Note 28 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
Reading edition
He began
“In murmurs which his first endeavoring tongue Caught infant-like from the far-foamèd sands.”
An extremely curious Esthonian legend (the only one which Grimm has discovered bearing any resemblance to the Babel-dispersion) seems to involve the same conception. God, seeing that population was too crowded, determined to disperse men, by giving to each nation a distinct tongue. Accordingly, he placed on the fire a caldron full of water, and made the different races successively approach, who appropriated respectively the various sounds of the hissing and singing water.—Grimm, p. 28. Others have compared with it the Mexican legend about the doves. See Winer, Biblisches Realwörterb. s. v. Sprache.