So far as regards the other details, as well as the general plot, it might have been— perhaps it is— an aboriginal growth, so completely is it at one with the native beliefs and customs.
Let us take another märchen even more widely spread. The Karens of Burmah tell of a tree-lizard who was born of a woman, and who succeeded in marrying the youngest of three sisters, a king's daughters. At night he cast his lizard-skin and became a handsome youth, but resumed it in the morning. His bride is questioned by her mother, and reveals her husband's nightly transformation. "Then the mother said: 'If that be the case, when he pulls off his skin to-night, throw it over to me.' When night came and the lizard stripped off his skin to sleep, his wife took it and threw it over to her mother, and her mother put it into the fire and burnt it up. In the morning, when he woke up he said to his wife: 'The fire has burnt up my clothes.' So his wife furnished him with suitable clothing, and he ceased to be a lizard."[1]
This story, like the last, has certain affinities with a familiar classic tale, though here the affinities are not very close: more exact resemblances may be found in modern European folk-lore. What I want you to notice, however, is the extraordinary manner, if it be an imported story, in which it has adapted itself to the Karen ideas and practices. The Karens are a wild race of endogamous savages, mixing little with the surrounding peoples. They live in villages, each of which, we are told, is an independent state. The chief, or king, of this tiny realm is hardly raised a step above his subjects; his rule is founded on the consent of his people, whose elders he must consult on all occasions. A marriage between the king's daughter and one of his subjects would be an ordinary occurrence. The whole community dwells in a long house, in which every family has a separate hearth, probably screened off from the rest. There would thus be no difficulty in the bride's throwing her husband's skin over to her mother, who could easily pop it into the family fire. The author who reports this tale gives us only a very scrappy and imperfect account of Karen beliefs. But he makes it clear that among them is a belief that some beings, at all events, can undergo transformation without loss of identity, and that the
- ↑ McMabon, The Karens of the Golden Chersonese, 248.
