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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths and Myth-Makers, by John Fiske
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Myths and Myth-Makers
+       Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology
+
+Author: John Fiske
+
+Posting Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #1061]
+Release Date: October, 1997
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller
+
+
+
+
+
+MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS
+
+Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology
+
+By John Fiske
+
+
+
+
+La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivre
+les croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusqu'aux
+superstitions de nos campagnes.--EDMOND SCHERER
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT
+AUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND NIXIES, I dedicate
+THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series of papers,
+in which I have endeavoured to touch briefly upon a great many of the
+most important points in the study of mythology, I think it right to
+observe that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricate
+discussions, I have sometimes cut the matter short, expressing myself
+with dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might perhaps
+have seemed more becoming. In treating of popular legends and
+superstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and seldom
+can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have travelled all the
+way around Robin Hood's barn and back again. I am sure that the reader
+would not have thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes with the
+thorns and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to such
+an extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever reaching the high road.
+I have not attempted to review, otherwise than incidentally, the works
+of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor; nor can I pretend
+to have added anything of consequence, save now and then some bit of
+explanatory comment, to the results obtained by the labour of these
+scholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these results in such
+a way as to awaken general interest in them. And accordingly, in dealing
+with a subject which depends upon philology almost as much as astronomy
+depends upon mathematics, I have omitted philological considerations
+wherever it has been possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that
+nothing has been advanced as established which is not now generally
+admitted by scholars, and that nothing has been advanced as probable for
+which due evidence cannot be produced. Yet among many points which are
+proved, and many others which are probable, there must always remain
+many other facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanation
+is the true one; and the student who endeavours to fathom the primitive
+thoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will do well to bear in
+mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm,--himself the greatest scholar and
+thinker who has ever dealt with this class of subjects,--"I shall indeed
+interpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I should
+like."
+
+PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+     I.  THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE
+
+     II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE
+
+     III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS
+
+     IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS
+
+     V.  MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD
+
+     VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI
+
+     VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD
+
+     NOTE
+
+
+
+
+MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE.
+
+FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His exploits
+have been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and one of the most
+popular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless familiar to
+many who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who are quite
+ignorant of the prowess of Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot, nay,
+even Charlemagne, are but empty names.
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely that
+no such person as William Tell ever existed, and it is certain that the
+story of his shooting the apple from his son's head has no historical
+value whatever. In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss,
+especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forced
+upon us as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the
+canons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point to Tell's
+lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the market-place at Altdorf,
+or to quote for our confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal at
+Zurich, as unimpeachable witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in
+vain that we are told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to
+it; therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than the
+handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross. For if
+relics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the truth of
+every miracle narrated by the Bollandists.
+
+The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures of William
+Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in 1482. As
+the shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in 1296, this
+leaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years, during which
+neither a Tell, nor a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty of
+Gessler, received any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically,
+that the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by
+the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenth
+century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts
+by which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not
+once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his
+exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is
+not alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of
+Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was living
+at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father was
+present. He tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he saw
+Duke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal field, half dead with
+fear. He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all
+the incidents of the Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a word
+about William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive. These mediaeval
+chroniclers, who never failed to go out of their way after a bit of the
+epigrammatic and marvellous, who thought far more of a pointed story
+than of historical credibility, would never have kept silent about the
+adventures of Tell, if they had known anything about them.
+
+After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who
+describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topography
+and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to confront us when
+we leave the solid ground of history and begin to deal with floating
+legends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have been
+its origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand the
+discussion.
+
+The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William Tell
+was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in 1598.
+He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words,
+concludes by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is so
+popular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we are
+told, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burnt
+alive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had a Danish
+origin. [1]
+
+The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many other
+heretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of Tell is given as
+follows, by Saxo Grammaticus:--
+
+"A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's body-guard, had
+made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal
+with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man
+once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was so
+skilled an archer that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way
+off on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by the
+ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark
+how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the sire to the
+peril of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge of his life
+should be placed instead of the wand, with a threat that, unless the
+author of this promise could strike off the apple at the first flight of
+the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss
+of his head. The king's command forced the soldier to perform more
+than he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by the tongues of
+slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did not
+his sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him
+to lay aside his firmness of heart; nay, he accepted the trial the more
+readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when
+he took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm
+ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he should
+defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking further counsel to
+prevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared at
+the sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he
+struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string.....
+But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows from
+the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune
+of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the swerving
+of the first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my innocence
+might have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free.'" [2]
+
+This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth, and
+the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story appears
+not only in Denmark, but in England, in Norway, in Finland and Russia,
+and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was known
+in India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed,
+and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in
+1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of Wayland
+Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the ballad of William of
+Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many details of the archery scene
+in "Ivanhoe." Here, says the dauntless bowman,
+
+     "I have a sonne seven years old;
+           Hee is to me full deere;
+      I will tye him to a stake--
+           All shall see him that bee here--
+      And lay an apple upon his head,
+           And goe six paces him froe,
+      And I myself with a broad arrowe
+           Shall cleave the apple in towe."
