MYTHS ON THE ORIGIN OF WOMEN.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 108, 2 November 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

MYTHS ON THE ORIGIN OF WOMEN.

Woman's first appearance has been a fruitful subject for the legend mongers. The Phoenician myth of creation is found in the story of Pygmalion and Galatea. There the first woman was carved by the first man out of ivory, and then endowed with life by Aphrodite. The Greek theory of the creation of women, according to Hesiod, was that Zeus, as a cruel jest, ordered Vulcan to make woman out of clay, and then induced the various gods and goddesses to invest the clay doll with all their worst qualities, the result being a lovely thing, with a witchery of moiu, refined craft, eager passion, love of dross, treacherous manners, and shameless mind. The Scandinavians say that as Odiu, Vil, and Ye, the three sons of Bor, wore walking along the soa beach thoy found two sticks of wood, ono of ash and one of elm. Sitting down the gods shaped a man and a woman out of these stickß, whittling the woman from the elm and calling her Emia. One of tho strangest stories touching the origin of women is told by the Malagoso. In so far as the creation of man goes, tho legnnd is not unlike that related by Moses, only that the fall came before Eve arrived. After the man had eaten of the forbidden fruit he became affected with a boil on the leg, out of which, whon it I burst came a beautiful girl. The man's first thought waa to throw her to the pigs, but he was commanded by a messenger from Heaven to lot her play among tho diggings until she was of marriageable age, then to make her his wife. He did so, called her Baboura, and she became tho mother of all races of men. The American Indians' myths relating to Adam and Eve are numerous and entertaining. Some traditions trace back our first parentage to white and red maize ; another is that man, searching for a wife, was given the daughter of the king of the muskrats, who, on being dipped into the waters of a neighbouring lake became a woman.