the soul and body, we have the best example in the old Egyptian creed. However it may be, the shape-shifting theory does not presuppose that the person is totally transformed; Norse belief makes the integral part of the original personality, the eyes, to persist, while all the rest is changed.[1] It is difficult to say whether there was anything similar in Welsh. At any rate we have no traces of it. It is, of course, not necessary to assume any historical continuity between the Welsh and Teutonic motives. It is, however, remarkable that in both Teutonic and Welsh we find this motive combined with that of chaste co-habitation.
(b) This last motive we find very often in the story of the Twin brothers (vide Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, i. pp. 24 ff.). The first brother, who has won the hand of a princess, is turned to stone; his twin brother, learning of his brother's peril, comes to his court, plays his rôle (at night he sometimes puts his sword between himself and his sister-in-law), and finally disenchants the petrified hero. This story is known as a modern folk motive through the whole of Europe. But here the resemblance between the two brothers accounts for the situation.
(c) As to the third motive, we often find that a magician or spirit can be killed only in some particular way, i.e. there are certain taboos limiting his life-powers. In the theme we are studying the taboo is that the hero shall not give his adversary a second stroke.[2] In modern Irish stories we find another motive: the giant's head after it has been hewn off creeps to the body again, and the hero prevents its reunion with the body; for if the head should
- ↑ The Irish lay stress on the preservation of the human voice: "Agus do ghabh aithreachas ann sin Aoife, agus adubhairt: 'Ó nach féadaim aon chabhair eile do thabhairt orraibh feasda biaidh bhur n-úrlabhra féin agaibh . . . agus biaidh bhúr dtreoir agus bhúr n-oirbheart agaibh.'" Oidhe Chloinne Lir, § 20.
- ↑ Miss Weston wrongly compares with this motive Peredur's sword (Percival, I. 147).