+
+In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous
+magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castren dug up the
+same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the
+Turks and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never
+heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter and
+verse, of one of their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of
+Farid-Uddin Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots
+an apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories, names
+and motives of course differ; but all contain the same essential
+incidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at the capricious
+command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him a
+small object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer
+always provides himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned as to
+the use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply
+is, "To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son." Now, when a marvellous
+occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that
+it never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves
+indefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking and
+dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead
+inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its
+general features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their
+primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia.
+
+It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen may
+really have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the legend;
+and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from one
+country to another and from age to age, may have formed the theme for
+all the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La Fontaine
+were patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many of
+Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt there
+has been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the legends of
+different peoples, as well as among the words of different languages;
+and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may have
+now and then been carried about the world in this manner. But as the
+philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between the
+native and the imported words in any Aryan language, by examining their
+phonetic peculiarities, so the student of popular traditions, though
+working with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with
+reference to a vast number of legends, that they cannot have been
+obtained by any process of conscious borrowing. The difficulties
+inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more apparent
+as we proceed to examine a few other stories current in different
+portions of the Aryan domain.
+
+As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived of
+his brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate I confess to having shed
+more tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes
+of many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how the dear old brute
+killed the wolf which had come to devour Llewellyn's child, and how the
+prince, returning home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's mouth
+dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the child
+from behind the cradle and the sight of the wolf's body had rectified
+his error. To this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching
+story, and shown the place, called Beth-Gellert, [3] where the dog's
+grave is still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the
+fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it
+started in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it
+has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668.
+Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an
+insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the following comical shape:
+"A Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared.
+The exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali
+within an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with his
+efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discovered
+amongst the herbs a poisonous snake." [4] Now this story of the Wali is
+as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as the English word
+FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain that
+the word father is in any sense derived from pater, so it would be
+impossible to represent either the Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a
+copy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is forced upon us that the
+stories, like the words, are related collaterally, having descended from
+a common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by one and the same
+primeval idea.
+
+Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of Faithful John
+and of Rama and Luxman. In the German story, Faithful John accompanies
+the prince, his master, on a journey in quest of a beautiful maiden,
+whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are carrying her home across
+the seas, Faithful John hears some crows, whose language he understands,
+foretelling three dangers impending over the prince, from which his
+friend can save him only by sacrificing his own life. As soon as they
+land, a horse will spring toward the king, which, if he mounts it, will
+bear him away from his bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, and
+tells the king the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee.
+Then, before the wedding a bridal garment will lie before the king,
+which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the Nessos-shirt of
+Herakles; but whoever throws the shirt into the fire and tells the
+king the reason, will be turned into stone from knee to heart. Finally,
+during the wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon,
+and "unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right breast
+she will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king the reason, will
+be turned into stone from head to foot. Thus forewarned, Faithful John
+saves his master from all these dangers; but the king misinterprets
+his motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to be hanged. On the
+scaffold he tells his story, and while the king humbles himself in an
+agony of remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone.
+
+In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying home
+his bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking about the perils that await
+his master and mistress. First he saves them from being crushed by the
+falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch
+which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree,
+the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills
+it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's
+blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood,
+the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife,
+upbraids him with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief at
+this unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned into stone. [5]
+
+For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the "Giant
+who had no Heart in his Body," as related by Dr. Dasent. This burly
+magician having turned six brothers with their wives into stone, the
+seventh brother--the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of European
+folk-lore--sets out to obtain vengeance if not reparation for the evil
+done to his kith and kin. On the way he shows the kindness of his nature
+by rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful
+wolf carries him on his back to the giant's castle, where the lovely
+princess whom the monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to act,
+in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and to find out, if possible,
+where her lord keeps his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finally
+succumbs to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies an
+island; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; in
+that well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg; and in that egg
+there lies my heart, you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rides on the
+wolf's back to the island; the raven flies to the top of the steeple and
+gets the church-keys; the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and
+brings up the egg from the place where the duck had dropped it; and
+so Boots becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the egg,
+the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which Boots
+promises to spare on condition that his brothers and their brides should
+be released from their enchantment. But when all has been duly effected,
+the treacherous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantly
+bursts.
