Dissull Varvawc, for that is the only one that can hold the
two cubs. And the leash will be of no avail unless it be plucked from
his beard while he is alive, and twitched out with wooden tweezers ...
and the leash will be of no use should he be dead because it will be
brittle,"--that is, when the sun is set (dead) his rays have no power
(_Mabinogion_, vol. II. p. 288). The same idea lies at the bottom of
the English superstition that "if a person's hair burn brightly when
thrown into the fire, it is a sign of longevity; the brighter the
flame, the longer the life. On the other hand, if it smoulder away,
and refuse to burn, it is a sign of approaching death" (Henderson's
_Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England_, p. 84).

The Malays have a story of a woman, called Utahigi, in whose head grew
a single white hair endowed with magic power. When her husband pulled
it out a great storm arose and Utahigi went up to heaven. She was a
bird (or cloud) maiden, and this hair must have been the lightning
drawn from the cloud. The Servian Atalanta, when nearly overtaken by
her lover, takes a hair from the top of her head and throws it behind
her. It becomes a mighty wood (clouds are the forests and mountains of
the sky, Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_, vol. I. p. 11),
Karadschitsch, _Volksmaerchen der Serben_, p. 25, in the story "von
dem Maedchen das behender als das Pferd ist." In Schmidt's
_Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder_, p. 79, the king's
daughter as she flies with her lover from the Lamnissa throws some of
her own hairs behind her, and they become a great lake (thunderbolts
and lightning bring rain). At p. 98 of the same work is the story "Der
Riese vom Berge." When this giant wishes to enter his great high
mountain, he takes a hair from his head and touches the mountain with
it. The mountain at once splits in two (p. 101). The king's daughter
in her encounter with the Efreet, "plucked a hair from her head and
muttered with her lips, whereupon the hair became converted into a
piercing sword with which she struck the lion [the Efreet], and he was
cleft in twain by her blow; but his head became changed into a
scorpion" (Lane's _Arabian Nights_, vol. I. p. 156). A Baba Yaga, in
Ralston's _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 147, plucks one of her hairs, ties
three knots in it, and blows, and thus petrifies her victims. She is a
personification of the spirit of the storm, _ib._ p. 164. In _Old
Deccan Days_, at p. 62, th