Hence it is that bushmen and wild beasts live together in all sorts of inaccessible places, while the Damaras and oxen possess the land.  The tree gave birth to everything else that lives.  The natives of the Philippines, writes Mr. Marsden in his “History of Sumatra,” have a curious tradition of tree-descent, and in accordance with their belief, “The world at first consisted only of sky and water, and between these two a glede; which, weary with flying about, and finding no place to rest, set the water at variance with the sky, which, in order to keep it in bounds, and that it should not get uppermost, loaded the water with a number of islands, in which the glede might settle and leave them at peace.  Mankind, they said, sprang out of a large cane with two joints, that, floating about in the water, was at length thrown by the waves against the feet of the glede as it stood on shore, which opened it with its bill; the man came out of one joint, the woman out of the other.  These were soon after married by the consent of their god, Bathala Meycapal, which caused the first trembling of the earth,[19] and from thence are descended the different nations of the world.”

Several interesting instances are given by Mr. Dorman, who tells us how the natives about Saginaw had a tradition of a boy who sprang from a tree within which was buried one of their tribe.  The founders of the Miztec monarchy are said to be descended from two majestic trees that stood in a gorge of the mountain of Apoala.  The Chiapanecas had a tradition that they sprang from the roots of a silk cotton tree; while the Zapotecas attributed their origin to trees, their cypresses and palms often receiving offerings of incense and other gifts.  The Tamanaquas of South America have a tradition that the human race sprang from the fruits of the date palm after the Mexican age of water.[20]

Again, our English nursery fable of the parsley-bed, in which little strangers are discovered, is perhaps, “A remnant of a fuller tradition, like that of the woodpecker among the Romans, and that of the stork among our Continental kinsmen."[21] Both these birds having had a mystic celebrity, the former as the fire-singing bird and guardian genius of children, the latter as the baby-bringer.[22] In Saterland it is said “infants are fetched out of the cabbage,” and in the Walloon part of Belgium they are supposed “to make their appearance in the parson’s garden.”  Once more, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is known in many places, both in North and South Germany, as the first abode of unborn infants, variations of this primitive belief being found in different localities.  Similar stories are very numerous, and under various forms are found in the legendary lore and folk-tales of most countries.

Footnotes: 

1.  See Keary’s “Outlines of Primitive Belief,” 1882, pp. 62-3.

2.  See Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology,” 1883, ii. 796-800; Quarterly
   Review, cxiv. 224; Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” i. 154;
   “Asgard and the Gods,” edited by W. S. W. Anson, 1822, pp. 26, 27.