"
In another Russian legend, Perun, the thunder-god, destroys the
devils with _stone_ hammers. On Ilya's day, the peasants offer him a
roasted animal, which is cut up and _scattered over the fields_,[2]
just as we have seen the great dragon or serpent cut to pieces and
scattered over the world.
Mr. Christy found at Bou-Merzoug, on the plateau of the Atlas, in
Northern Africa, in a bare, deserted, stony place among the
mountains, a collection of fifteen hundred tombs, made of rude
limestone slabs, set up with one slab to form a roof, so as to make
perfect dolmens--closed chambers--where the bodies were packed in.
"Tradition says that a wicked people lived there, and for their sins
_stones were rained upon them from heaven;_ so they built these
chambers to creep into."[3]
In addition to the legend of "Pha?ton," already given, Ovid derived
from the legends of his race another story,
[1. Tylor's "Early Mankind," p. 328.
2. Poor, "Sanskrit Literature," p. 400.
3. Tylor's "Early Mankind," p. 222.]
{p. 261}
which seems to have had reference to the same event.
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