Note 133.1 — Chapter V · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.

It will be remembered that Mughain, before she bore Aedh Sláine, did more than drink of the consecrated water: she washed in it. Stories of conception by bathing have been seriously believed alike in the Old and New Worlds. A Zulu saga represents a king’s daughters as bathing in a pool in the river. The youngest, a mere child, comes out with breasts swollen as large as a woman’s. By the advice of the council of old men she is driven away. After wandering from place to place she gives birth to a boy who grows up a wise doctor. From what is said of his beneficent deeds it has been conjectured that we have here a corrupted account of Our Lord’s birth, derived possibly from the Portuguese.133.1 If this be so (which is quite uncertain) it is important to note that the story has coalesced with native tradition as completely as the fiftieth rune of the Kalevala with the adventures of Väinämöinen. The main incident was apparently in harmony with native thought, and therefore easily attracted to itself the details of native life and discarded its own proper details, which would be incomprehensible. In the Hindu mythology Parvati, the spouse of Siva, justified her own irregular entrance upon the world by conception through bathing, without intercourse, and thus brought forth Ganesa.133.2 A story is told, in a work attributed to Plutarch, of Bacchus in the shape of the river Tigris carrying away the nymph Alphesiboea and begetting on her a son, Medus. If Aristonymus, who seems to have been originally responsible for it, was reporting a genuine tradition, it must, so far as we can penetrate its Greek disguise, have referred to a similar adventure on the part of Alphesiboea. Medus was the eponym of the Medes.134.1 Some of the Algonkins of North America traced the lineage of mankind from two young squaws who, swimming in the sea, were impregnated by the foam and produced a boy and girl.134.2 So the black Kirghiz pretended to have for their great foremother a princess who became pregnant by bathing in a foam-covered lake.134.3