Note 115.1 — Chapter V · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.

The Shih King, one of the sacred books of the Chinese, contains an ode intended to be recited at a sacrifice in the ancestral temple of Shang. It refers to the origin of Shang’s father Hsieh. His mother was a concubine of Khû, a ruler who flourished in the twenty-fifth century before Christ. She was bathing, as these Chinese heroines frequently are on such occasions, when a heaven-commissioned swallow dropped an egg, which she took and gulped down, becoming in this way the mother of Hsieh.115.1 The lady is not here, as in the case of other founders of Chinese dynasties, represented as a maiden. Yu’s mother, for instance, appears to be thus regarded. A pearl, a substance not more unpromising than a pebble, fell in her bosom, and she swallowed it. According to one version the boy was born from her breast.115.2 A Mongolian tale traces the origin of the Chinese nation to a Khan’s daughter, who compelled a poor Bandé to disgorge a precious stone as big as a sheep’s eye, which he had stolen from two men, and swallowed. As soon as he brought it up, she seized and swallowed it in her turn. It rendered her pregnant. The Bandé, by reading a charm, turned her into a she-ass; and in this form she gave birth to twin boys, one good, the other evil. From them the Chinese nation is descended.115.3 Several Tartar tribes ascribe their lineage to Alankava, the virgin daughter of Gioubiné, son of Bolduz, king of the Mongols. One night a great light awakened and embraced her, entering her mouth and passing through her body. As this peculiar proceeding was repeated every night, in order to dissipate suspicions of her virtue (for she had become pregnant) the chiefs of the national assembly were introduced into her chamber to witness the occurrence. When her time was come she gave birth to three boys, each of whom was the ancestor of a tribe, and from one of whom Genghis Khan and Tamerlane descended.115.4 An Irish tradition more modestly (probably for reasons discussed on a previous page) presents the mother of Kieran, the first saint born on Hibernian soil, as only dreaming that a star fell into her mouth.116.1