+
+The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is published
+in Miss Frere's remarkable collection of tales entitled "Old Deccan
+Days." In the Hindu version the seven daughters of a rajah, with
+their husbands, are transformed into stone by the great magician
+Punchkin,--all save the youngest daughter, whom Punchkin keeps shut up
+in a tower until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marry
+him. But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the cradle, who
+grows up to manhood unmolested, and finally undertakes the rescue of his
+family. After long and weary wanderings he finds his mother shut up in
+Punchkin's tower, and persuades her to play the part of the princess
+in the Norse legend. The trick is equally successful. "Hundreds of
+thousands of miles away there lies a desolate country covered with thick
+jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in
+the centre of the circle stand six jars full of water, piled one above
+another; below the sixth jar is a small cage which contains a little
+green parrot; on the life of the parrot depends my life, and if the
+parrot is killed I must die." [6] The young prince finds the place
+guarded by a host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from a
+devouring serpent in the course of his journey take him on their
+crossed wings and carry him to the place where the jars are standing. He
+instantly overturns the jars, and seizing the parrot, obtains from the
+terrified magician full reparation. As soon as his own friends and a
+stately procession of other royal or noble victims have been set at
+liberty, he proceeds to pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legs
+come away, so tumble off the arms and legs of the magician; and finally
+as the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own head round
+and dies.
+
+The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some portions
+of it will be recognized by the reader as incidents in the Arabian
+tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of close correspondence in
+conception with manifest independence in the management of the details
+of these stories is striking enough, but it is a phenomenon with which
+we become quite familiar as we proceed in the study of Aryan popular
+literature. The legend of the Master Thief is no less remarkable than
+that of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the Thief, wishing to get
+possession of a farmer's ox, carefully hangs himself to a tree by the
+roadside. The farmer, passing by with his ox, is indeed struck by the
+sight of the dangling body, but thinks it none of his business, and
+does not stop to interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets
+himself down, and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself with
+equal precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is astonished
+and puzzled; but when for the third time he meets the same unwonted
+spectacle, thinking that three suicides in one morning are too much for
+easy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether the other
+two bodies are really where he thought he saw them. While he is framing
+hypotheses of witchcraft by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thief
+gets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives a finer
+point. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the market to buy
+a goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They
+stationed themselves at intervals on the high road. When the Brahman,
+who carried the goat on his back, approached the first thief, the
+thief said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman
+replied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after he was
+accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog
+on your back?' The Brahman felt perplexed, put the goat down, examined
+it, took it up again, and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the
+third thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?'
+Then the Brahman was frightened, threw down the goat, and walked home to
+perform his ablutions for having touched an unclean animal. The thieves
+took the goat and ate it." The adroitness of the Norse King in "The
+Three Princesses of Whiteland" shows but poorly in comparison with the
+keen psychological insight and cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers.
+In the course of his travels this prince met three brothers fighting
+on a lonely moor. They had been fighting for a hundred years about the
+possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which would make the
+wearer invisible, and convey him instantly whithersoever he might wish
+to go. The King consents to act as umpire, provided he may once try the
+virtue of the magic garments; but once clothed in them, of course he
+disappears, leaving the combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs.
+Now in the "Sea of Streams of Story," written in the twelfth century by
+Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya
+Mountains, similarly discomfits two brothers who are quarrelling over
+a pair of shoes, which are like the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl which
+has the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race for
+them?" suggests Putraka; and, as the two blockheads start furiously off,
+he quietly picks up the bowl, ties on the shoes, and flies away! [7]
+
+It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The tales here quoted
+are fair samples of the remarkable correspondence which holds good
+through all the various sections of Aryan folk-lore. The hypothesis
+of lateral diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails to explain
+coincidences which are maintained on such an immense scale. It is quite
+credible that one nation may have borrowed from another a solitary
+legend of an archer who performs the feats of Tell and Palnatoki; but it
+is utterly incredible that ten thousand stories, constituting the entire
+mass of household mythology throughout a dozen separate nations, should
+have been handed from one to another in this way. No one would venture
+to suggest that the old grannies of Iceland and Norway, to whom we owe
+such stories as the Master Thief and the Princesses of Whiteland, had
+ever read Somadeva or heard of the treasures of Rhampsinitos. A large
+proportion of the tales with which we are dealing were utterly unknown
+to literature until they were taken down by Grimm and Frere and
+Castren and Campbell, from the lips of ignorant peasants, nurses, or
+house-servants, in Germany and Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland.
+Yet, as Mr. Cox observes, these old men and women, sitting by the
+chimney-corner and somewhat timidly recounting to the literary explorer
+the stories which they had learned in childhood from their own
+nurses and grandmas, "reproduce the most subtle turns of thought and
+expression, and an endless series of complicated narratives, in which
+the order of incidents and the words of the speakers are preserved
+with a fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition of historical
+events. It may safely be said that no series of stories introduced
+in the form of translations from other languages could ever thus have
+filtered down into the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung
+up again, like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened beauty."
