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 chief of the Naga, or snake race.  It is said that Raja Janameja prepared a yajnya, or great malevolently magical incantation, to destroy all the people of the serpent race.  To prevent this annihilation, the supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, and became the husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a Brahman.  But Pundarika Nag, being a serpent by nature, could not divest himself, even in human shape, of his forked tongue and venomed breath.  And, just as Urvasi could not abide with her mortal lover, after he transgressed the prohibition to appear before her naked, so Pundarika Nag was compelled by fate to leave his bride, if she asked him any questions about his disagreeable peculiarities.  She did, at last, ask questions, in circumstances which made Pundarika believe that he was bound to answer her.  Now the curse came upon him, he plunged into a pool, like the beaver, and vanished.  His wife became the mother of the serpent Rajas of Chutia Nagpur.  Pundarika Nag, in his proper form as a great hooded snake, guarded his first-born child.  The crest of the house is a hooded snake with human face. {81a}

Here, then, we have many examples of the disappearance of the bride or bridegroom in consequence of infringement of various mystic rules.  Sometimes the beloved one is seen when he or she should not be seen.  Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride vanishes, merely because she is in a bad temper. {81b} Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo on water is broken, with the usual results.  Now for an example in which the rule against using names is infringed. {82a}