“In other myths, in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates man from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man, etc.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 248. See also under chapter on the Mistletoe, p. 99 of this volume.)
“Moffatt is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.” (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Lang, vol. i. p. 91.) Perhaps this tale belongs to our series of myths.
“The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it attribute to mankind.”—(Idem, Lang, vol. i. p. 170.)
“As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people.” (“Nat. Trib. of S. Australia,” p. 200.) “Mingarope having retired upon a natural occasion was highly pleased with the red color of her excrement, which she began to mould into the form of a man, and tickling it, it showed signs of life and began to laugh.”—(Idem, p. 201.)
The myth relating that differences in language sprung up after certain of the tribes had eaten the excrement of the goddess “Wurruri” is given on p. 268; it has been recited in this volume on a previous page. There was another god, named Nurunduri, of whom the story is told that he once made water in a certain spot, “from which circumstance the place is called Kainjamin (to make water.)”—(Idem, p. 205.)
Among the Bilgula of British Columbia, there is a myth which relates that a certain stump of a tree was a cannibal and had captured a girl. Once, when he had gone out to fish for halibut, “he ordered his urinary vessel to call him if the girl should make an attempt to escape. When she did so, the vessel cried, ‘Rota-gota, Rota-gota, gota.’”—(Personal letter from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
There is a riddle among the Kamtchatkans in regard to human feces: “My father has numerous forms and dresses; my mother is warm and thin and bears every day. Before I am born, I like cold and warmth, but after I am born, only cold. In the cold I am strong, and in the warmth, weak; if cold, I am seen far; if warm, I am smelled far.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Among some of the Eskimo tribes the Raven is represented as talking to its own excrement and consulting it; excrement occurs frequently in their legends.—(Personal letter from Dr. Boas, as above.)
From the preceding paragraph we see that the Eskimo must have formerly, even if they do not now, consulted excrement in their Divination; the extract from Gilder, given under “Mortuary Ceremonies” confirms this hypothesis.