+There is indeed no alternative for us but to admit that these fireside
+tales have been handed down from parent to child for more than a hundred
+generations; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his evening
+meal of yava and sipped his fermented mead, listened with his children
+to the stories of Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days
+when the squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-skinned Sudra
+was as yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origin
+can explain the community in character between the stories told by the
+Aryan's descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands of
+Scotland.
+
+This conclusion essentially modifies our view of the origin and growth
+of a legend like that of William Tell. The case of the Tell legend is
+radically different from the case of the blindness of Belisarius or
+the burning of the Alexandrian library by order of Omar. The latter are
+isolated stories or beliefs; the former is one of a family of stories or
+beliefs. The latter are untrustworthy traditions of doubtful events; but
+in dealing with the former, we are face to face with a MYTH.
+
+What, then, is a myth? The theory of Euhemeros, which was so fashionable
+a century ago, in the days of the Abbe Banier, has long since been so
+utterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. The
+peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the extraordinary
+features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its inmost significance, and to
+the dull and useless residuum accorded the dignity of primeval history.
+In this way the myth was lost without compensation, and the student,
+in seeking good digestible bread, found but the hardest of pebbles.
+Considered merely as a pretty story, the legend of the golden fruit
+watched by the dragon in the garden of the Hesperides is not without its
+value. But what merit can there be in the gratuitous statement which,
+degrading the grand Doric hero to a level with any vulgar fruit-stealer,
+makes Herakles break a close with force and arms, and carry off a crop
+of oranges which had been guarded by mastiffs? It is still worse when
+we come to the more homely folk-lore with which the student of mythology
+now has to deal. The theories of Banier, which limped and stumbled
+awkwardly enough when it was only a question of Hermes and Minos and
+Odin, have fallen never to rise again since the problems of Punchkin
+and Cinderella and the Blue Belt have begun to demand solution.
+The conclusion has been gradually forced upon the student, that the
+marvellous portion of these old stories is no illegitimate extres-cence,
+but was rather the pith and centre of the whole, [8] in days when there
+was no supernatural, because it had not yet been discovered that there
+was such a thing as nature. The religious myths of antiquity and the
+fireside legends of ancient and modern times have their common root in
+the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded
+utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into
+which they were born.
+
+That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men are wont
+to regard natural phenomena was in early times unknown. We have come
+to regard all events as taking place regularly, in strict conformity to
+law: whatever our official theories may be, we instinctively take this
+view of things. But our primitive ancestors knew nothing about laws of
+nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of
+cause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things.
+There was a time in the history of mankind when these things had never
+been inquired into, and when no generalizations about them had been
+framed, tested, or established. There was no conception of an order of
+nature, and therefore no distinct conception of a supernatural order of
+things. There was no belief in miracles as infractions of natural laws,
+but there was a belief in the occurrence of wonderful events too mighty
+to have been brought about by ordinary means. There was an unlimited
+capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not
+yet been checked and headed off in various directions by established
+rules of experience. Physical science is a very late acquisition of the
+human mind, but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be almost
+completely disabled from comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors.
+"How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and heaven to be
+made out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell representing
+heaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding fluid the
+circumambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it remains a
+fact that they did so regard them. How the Scandinavians could have
+supposed the mountains to be the mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun,
+and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot conceive; yet such a
+theory was solemnly taught and accepted. How the ancient Indians could
+regard the rain-clouds as cows with full udders milked by the winds
+of heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet their Veda contains
+indisputable testimony to the fact that they were so regarded." We have
+only to read Mr. Baring-Gould's book of "Curious Myths," from which
+I have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's treatise on "Northern
+Mythology," to realize how vast is the difference between our
+stand-point and that from which, in the later Middle Ages, our immediate
+forefathers regarded things. The frightful superstition of werewolves is
+a good instance. In those days it was firmly believed that men could be,
+and were in the habit of being, transformed into wolves. It was believed
+that women might bring forth snakes or poodle-dogs. It was believed that
+if a man had his side pierced in battle, you could cure him by nursing
+the sword which inflicted the wound. "As late as 1600 a German writer
+would illustrate a thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn by a picture
+of a dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongue
+and iron teeth."
+
+Now if such was the condition of the human intellect only three or four
+centuries ago, what must it have been in that dark antiquity when not
+even the crudest generalizations of Greek or of Oriental science had
+been reached? The same mighty power of imagination which now, restrained
+and guided by scientific principles, leads us to discoveries and
+inventions, must then have wildly run riot in mythologic fictions
+whereby to explain the phenomena of nature. Knowing nothing whatever
+of physical forces, of the blind steadiness with which a given effect
+invariably follows its cause, the men of primeval antiquity could
+interpret the actions of nature only after the analogy of their own
+actions. The only force they knew was the force of which they were
+directly conscious,--the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all
+the outward world to be endowed with volition, and to be directed by it.
