neither see nor hear any living creature; and here they remain, in silence and fasting, until after sundown; whilst there are those who think it sufficient if they rigidly abstain from food on the day before commencing their wanderings.  During this period of probation a man ought not to see fire, but should this have happened, he must strike a light with flint and steel, whereby the evil that would otherwise have ensued will be obviated."[61] During the sixteen days that a Pima Indian is undergoing purification for killing an Apache he may not see a blazing fire.[62]

[The story of Prince Sunless.]

Acarnanian peasants tell of a handsome prince called Sunless, who would die if he saw the sun.  So he lived in an underground palace on the site of the ancient Oeniadae, but at night he came forth and crossed the river to visit a famous enchantress who dwelt in a castle on the further bank.  She was loth to part with him every night long before the sun was up, and as he turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties to linger, she hit upon the device of cutting the throats of all the cocks in the neighbourhood.  So the prince, whose ear had learned to expect the shrill clarion of the birds as the signal of the growing light, tarried too long, and hardly had he reached the ford when the sun rose over the Aetolian mountains, and its fatal beams fell on him before he could regain his dark abode.[63]

Notes: 

[1] The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 44.

[2] H.H.  Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 142; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisees du Mexique et de l’Amerique-Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 29.

[3] Manuscrit Ramirez, Histoire de l’origine des Indiens, publie par D. Charnay (Paris, 1903), p. 108; J. de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk. vii. chap. 22, vol. ii. p. 505 of E. Grimston’s translation, edited by (Sir) Clements R. Markham (Hakluyt Society, London, 1880).

[4] Memorials of the Empire of Japon in the XVI. and XVII.  Centuries, edited by T. Rundall (Hakluyt Society, London, 1850), pp. 14, 141; B. Varenius, Descriptio regni Japoniae et Siam (Cambridge, 1673), p. 11; Caron, “Account of Japan,” in John Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels (London, 1808-1814), vii. 613; Kaempfer, “History of Japan,” in id. vii. 716.

[5] W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), iii. 102 sq.; Captain James Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 329.

[6] A. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte (Leipsic, 1860), iii. 81.

[7] Athenaeus, xii. 8, p. 514 c.

[8] The Voiages and Travels of John Struys (London, 1684), p. 30.