The childhood of fiction Author:John Arnott MacCulloch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE WATER OF LIFE If death was the king of terrors to early man, none the less he seems to have believed that it was possible to overcome it. M... more »yth told of a time when it was not; ritual ceremonies represented the dead coming to life again; the soul, it was believed, could be recalled to the body by the power of the medicine-man. This belief has given birth to three distinct ideas, which are enshrined in many folk-tales, those of the Water of Life, of the Dismembered coming to life again, of the External or Separable Soul. Folk-tales containing these incidents are of the most varied kind, and are found current in all parts of the world, thus testifying at once to man's hatred of death, and his desire for life's renewal when it had come to an end. In this and the two following chapters I shall treat each of these incidents separately, and try to throw some light upon their origin. The ramifications of the idea that a certain mystic water can resuscitate or restore are many, and I can only attempt to indicate the chief of them. A certain number of stories may be cited first, to show the general idea at work. In several Russian tales two heroes are maimed by an enchantress. One has his feet cut off, the other his eyes put out. They live alone, helping each other. At last they obtain two waters, from a snake, or from a Baba Yaga (a kind ofVARIOUS EPISODES 53 snake-demon). The first water restores feet and eyes, but the heroes can neither walk nor see until the second, the Water of Life, is applied.1 The eldest of three brothers in a Lithuanian story kills a nine- headed dragon, and rescues a princess, whose servants, put him to death. A lion catches a crow, and forces it to bring the Water of Life, by which his master is revived.2 Geria, a Mingrelian hero, havin...« less