+They personified everything,--sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean,
+earthquake, whirlwind. [9] The comparatively enlightened Athenians of
+the age of Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it to
+rain upon their gardens. [10] And for calling the moon a mass of dead
+matter, Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients the moon
+was not a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it was the horned huntress,
+Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing herself in the
+clear lake; or it was Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of the
+sea-foam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of vaporized
+water: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by
+Hermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by
+the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting
+across the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to
+receive the souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty
+mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the
+divining-wand of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The
+yellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flaming
+chariot; or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from
+the sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole),
+which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing
+funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath; or,
+as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters,
+to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash,
+inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too
+near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither,
+and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity,
+in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching
+arrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land. Still other
+conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderful
+treasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and again it
+was Ixion himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for violence
+offered to Here, the queen of the blue air.
+
+This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and plausible,
+it is, in its essential points, demonstrated. It stands on as firm a
+foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory theory in
+molecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us to read the
+primitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the names of Greek gods
+and heroes have no meaning in the Greek language; but these names occur
+also in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings. In the Veda we find
+Zeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameias or Hermes,
+meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We find Athene (Ahana), meaning
+the light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled to understand why the
+Greek described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There too
+we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight, whom the Panis, or
+night-demons, who serve as the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive
+to seduce from her allegiance to the solar monarch. Even Achilleus
+(Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive Briseis (Brisaya's
+offspring); and the fierce Kerberos (Carvara) barks on Vedic ground in
+strict conformity to the laws of phonetics. [11] Now, when the Hindu
+talked about Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he thought of the
+personified sky and clouds; he had not outgrown the primitive mental
+habits of the race. But the Greek, in whose language these physical
+meanings were lost, had long before the Homeric epoch come to regard
+Zeus and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus, as mere persons,
+and in most cases the originals of his myths were completely forgotten.
+In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in the sky, between the bright
+deities and the demons of night; but the Greek poet, influenced perhaps
+by some dim historical tradition, has located the contest on the shore
+of the Hellespont, and in his mind the actors, though superhuman, are
+still completely anthropomorphic. Of the true origin of his epic story
+he knew as little as Euhemeros, or Lord Bacon, or the Abbe Banier.
+
+After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being misunderstood
+when we define a myth as, in its origin, an explanation, by the
+uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an
+esoteric symbol,--for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in
+myths the remnants of a refined primeval science,--but an explanation.
+Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of
+allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when
+plain language would serve their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure,
+worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god,
+they meant just what they said, save that where we propound a scientific
+theorem, they constructed a myth. [12] A thing is said to be explained
+when it is classified with other things with which we are already
+acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of which the highest
+science is capable. We explain the origin, progress, and ending of a
+thunder-storm, when we classify the phenomena presented by it along with
+other more familiar phenomena of vaporization and condensation. But the
+primitive man explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when he
+had classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition,
+by constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerring
+arrows of a heavenly archer. We consider the nature of the stars to
+a certain extent explained when they are classified as suns; but the
+Mohammedan compiler of the "Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih" was content to explain
+them as missiles useful for stoning the Devil! Now, as soon as the old
+Greek, forgetting the source of his conception, began to talk of a human
+Oidipous slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the Mussulman began,
+if he ever did, to tell his children how the Devil once got a good
+pelting with golden bullets, then both the one and the other were
+talking pure mythology.
+
+We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between a myth and
+a legend. Though the words are etymologically parallel, and though in
+ordinary discourse we may use them interchangeably, yet when strict
+accuracy is required, it is well to keep them separate. And it is
+perhaps needless, save for the sake of completeness, to say that
+both are to be distinguished from stories which have been designedly
+fabricated. The distinction may occasionally be subtle, but is usually
+broad enough. Thus, the story that Philip II. murdered his wife
+Elizabeth, is a misrepresentation; but the story that the same Elizabeth
+was culpably enamoured of her step-son Don Carlos, is a legend. The
+story that Queen Eleanor saved the life of her husband, Edward I., by
+sucking a wound made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a legend; but
+the story that Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus, who had stolen his
+cattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is a myth. While a legend is
+usually confined to one or two localities, and is told of not more than
+one or two persons, it is characteristic of a myth that it is spread,
+in one form or another, over a large part of the earth, the leading
+incidents remaining constant, while the names and often the motives
+vary with each locality. This is partly due to the immense antiquity
+of myths, dating as they do from a period when many nations, now widely
+separated, had not yet ceased to form one people. Thus many elements of
+the myth of the Trojan War are to be found in the Rig-Veda; and the myth
+of St. George and the Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But we
+must not always infer that myths have a common descent, merely because
+they resemble each other. We must remember that the proceedings of the
+uncultivated mind are more or less alike in all latitudes, and that
+the same phenomenon might in various places independently give rise to
+similar stories. [13] The myth of Jack and the Beanstalk is found not
+only among people of Aryan descent, but also among the Zulus of South
+Africa, and again among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace a
+story in this way from one end of the world to the other, or through a
+whole family of kindred nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that we
+are dealing with a true myth, and not with a mere legend.
