on Bitiou,
cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his
concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He
changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis--a feature in the story which
is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his
story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in
Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them
confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down; a chip
flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou)
again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise
the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are
a symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus. He compares features, not always
very closely analogous, in European Marchen. For example, a girl hides
in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really analogous
with Bitiou's separable life in the acacia! 'Anepou' is like 'Anapu,'
Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris--dead in winter. Mr. Frazer,
Mannhardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these
identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, 'The
Marchen is an old obscure solar myth' (p. 242). To others the story of
Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of
tales illustrating furens quid femina possit, and illustrating the world-
wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other
Marchen, and giving to all a thoroughly classical Egyptian colouring.
{61a} Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in
the matter.

The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is
a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Marchen of the
Lad, the Giant's helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats
otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have
studied the story--as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and
elsewhere--in 'A Far-travelled Tale.' {61b} In our late Greek versions
the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to
me. There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic. His fleece
is of no interest to anybody. Out of his body grows a tree with a golden
apple. Sun-yarns occur in popular songs. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283)
abounds in solar explanatio