The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Buriat of Irkutsk (Siberia), for example, declare that Morgon-Kara, their first shaman, was so competent that he could bring back souls from the dead. And so the Lord of the Dead complained to the High God of Heaven, and God decided to pose the shaman a test. He got possession of the soul of a certain man and slipped it into a bottle, covering the opening with the ball of his thumb. The man grew ill, and his relatives sent for Morgon-Kara. The shaman looked everywhere for the missing soul. He searched the forest, the waters, the mountain gorges, the land of the dead, and at last mounted, “sitting on his drum,” to the world above, where again he was forced to search for a long time. Presently he observed that the High God of Heaven was keeping a bottle covered with the ball of his thumb, and, studying the circumstance, perceived that inside the bottle was the very soul he had come to find. The wily shaman changed himself into a wasp. He flew at God and gave him such a hot sting on the forehead that the thumb jerked from the opening and the captive got away. Then the next thing God knew, there was this shaman, Morgon-Kara, sitting on his drum again, and going down to earth with the recovered soul. The flight in this case, however, was not entirely successful. Becoming terribly angry, God immediately diminished the power of the shaman forever by splitting his drum in two. And so that is why shaman drums, which originally (according to this story of the Buriat) were fitted with two heads of skin, from that day to this have had only one.^[4]

A popular variety of the magic flight is that in which objects are left behind to speak for the fugitive and thus delay pursuit. The New Zealand Maori tell of a fisherman who one day came home to find that his wife had swallowed their two sons. She was lying groaning on the floor. He asked her what the trouble was, and she declared that she was ill. He demanded to know where the two boys were, and she told him they had gone away. But he knew that she was lying. With his magic, he caused her to disgorge them: they came out alive and whole. Then that man was afraid of his wife, and he determined to escape from her as soon as he could, together with the boys.

When the ogress went to fetch water, the man, by his magic, caused the water to decrease and retreat ahead of her, so that she had to go a considerable way. Then by gestures he instructed the huts, the clumps of trees growing near the village, the filth dump, and the temple on top of the hill to answer for him when his wife should return and call. He made away with the boys to his canoe, and they hoisted sail. The woman came back, and, not finding anyone about, began to call. First the filth pit replied. She moved in that direction and called again. The houses answered; then the trees. One after another, the various objects in the neighborhood responded to her, and she ran, increasingly bewildered, in every direction. She became weak and began to pant and sob and then, at last, realized what had been done to her. She hastened to the temple on the hilltop and peered out to sea, where the canoe was a mere speck on the horizon.^[5]

Another well-known variety of the magic flight is one in which a number of delaying obstacles are tossed behind by the wildly fleeing hero.

A little brother and sister were playing by a spring, and as they did so suddenly tumbled in. There was a waterhag down there, and this waterhag said, “Now I have you! Now you shall work your heads off for me!” And she carried them away with her. She gave to the little girl a tangle of filthy flax to spin and made her fetch water in a bottomless tub; the boy had to chop a tree with a blunt ax; and all they ever had to eat were stone-hard lumps of dough. So at last the children became so impatient that they waited until one Sunday, when the hag had gone to church, and escaped. When church let out, the hag discovered that her birds had flown, and so made after them with mighty bounds.

But the children espied her from afar, and the little girl threw back a hairbrush, which immediately turned into a big brush-mountain with thousands and thousands of bristles over which the hag found it very difficult to climb; nevertheless, she finally appeared. As soon as the children saw her, the boy threw back a comb, which immediately turned into a big comb-mountain with a thousand times a thousand spikes; but the hag knew how to catch hold of these, and at last she made her way through. Then the little girl threw back a mirror, and this turned into a mirror-mountain, which was so smooth that the hag was unable to get over. Thought she: “I shall hurry back home and get my ax and chop the mirror-mountain in two.” But by the time she got back and demolished the glass, the children were long since far away, and the waterhag had to trudge back again to her spring.^[6]