+
+Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at once obtain a
+valid explanation of its origin. The conception of infallible skill
+in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular
+fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the
+sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows
+and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armour
+can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes.
+The shafts of Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon of the
+rain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure destruction
+to the serpent of winter. Odysseus, warring against the impious
+night-heroes, who have endeavoured throughout ten long years or hours of
+darkness to seduce from her allegiance his twilight-bride, the weaver
+of the never-finished web of violet clouds,--Odysseus, stripped of
+his beggar's raiment and endowed with fresh youth and beauty by the
+dawn-goddess, Athene, engages in no doubtful conflict as he raises the
+bow which none but himself can bend. Nor is there less virtue in the
+spear of Achilleus, in the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's
+stout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bedivere
+was so loath to part. All these are solar weapons, and so, too, are
+the arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William of
+Cloudeslee, whose surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the Phaiakian
+land. William Tell, whether of Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last
+reflection of the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrained
+for a while to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness, as
+Apollo served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bidding of Eurystheus.
+His solar character is well preserved, even in the sequel of the Swiss
+legend, in which he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as an
+archer, and in which, after traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous sea
+of night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, and
+strikes down the oppressor who has held him in bondage.
+
+But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his enemies,
+is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he succumbs to treachery,
+is bound by the frost-giants, or slain by the demons of darkness. The
+poisoned shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to the mighty
+Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to save him from
+the craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy solar
+hero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be cut off by an
+untimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe old
+age, and triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, must
+nevertheless yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and look
+upon new works of strange men, until at last he is swallowed up in the
+western sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should
+disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is that the
+horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in the far east. It is
+perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as a
+thorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the
+heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus
+escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by
+his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn,
+and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the
+Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when
+pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked
+in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until
+the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity.
+
+The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories of
+spell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, and
+heroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed
+to slumber. Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said to
+sleep through the winter months; and at the time of the falling leaves,
+by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe and
+divinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape,
+fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek myth the
+shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial slumber. The
+German Siegfried, pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until
+he shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the
+Vierwald-stattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their
+country shall again need to be delivered from the oppressor. Charlemagne
+is reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming of
+Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; and
+in a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa
+slumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him to
+sally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of
+the world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian
+of Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of
+Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the
+heathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and awoke to
+find a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the
+legend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God
+a thousand years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes
+entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking
+from his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family of
+legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the
+last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by
+Vivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away
+fifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills.
+[14]
+
+We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderful
+sleepers; but, on the principle of the association of opposites, we
+are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness,
+illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of
+Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternity
+chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic
+Tithonos; and the Man in the Moon.
+
+The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human
+fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had been
+before him. "Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moon
+is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been
+exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is
+beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the
+nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that
+
+     'The Man in the Moon
+      Came down too soon
+      And asked his way to Norwich';
+
+but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does not
+state." Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has him put up there as a
+punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespeare
+also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a
+dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is stated to have
+been, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking,--an idea derived from the Old
+Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caught
+gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is
+condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back.
+Instead of a dog, one German version places with him a woman, whose
+crime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries her butter-tub; and
+this brings us to Mother Goose again:--
+
+     "Jack and Jill went up the hill
+     To get a pail of water.
+     Jack fell down and broke his crown,
+     And Jill came tumbling after."
+
+This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view from
+which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsense
+in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one. In
+Icelandic mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children whom
+the moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They had been drawing
+water in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole placed
+across their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to the
+present day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the moon-spots
+is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They fall away one
+after the other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail symbolizes the
+supposed connection of the moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the
+myth occur in Sanskrit.
+
+The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was called
+Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediaeval mythology as a
+persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins,
+who all suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. The
+meaning of the myth is obvious. In German mythology, England is the
+Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover
+before daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is calling
+her in England." [15] The companions of Ursula are the pure stars, who
+leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regions
+of day. In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis; but,
+in accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the sensual
+Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story of
+Tannhauser.
+
+The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, between
+Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope yawns a cavern, the
+Horselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, as
+of subterranean water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened
+inhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night wild moans
+and cries issuing, mingled with peals of demon-like laughter. Here it
+was believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few who
+declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them
+from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and
+famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg,
+"saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him
+and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her,
+whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace
+in the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless
+revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpse
+of the pure light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, who
+took compassion on him and released him. He sought a village church, and
+to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution,
+until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father,
+horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt such as
+his could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand grow
+green and blossom. "Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul
+darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to him, the
+Venusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered
+that his pastoral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower.
