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 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