The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests.  The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ materially from each other.  They are only different manifestations of the same mysterious energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.[248] Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other hand, an apprehension that the divine being, thus drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those magical functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of the people and even of the world is believed to hang.  Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second part of this work;[249] they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers.  Nowhere, it is thought, can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible, suspended between the two.[250]

[Stories of immortality attained by suspension between heaven and earth.]

In legends and folk-tales, which reflect the ideas of earlier ages, we find this suspension between heaven and earth attributed to beings who have been endowed with the coveted yet burdensome gift of immortality.  The wizened remains of the deathless Sibyl are said to have been preserved in a jar or urn which hung in a temple of Apollo at Cumae; and when a group of merry children, tired, perhaps, of playing in the sunny streets, sought the shade of the temple and amused themselves by gathering underneath the familiar jar and calling out, “Sibyl, what do you wish?” a hollow voice, like an echo, used to answer from the urn, “I wish to die."[251] A story, taken down from the lips of a German peasant at Thomsdorf, relates that once upon a time there was a girl in London who wished to live for ever, so they say: 

“London, London is a fine town.  A maiden prayed to live for ever.”

And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a church, and every St. John’s Day, about the hour of noon, she eats a roll of bread.[252] Another German story tells of a lady who resided at Danzig and was so rich and so blest with all that life can give that she wished to live always.  So when she came to her latter end, she did not really die but only looked like dead, and very soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church, half standing and half sitting, motionless.  She stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and