But this state of seclusion is discontinued during
eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her devotions to the
monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the heavenly
bodies between his teeth. This permission to break her rule of
retirement and appear abroad during an eclipse seems to show how
literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens
entering on womanhood to look upon the sun.
A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave
traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. The old Greek
story of Danae, who was confined by her father in a subterranean
chamber or a brazen tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who reached her
in the shape of a shower of gold, perhaps belongs to this class of
tales. It has its counterpart in the legend which the Kirghiz of
Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair daughter,
whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An old
woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she
asked the old woman, "Where do you go so often?" "My child," said
the old dame, "there is a bright world.
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