Note 170 — Chapter II
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Footnote 170
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Laura Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen (Leipsic, 1870), No. 28, vol. i. pp. 177 sqq. The incident of the bone occurs in other folk-tales. A prince or princess is shut up for safety in a tower and makes his or her escape by scraping a hole in the wall with a bone which has been accidentally conveyed into the tower; sometimes it is expressly said that care was taken to let the princess have no bones with her meat (J.G. von Hahn, op. cit. No. 15; L. Gonzenbach, op. cit. Nos. 26, 27; Der Pentamerone, aus dem Neapolitanischen übertragen von Felix Liebrecht (Breslau, 1846), No. 23, vol. i. pp. 294 sqq.). From this we should infer that it is a rule with savages not to let women handle the bones of animals during their monthly seclusions. We have already seen the great respect with which the savage treats the bones of game (Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild ii. 238 sqq., 256 sqq.); and women in their courses are specially forbidden to meddle with the hunter or fisher, as their contact or neighbourhood would spoil his sport (see below, pp. 77, 78 sq., 87, 89 sqq.). In folk-tales the hero who uses the bone is sometimes a boy; but the incident might easily be transferred from a girl to a boy after its real meaning had been forgotten. Amongst the Tinneh Indians a girl at puberty is forbidden to break the bones of hares (above, p. 48). On the other hand, she drinks out of a tube made of a swan's bone (above, pp. 48, 49), and the same instrument is used for the same purpose by girls of the Carrier tribe of Indians (see below, p. 92). We have seen that a Tlingit (Thlinkeet) girl in the same circumstances used to drink out of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle (above, p. 45), and that among the Nootka and Shuswap tribes girls at puberty are provided with bones or combs with which to scratch themselves, because they may not use their fingers for this purpose (above, pp. 44, 53).