+Then he sent messengers after Tannhauser, and they reached the Horsel
+vale to hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, had
+just entered the Horselloch. Since then Tannhauser has not been seen."
+(p. 201.)
+
+As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend, in its
+Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the struggle between
+the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated with
+pagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by
+the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up in
+despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery.
+
+But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in the
+folk-lore of every people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read it
+without being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill),
+entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numa
+to the grove of the nymph Egeria; of Odysseus held captive by the Lady
+Kalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale of
+Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus is
+ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph of darkness,
+Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or cover). So the zone of the moon-goddess
+Aphrodite inveigles all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount
+Ida; and by a similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemly
+idleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world.
+The disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus
+Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance.
+
+But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources of
+popular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint German
+picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole
+wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see
+the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms
+outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the
+alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace,
+the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with
+their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished
+by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the
+simplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; for
+the true significance of the whole picture is contained in the father's
+address to his child,
+
+     "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
+      In durren Blattern sauselt der Wind."
+
+The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert
+Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of
+Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful
+host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a
+bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of
+the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and
+piped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackened
+the face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and followed the
+piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they alls jumped
+in and were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone, the townsfolk
+refused to pay the piper on the ground that he was evidently a wizard.
+He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, and
+putting his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat all the
+little, plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children came merrily running
+after him, their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do,
+while he led them up a hill in the neighbourhood. A door opened in the
+mountain-side, through which he led them in, and they never were seen
+again; save one lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before
+the door shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he had not
+been able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street through
+which this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be
+played. For a long time the town dated its public documents from this
+fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historical
+event. [17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and,
+strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England
+believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in
+Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of
+elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers
+to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow
+him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing
+through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the
+wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the
+dead." To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wail
+of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past their
+cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities.
+He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bears
+away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes fillfils
+a double function, is supposed to rush at night over the tree-tops,
+"accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's spirits." And readers
+of recent French literature cannot fail to remember Erokmann-Chatrian's
+terrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he sped through
+the forest, carrying away a young girl's soul.
+
+Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking none
+other than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is the classic
+Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the
+Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of
+Apollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by
+Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. [18] And the
+father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures his
+child that the siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of the
+wind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple class of phenomena
+arose this entire family of charming legends.
+
+But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos), also
+draw rats after him? In answering this we shall have occasion to note
+that the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice against the
+brute creation which is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In many
+countries, rats and mice have been regarded as sacred animals; but in
+Germany they were thought to represent the human soul. One story out of
+a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a
+servant-girl fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling nuts. They
+observed a little red mouse creep from her mouth and run out of the
+window. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wake
+her, so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to
+the former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her,
+it vanished; at the same moment the girl died." [19] This completes the
+explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to the horrible
+story of Bishop Hatto.
+
+This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle of
+which stream he possessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as the
+Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and people
+came from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's ample and
+well-filled granaries. Well, he told them all to go into the barn, and
+when they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to the
+barn and burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry supper. But
+when he arose next morning, he heard that an army of rats had eaten all
+the corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to storm the palace.
+Looking from his window, he saw the roads and fields dark with them,
+as they came with fell purpose straight toward his mansion. In frenzied
+terror he took his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river. But it
+was of no use: down into the water marched the rats, and swam across,
+and scaled the walls, and gnawed through the stones, and came swarming
+in about the shrieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all.
+Now, bearing in mind what was said above, there can be no doubt that
+these rats were the souls of those whom the Bishop had murdered. There
+are many versions of the story in different Teutonic countries, and
+in some of them the avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strange
+metamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims. St. Gertrude, moreover,
+the heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead an
+army of mice; she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, in
+his character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats. [20]
+
+As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the
+psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic
+counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine
+attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early
+Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As the
+fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the house-top,
+the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith be
+required of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the howling
+of a dog under the window is supposed to portend a death in the family.
+It is the fleet greyhound of Hermes, come to escort the soul to the
+river Styx. [21]
+
+But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing can be more
+transparent than the phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is
+described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the
+cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo,
+and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as crawling
+through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle.
+He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under
+him and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype not only of
+the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave
+who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part
+the conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pry
+and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or
+expand himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale, [22]
+whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom
+the fisherman releases from the bottle.
+
+The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions suggested
+by the storm-cloud and the lightning must be reserved for a future
+occasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate the
+conclusion which is the result of the present inquiry, that the
+marvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryan
+household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and
+heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's
+serious attention. These stories--some of them familiar to us in
+infancy, others the delight of our maturer years--constitute the debris,
+or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distant
+highlands of ancient mythology.
