of flight.| Here is an example of the belief as
remote from Hindostan as may be. Could the
Dindjié have borrowed it from historical India ?
lf we are to be told about borrowing at all, it
would be more plausible to maintain that the
Dindjié inherited the idea of the eagle's coat
from Skrilings, who learned it from the old
Norse settlers in Greenland. For Woden, when
he had drunk Suftung’s mead, “ turned himself
into his eagle-coat, and flew away as hard as he
could. But when Suftung saw the eagle’s flight,
he betook himself to his eagle-skin, and flew
after him.” ?

From a people also Northern, but far removed
from Scandinavian influence, from the Thlinkeets
of the North Pacific coast, comes another example
of the use in myth of a separable skin. Yehl,
the hero of the Thlinkeets, and a child of miracle,
became a mighty hunter. “One day a large
bird appeared to him; . . . its name was Crane,
that can fly to heaven. Yehl shot the bird,
skinned it, and whenever he wished to fly used
to clothe himself in its skin." In this gear, or


1 Op. cit., p. 63.
2 The Edda, translated in Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i.
405.
