In that bright world your
father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is
where I go." The maiden said, "Good mother, I will tell nobody, but
show me that bright world." So the old woman took the girl out of
the iron house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered
and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived.
Her angry father put her in a golden chest and sent her floating
away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide sea. The
shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz
legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun. The idea that women
may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in legends, and there
are even traces of it in marriage customs.
4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
THE MOTIVE for the restraints so commonly imposed on girls at
puberty is the deeply engrained dread which primitive man
universally entertains of menstruous blood. He fears it at all times
but especially on its first appearance; hence the restrictions under
which women lie at their first menstruation are usually more
stringent than those which they have to observe at any subsequent
recurrence of the mysterious flow.
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