[Modern Greek stories of the maid who might not see the sun.]

In a modern Greek folk-tale the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her, for if this were to happen she would be turned into a lizard.[168] In another modern Greek tale the Sun bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on condition of taking the child back to himself when she is twelve years old.  So, when the child was twelve, the mother closed the doors and windows, and stopped up all the chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun from coming to fetch away her daughter.  But she forgot to stop up the key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed through it and carried off the girl.[169] In a Sicilian story a seer foretells that a king will have a daughter who, in her fourteenth year, will conceive a child by the Sun.  So, when the child was born, the king shut her up in a lonely tower which had no window, lest a sunbeam should fall on her.  When she was nearly fourteen years old, it happened that her parents sent her a piece of roasted kid, in which she found a sharp bone.  With this bone she scraped a hole in the wall, and a sunbeam shot through the hole and got her with child.[170]

[The story of Danae and its parallel in a Kirghiz legend.]

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,[171] perhaps belongs to the same 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.  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 shew 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.[172] The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun.

[Impregnation of women by the sun in legends.]

The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in legends.  Thus, for example, among the Indians of Guacheta in Colombia, it is said, a report once ran that the sun would impregnate one of their maidens, who should bear a child and yet remain a virgin.  The chief had two daughters, and was very desirous that one of them should conceive in this miraculous manner.  So every day he made