to be the humour of it. In
Lagarde's Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae a similar Syrian
covenant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 A. D., when a
Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled,
and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was "made its
mother," and the creature was buried with due lamentations. The "mother"
was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions
bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kinsman,
but without extorting revenge.(3) Revenge was out of their reach.
They had been brought within the kin of their foes, and there were no
Erinnyes, "avengers of kindred blood," to help them. People in this
condition of belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men,
stones, trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of
animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by magic,
or by metamorphosis. Such tales survive in our modern folk-lore. To make
our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery-myth of the
origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other illustrations, the
Australian myth of the origin of the black and white plumage of the
pelican. Mr. Ralston has published the Russian version of the myth
of the donkey's ears. The Spanish form, which is identical with the
Russian, is given by Fernan Caballero in La Gaviota.

(1) Magazine of Art, January, 1883.

(2) "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal, October, 1883.

(3) We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example, and
to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel.

"Listen! do you know why your ears are so big?" (the story is told to
a stupid little boy with big ears). "When Father Adam found himself in
Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name; those of THY species,
my child, he named 'donkeys'. One day, not long after, he called the
beasts together, and asked each to tell him its name. They all answered
right except the animals of THY sort, and they had forgotten their name!
Then Father Adam was very angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by
the ears, he pulled them out, screaming 'You are called DONKEY!' And
the donkey's ears have been long ever since." This, to a child, is a
credible explanation. So, perhaps, is another survival of this form of
science--the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the haddock; they
were impressed by St. Peter's finger and thumb wh