" In the Tuhoe tribe of Maoris 'the power of making women fruitful' is ascribed to trees. These trees are associated with the navel-strings of definite mythical ancestors, as indeed the navel-strings of all children used to be hung upon them down to quite recent times."(The Golden Bough, p. 138)

I suppose this quote was chosen because of the recurrent motif of copulation in the stories of Creation which everyone in class related today(procreation is creation is it not?), and of the details in the Norse/Scandinavian creation myth where the first human beings were born of trees. Several people chose that one, as well as various Indian creation myths(Native-American and Hindu). I think Lynette's story of the Salish/Kootenai was especially special, being as she heard it from her own great grandmother, who is 104 years old!

Mary-Sean's Celtic creation myth(which also cropped up a couple times) tells of a giant god made of hoar frost, who melted when fire came into the world, and had the world formed from his body--his blood became the sea and streams and rivers and his skeleton the mountains.

And Doulgas' rendition of the Sami creation myth, which provided handy ethno- and geographic information which I did not know of before. Yay!

And it didn't matter that some of the stories repeated because no one tells the same story the same way.