[450] Afanassieff, ii. 17.
[451] Acarnides insutus pelle juvenci; Ovidius, In Ibin.
[452] Köhler, Ueber T. F. Campbell's Sammlung gälischer Märchen, in Orient und Occident.—Cfr. the 30th of the Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia.
[453] Köhler, the work quoted above.
[454] To this myth of the cow which goes over the moon, the observation of a lunar eclipse might have contributed materially, in which the cow earth (in Sanskṛit, go means earth as well as cow) really passes over the moon or hare. Or else, the cloud and the night, as a black cow, very frequently goes over the hare or moon.
[455] In the Russian superstition, when a hare passes between the wheels of the vehicle which carries a newly-married couple, it bodes misfortune; nor is this without reason: the hare is the moon; the moon is the protectress of marriages; if she throws obstacles in the way, the marriage cannot be happy; consequently, marriages in India were celebrated at full moon.
[456] Die Kuh, die viel brüllt, gibt nicht die meiste Milch.
[457] Phalânâm phalam açnoti tadâ dattvâ; Mahâbhâratam, iii. 13, 423.
[458] In the German legend of King Volmar, in Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 451, we find the peas in the ashes. In the seventh of the Contes Merveilleux of Porchat, we have the pot in which the cabbages are boiled, from which come forth money and partridges. In the sixth of the same Contes Merveilleux, the young curioso sees a nest upon an elm-tree, and wishes to climb up; the ascent never comes to an end; the tree takes him up near to heaven. On the summit of the elm-tree there is a nest, from which comes forth a beautiful fair-haired maiden (the moon).
[459] i. 53.