chief
of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja Janameja prepared a
yajnya, or great malevolently magical incantation, to destroy all the
people of the serpent race. To prevent this annihilation, the
supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, and became the
husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a Brahman. But Pundarika
Nag, being a serpent by nature, could not divest himself, even in human
shape, of his forked tongue and venomed breath. And, just as Urvasi
could not abide with her mortal lover, after he transgressed the
prohibition to appear before her naked, so Pundarika Nag was compelled by
fate to leave his bride, if she asked him any questions about his
disagreeable peculiarities. She did, at last, ask questions, in
circumstances which made Pundarika believe that he was bound to answer
her. Now the curse came upon him, he plunged into a pool, like the
beaver, and vanished. His wife became the mother of the serpent Rajas of
Chutia Nagpur. Pundarika Nag, in his proper form as a great hooded
snake, guarded his first-born child. The crest of the house is a hooded
snake with human face. {81a}

Here, then, we have many examples of the disappearance of the bride or
bridegroom in consequence of infringement of various mystic rules.
Sometimes the beloved one is seen when he or she should not be seen.
Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride vanishes, merely because she is
in a bad temper. {81b} Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo on
water is broken, with the usual results. Now for an example in which the
rule against using _names_ is infringed. {82a}

This formula constantly occurs in the Welsh fairy tales published by
Professor Rhys. {82b} Thus the heir of Corwrion fell in love with a
fairy: 'They were married on the distinct understanding that the husband
was not to know her name, . . . and was not to strike her with iron, on
pain of her leaving him at once.' Unluckily the man once tossed her a
bridle, the iron bit touched the wife, and 'she at once flew through the
air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Lake.'

A number of tales turning on the same incident are published in
'Cymmrodor,' v. I. In these we have either the taboo on the name, or the
taboo on the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition iron
'drives away devils and ghosts,' according to the Scholiast on the
eleventh book of the 'Odyssey,' and the Oriental Djinn also flee from
iron. {82c} Just as