(3) The accused brother is pursued by his kinsman, and about to be slain, when Ra, at his prayer, casts between him and the avenger a stream full of crocodiles. This incident is at least not very unlike one of the most widely diffused of all incidents of story—the flight in which the runaways cause magical rivers or lakes suddenly to cut off the pursuer. This narrative of the flight and the obstacles is found in Scotch, Gaelic, Japanese (no water obstacle), Zulu, Russian, Samoan, and in "The Red Horse of the Delawares," a story from Dacotah, as well as in India and elsewhere.* The difference is, that in the Egyptian conte, as it has reached us in literary form, the fugitive appeals to Ra to help him, instead of magically making a river by throwing water or a bottle behind him, as is customary. It may be conjectured that the substitution of divine intervention in response to prayer for magical self-help is the change made by a priestly scribe in the traditional version.**
* See Folk-Lore Journal, April, 1886, review of Houston's
Popular Stories, for examples of the magic used in the
flight.
** Maspero, Contes, p. 13, note 1.
(4) Next morning the brothers parley across the stream. The younger first mutilates himself (Atys) then says he is going to the vale of the acacia, according to M. Maspero probably a name for the other world. Meanwhile the younger brother will put his heart in a high acacia tree. If the tree is cut down, the elder brother must search for the heart, and place it in a jar of water, when the younger brother will revive. Here we have the idea which recurs in the Samoyed marchen where the men lay aside their hearts, in which are their separable lives. As Mr.
Ralston says,* "This heart-breaking episode occurs in the tales of many lands". In the Russian the story is Koschchei the deathless, whose "death" (or life) lies in an egg, in a duck, on a log, in the ice.** As Mr. Ralston well remarks, a very singular parallel to the revival of the Egyptian brothers heart in water is the Hottentot tale of a girl eaten by a lion. Her heart is extracted from the lion, is placed in a calabash of milk, and the girl comes to life again.***
(5) The younger brother gives the elder a sign magical, whereby he shall know how it fares with the heart. When a cup of beer suddenly grows turbid, then evil has befallen the heart. This is merely one of the old sympathetic signs of story—the opal that darkens; the comb of Lemminkainen in the Kalewala that drops blood when its owner is in danger; the stick that the hero erects as he leaves home, and which will fall when he is imperilled. In Australia the natives practise this magic with a stick, round which they bind the hair of the distant person about whose condition they want to be informed.**** This incident, turning on the belief in sympathies, might perhaps be regarded as "universally human" and capable of being invented anywhere.
* Russian Folk-Tales, 109.
** In Norse, Asbjornsen and Moe, 36; Dasent, 9. Gaelic,
Campbell, i. 4, p. 81. Indian, "Punchkin," Old Deccan Days,
pp. 13-16. Samoyed, Castren, Ethnol. Varies liber die
Altaischen Volker., p. 174.
*** Bleek, Reynard the Fox of South Africa, p. 57.
**** Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 36, 1881. The stick
used is the "throwing stick" wherewith the spear is
hurled,(6) The elder brother goes home and kills his wife.
The gods pity the younger Bitiou in the Valley of Acacias,
and make him a wife.
M. Cosquin has found in France the trait of the blood that boils in the glass when the person concerned is in danger.
(7) The three Hathors come to her creation, and prophesy for her a violent death. For this incident compare Perrault's The Sleeping Beauty and Maury's work on Les Fees. The spiritual midwives and prophetesses at the hour of birth are familiar in märchen as Fairies, and Fates, and Mæræ.
(8) The river carries a tress of the hair of Bitiou's wife to the feet of Pharaoh's washermen; the scent perfumes all the king's linen. Pharaoh falls in love with the woman from whose locks this tress has come. For this incident compare Cinderella. In Santal and Indian märchen a tress of hair takes the place of the glass-slipper, and the amorous prince or princess will only marry the person from whose head the lock has come. Here M. Cosquin himself gives Siamese, Mongol, Bengali (Lai Behar Day, p. 86), and other examples of the lock of hair doing duty for the slipper with which the lover is smitten, and by which he recognises his true love.
(9) The wife of Bitiou reveals the secret of his heart. The people of Pharaoh cut down the acacia tree.