hey fell in
with some of his wife's servants who were sent thither to draw water.
Engaging them in conversation, he caused his son to drop the comb into
one of the water-jars. By this means his wife recognized them, and sent
an enchanted handkerchief which enabled him to fly and follow her
servants to her home. After awhile she sent him and her son back to the
earth, promising to get permission in a short time to return and live
with them. By the carelessness of one of her servants, however, both
father and son were dropped into the sea and drowned. Apprised of the
catastrophe by ravens, the fairy transformed her servant, by way of
punishment, into--or according to a variant, became herself--the morning
star, while father and son became the evening star. And now the morning
star and the evening star perpetually seek one another, but never again
can they meet.[231]

Turning to the instances where ancestry is claimed, we find that the
chiefs of the Ati clan are descended from "the peerless one" of
Rarotonga. The Arawak Indians of Guiana reckon descent in the female
line. One of their families takes its name from its foremother, the
warlock's daughter who was provided with the dogskin mentioned on a
previous page. Another family deduces its name and pedigree from an
earth-spirit married to one of its ancestors; but it does not appear
whether any Swan-maiden myth attaches to her. The fish _puttin_ is
sacred among the Dyaks. On no account will they eat it, because they
would be eating their relations, for they are descended from the lady
whose first and last form was a _puttin_. In other words, the _puttin_
is their totem. A family of the town of Chama on the Gold Coast claims
in like manner to be descended from the fish-woman of whose story I have
given an outline; and a legend to the same effect is current at the
neighbouring town of Appam; nor in either instance do the members of the
family dare to eat of the fish of the kind to which they believe their
ancestress belonged. The totem superstition is manifest in the case of
the Phoenician, or Babylonian, goddess Derceto, who was represented as
woman to the waist and thence downward fish. She was believed to have
been a woman, the mother of Semiramis, and to have thrown herself in
despair into a lake. Her worshippers abstained from eating fish; though
fish were offered to her in sacrifice, and golden fish suspended in her
temple. Melusina was the mother of the family of Lus