"[61] During the sixteen days that a Pima Indian is
undergoing purification for killing an Apache he may not see a blazing
fire.[62]
[The story of Prince Sunless.]
Acarnanian peasants tell of a handsome prince called Sunless, who would
die if he saw the sun. So he lived in an underground palace on the site
of the ancient Oeniadae, but at night he came forth and crossed the
river to visit a famous enchantress who dwelt in a castle on the further
bank. She was loth to part with him every night long before the sun was
up, and as he turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties to linger, she hit
upon the device of cutting the throats of all the cocks in the
neighbourhood. So the prince, whose ear had learned to expect the shrill
clarion of the birds as the signal of the growing light, tarried too
long, and hardly had he reached the ford when the sun rose over the
Aetolian mountains, and its fatal beams fell on him before he could
regain his dark abode.[63]
Notes:
[1] _The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, i. 44.
[2] H.H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_ (London,
1875-1876), ii. 142; Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des Nations
civilisees du Mexique et de l'Amerique-Centrale_ (Paris, 1857-1859),
iii. 29.
[3] _Manuscrit Ramirez, Histoire de l'origine des Indiens_, publie par
D. Charnay (Paris, 1903), p. 108; J. de Acosta, _The Natural and Moral
History of the Indies_, bk. vii.
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