Note 1 — FOLK-TALES AND SONGS

Naga folk-lore in general has much in common with that of other races of Mongolian affinities. Thus the Naga (Angami) and Kachari story of the origin of the domestication of certain animals as opposed to the rest is akin to the Lapp story given by Mr. Andrew Lang under the title of “The Elf Maiden,” in his Brown Fairy Book. The Angami story is to be found in The Angami Nagas, Part IV., the Terhengi Genna, and the Kachari version in Soppitt, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Kachari Tribes of the North Cachar Hills, p. 56. Much closer, however, is the resemblance between an incident in the story of “The Fox and the Lapp” (same volume of Mr. Lang’s Fairy Tales), and the almost verbally identical incident in the Sema story of Iki and the Tiger (The Sema Nagas, p. 319). In the latter Iki escapes from the tiger by pointing to a hornbill flying over and saying, “I made that.” The tiger asks if Iki can make him like it, and on Iki’s consenting agrees to let himself be tied up, and to undergo an operation entailing his destruction. In the Lapp story the fox escapes from the bear by precisely the same ruse, a woodpecker taking the place of the hornbill. In the same volume of Mr. Lang’s is a story called “The Husband of the Rat’s Daughter,” quoted as from Contes Populaires, but apparently coming from Japan, which is identical with the Angami story of “The Rat Maiden” (The Angami Nagas, Part V.).—J. H. H. ↑