Afzelius,
vol. ii. p. 29, quoting Muellenhoff. It is a common Teutonic belief that
knot-holes are attributable to elves (Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 461).

[201] "Am Urds-Brunnen," vol. vi. p. 58.

CHAPTER XI.

SWAN-MAIDENS (_continued_).

The incident of the recovery of the bride not found in all the
stories--New Zealand sagas--Andrianoro--Mother-right--The father
represented under a forbidding aspect--Tasks imposed on the
hero--The Buddhist theory of the Grateful Animals--The
feather-robe a symbol of bride's superhuman character--Mode of
capture--The Taboo--Dislike of fairies for iron--Utterance of
name forbidden--Other prohibitions--Fulfilment of fate--The taboo
a mark of progress in civilization--The divine ancestress--Totems
and Banshees--Re-appearance of mother to her children--The lady
of the Van Pool an archaic deity.

I hope I have made clear in the last chapter the connection between the
various types of the Swan-maiden group of folk-tales. The one idea
running through them all is that of a man wedding a supernatural maiden
and unable to retain her. She must return to her own country and her own
kin; and if he desire to recover her he must pursue her thither and
conquer his right to her by undergoing superhuman penance or performing
superhuman tasks,--neither of which it is given to ordinary men to do.
It follows that only when the story is told of men who can be conceived
as released from the limitations we have been gradually learning during
the progress of civilization to regard as essential to humanity--only
when the reins are laid upon the neck of invention,--is it possible to
relate the narrative of the recovery of the bride. These conditions are
twice fulfilled in the history of a folk-tale. They are fulfilled,
first, when men are in that early stage of thought in which the
limitations of man's nature are unknown, when speculations of the kind
touched upon