II
170 G. r6hEIM
the permanent inhabitant of a cave, that if they influenced his behaviour in any way it can only have been as a mere after- thought. He must have been led by a blind impulse to search for and strive after a locality in which the concealment of his pre-natal life could be restored and to which his late descendants still conserved a feeling of mysterious attraction connected with an awe of the uncanny. When we come to the myth which tells us how mankind in general and animals were shut up in a cave, * we shall not fail to recognise these as conserving the imprints both of the prehistory of the race and the individual. In some of these myths the underworld (or the sky) is substituted for the cave, and, as if the myth-teller feared that his meaning could possibly be mistaken, we are told that the passage was stopped by an enceinte woman who got stuck in the hole, ^s It is evident that this passage of mankind through a hole in the earth is really a passage through the hole we all pass through when we first catch sight of the light of day.^ The Paressi, a people whose nearest relatives all have the myth of the origin of mankind from a cave, relate a very interesting version of this legend. In
1 R. H. Lowie: "Catch-Words for Mythical Motives", Journal of Ame- rican Folk-Lore, 1908, p. 27; J. Mooney: Myths of the Cherokee, XIX, Re- port of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900, pp. 287, 432; "Die Tiere sollen nach der Meinung der Kaileute aus HOhlen hervorgegangen sein, deren Betreten filr die Menschen gefahrlich ist." Ch. Keysser: Aus dem Leben der Kaileute; Neuhauss: Deutsch-Neu-Guinea, III, 1911, S. 160. Perhaps originally similar to the Central Australian ertnatulunga. »
2 p. Ehrenreich: Die Mythe und Legenden der Stidamerikanischen Ur- volker, 3905, S. 32, 33; H. R. Voth: Traditions of the Hopi, Field Columbian, Museum, p. 96. VIII, Anthr. Series, 1905, p. 10; W. H. Brett: The Indian Tribes of Guiana, 1868, p. 389; Idem: Legends and Myths ot the Aboriginal Indians of the British Guiana, 2nd. Ed., p. 66; E. im Thurn: Among the In- dians of Guiana. 1883, p. 277; Ehrenreich: Beitrage zur Vmkerkunde Brasiliens. 1891, (VerQff. Kngl. M. v. V.), S. 39; Koch-Grunberg: Indianermarchen aus SQdamerika, 1920, S. 225 (quoted from Barbosa Rodrigues: Poranduba Ama- zonense, 1890, p. 245). In another version of the same theme a woman who is with child is hurled down to the earth through a hole in the sky: this fall is but a cosmological projection of birth itself. S. G. Simmon: Traditions of the Crows. 1903, p. 299; H. N. B. Hewitt: Iroquoian Cosmology, XXI, Heport Bureau Am. Eth. 1903, p. 177; H. R. Schoolcraft: Algic Researches, I, p. 135.
- This interpretation of the myth has been given in an ingenious essay
' by W. Mathews ("Myths of Gestation and Parturition", American Antkro- pologist, 1902, IV, p. 737) who also explains the meaning of water and the tree (= navel string) in these myths.
