the
unions of men and animals, incessantly occur. 'Unnatural' as these
notions seem to us, no ideas are more familiar to savages, and none recur
more frequently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek mythology. An
extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent from a frog. The
wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a tale of
this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her associations with her old
amphibious life are revived in the manner she had expressly forbidden.

* * * * *

Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojibway parallel. A hunter
named Otter-heart, camping near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl
loitering round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 'lays his
blanket near the deerskin she had laid for herself. "Good," he muttered,
"this is my wife."' She refuses to eat the beavers he has shot, but at
night he hears a noise, 'krch, krch, as if beavers were gnawing wood.' He
sees, by the glimmer of the fire, his wife nibbling birch twigs. In
fact, the good little wife is a beaver, as the pretty Indian girl was a
frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and the snow melted and
the streams ran full. Then his wife implored the hunter to build her a
bridge over every stream and river, that she might cross dry-footed.
'For,' she said, 'if my feet touch water, this would at once cause thee
great sorrow.' The hunter did as she bade him, but left unbridged one
tiny runnel. The wife stumbled into the water, and, as soon as her foot
was wet, she immediately resumed her old shape as a beaver, her son
became a beaverling, and the brooklet, changing to a roaring river, bore
them to the lake. Once the hunter saw his wife again among her beast
kin. 'To thee I sacrificed all,' she said, 'and I only asked thee to
help me dry-footed over the waters. Thou didst cruelly neglect this. Now
I must remain for ever with my people.'

* * * * *

This tale was told to Kohl by 'an old insignificant squaw among the
Ojibways.' {80a} Here we have a precise parallel to the tale of Bheki,
the frog-bride, and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water is
made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically revived the bride's old
animal life with the beavers. Or was the Indian name for beaver
(temakse) once a name for the sun? {80b}

A curious variant of this widely distributed Marchen of the animal bride
is found in the mythical genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur, a