the Modern Greeks. In the
Syriote tale of "The Strigla" (Hahn, No. 65) a
princess devours her father and all his subjects. Her
brother, who had escaped while she was still a babe,
visits her and is kindly received. But while she is
sharpening her teeth with a view towards eating him, a
mouse gives him a warning which saves his life. As in
the Russian story the mouse jumps about on the strings
of a lute in order to deceive the witch, so in the
Greek it plays a fiddle. But the Greek hero does not
leave his sister's abode. After remaining concealed
one night, he again accosts her. She attempts to eat
him, but he kills her.

In a variant from Epirus (Hahn, ii. p. 283-4) the
cannibal princess is called a Chursusissa. Her brother
climbs a tree, the stem of which she gnaws almost
asunder. But before it falls, a Lamia comes to his aid
and kills his sister.

Afanasief (viii. p. 527) identifies the Sun's Sister
with the Dawn. The following explanation of the skazka
(with the exception of the words within brackets) is
given by A. de Gubernatis ("Zool. Myth." i. 183).
"Ivan is the Sun, the aurora [or dawn] is his [true]
sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that
is, in the east, the shades of night [his witch, or
false sister] go underground, and the Sun arises to
the heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thus
in the Christian belief, St. Michael weighs human
souls; those who weigh much sink down into hell, and
those who are light arise to the heavenly paradise."]

As an illustration of this story, Afanasief (_P.V.S._ iii. 272) quotes
a Little-Russian Skazka in which a man, who is seeking "the Isle in
which there is no death," meets with various personages like those
with whom the Prince at first wished to stay on his journey, and at
last takes up his abode with the moon. Death comes in search of him,
after a hundred years or so have elapsed, and engages in a struggle
with the Moon, the result of which is that the man is caught up into
the sky, and there shines thenceforth "as a star near the moon."

The Sun's Sister is a mythical being who is often mentioned in the
popular poetry of the South-Slavonians. A Servian song represents a
beautiful maiden, with "arms of silver up to the elbows," sitting on a
silver throne which floats on w