and sell him as a slave. Like the executioners in some of the stories already examined, they kill a beast (in this case, a kid), and, dipping his coat in the blood, they bring it home to their father in proof of the hero's death. The hero himself, sold into a far country, goes through adventures there which end in his becoming the ruler of the land, and seeing his dream accomplished, when his own family are driven, by stress of famine, to bow before him, and practically to accept their life at his hands.
It is related among the Turanian tribes of South Siberia,[1] that the three sons of a poor man and woman go upon a mountain to dream. The two eldest dream of riches, but the third dreams that his father and mother are lean camels, his two brothers hungry wolves running towards the mountains, while he himself, between the sun and moon, wears the morning star upon his forehead. The father orders the brothers to kill the youngest. They dare not do so, but only expel him from home, killing the dog instead, the blood of which they take to their father to show their compliance. The hero wanders about, and at length comes to a hut, where a lame old man and a blind old woman dwell, by whom he is adopted as their son. Mounted on the old man's wonderful horse, he vanquishes a demon, and cuts him open. From the monster's stomach come forth innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects, including caskets containing the old woman's eyes. The old man endows him with the power of transforming himself into various animal shapes at will. In one of these he wins a wife and much gold. In another, two lean camels appear, who are his parents of whom he had dreamt. These he loads with a sack. He takes to himself another wife; and, living now with one wife and now with the other, he gives them the flesh of his own father to eat, thus revenging himself for his previous ill-usage.
In considering these stories it must be remembered that the adventures of The Outcast Child after expulsion are all episodic, and therefore liable to endless variation. The framework and substance of the narrative are the cause and facts of the expulsion, and the ultimate vindication of the hero or heroine. The Altaic mountaineers, who are
- ↑ Cited by De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol, i. p. 139, from Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der Türkischen Stämme süd-Sibirlens.