+
+September, 1870.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE.
+
+IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a small
+inland village, I came upon an unexpected illustration of the tenacity
+with which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have now
+and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the
+trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of
+half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man
+was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked
+twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned
+upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the
+shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain
+spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the
+likeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain pointing
+to something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded
+to try the experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something in
+the ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass
+over that spot without bending down and pointing to it.
+
+My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as
+I perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the long
+drought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and here
+was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. These
+men were seeking water with a divining-rod. Here, alive before my eyes,
+was a superstitious observance, which I had supposed long since dead and
+forgotten by all men except students interested in mythology.
+
+As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy came
+up, stoutly affirming his incredulity,
+
+and offering to show the company how he could carry the rod motionless
+across the charmed spot. But when he came to take the weird twig he
+trembled with an ill-defined feeling of insecurity as to the soundness
+of his conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet the rod
+bent in spite of him,--as was not so very strange. For, with all his
+vague scepticism, the honest lad had not, and could not be supposed to
+have, the foi scientifique of which Littre speaks. [23]
+
+Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod; but something in my manner
+seemed at once to excite the suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes,
+take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it;
+there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break
+your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with
+a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture
+of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times
+across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the
+zenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize.
+"Well," said he, "you see, your temperament is peculiar; the conditions
+ain't favourable in your case; there are some people who never can work
+these things. But there's water below here, for all that, as you'll
+find, if you dig for it; there's nothing like a hazel-rod for finding
+out water."
+
+Very true: there are some persons who never can make such things work;
+who somehow always encounter "unfavourable conditions" when they wish
+to test the marvellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can make
+"Planchette" move in conformity to the requirements of any known
+alphabet; who never see ghosts, and never have "presentiments," save
+such as are obviously due to association of ideas. The ill-success of
+these persons is commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in the
+majority of cases, it might be more truly referred to the strength of
+their faith,--faith in the constancy of nature, and in the adequacy
+of ordinary human experience as interpreted by science. [24] La foi
+scientifique is an excellent preventive against that obscure, though not
+uncommon, kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to write
+and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without the
+conscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, no
+doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to
+Paris, [25] and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining
+the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first authentic
+case of clairvoyance.
+
+But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in his
+philosophizing, was certainly very defective in his acquaintance with
+the time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries so
+as to cover the field of Indo-European tradition, he would have learned
+that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, the
+Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as the
+hazel for the purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in due
+course of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod itself
+is but one among a large class of things to which popular belief has
+ascribed, along with other talismanic properties, the power of opening
+the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures.
+Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for
+cooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us endeavour to
+elucidate the origin of this curious superstition.
+
+The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use to
+which the divining-rod has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it was
+regularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation of
+Jacques Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible
+murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has been used from time immemorial
+by miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in the
+days when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field,
+instead of being exposed to the risks of financial speculation, the
+divining-rod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours'
+wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he would
+have taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to search for the buried
+treasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure of
+disease, and has been kept in households, like a wizard's charm, to
+insure general good-fortune and immunity from disaster.
+
+As we follow the conception further into the elf-land of popular
+tradition, we come upon a rod which not only points out the situation of
+hidden treasure, but even splits open the ground and reveals the mineral
+wealth contained therein. In German legend, "a shepherd, who was driving
+his flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped to rest, leaning on his
+staff, the mountain suddenly opened, for there was a springwort in his
+staff without his knowing it, and the princess [Ilse] stood before him.
+She bade him follow her, and when he was inside the mountain she told
+him to take as much gold as he pleased. The shepherd filled all his
+pockets, and was going away, when the princess called after him, 'Forget
+not the best.' So, thinking she meant that he had not taken enough,
+he filled his hat also; but what she meant was his staff with the
+springwort, which he had laid against the wall as soon as he stepped
+in. But now, just as he was going out at the opening, the rock suddenly
+slammed together and cut him in two." [26]
+
+Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the enclosed
+springwort, but in many cases a leaf or flower is itself competent to
+open the hillside. The little blue flower, forget-me-not, about which
+so many sentimental associations have clustered, owes its name to the
+legends told of its talismanic virtues. [27] A man, travelling on a
+lonely mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks it in his hat.
+Forthwith an iron door opens, showing up a lighted passage-way, through
+which the man advances into a magnificent hall, where rubies and
+diamonds and all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great heaps on
+the floor. As he eagerly fills his pockets his hat drops from his head,
+and when he turns to go out the little flower calls after him, "Forget
+me not!" He turns back and looks around, but is too bewildered with his
+good fortune to think of his bare head or of the luck-flower which he
+has let fall. He selects several more of the finest jewels he can
+find, and again starts to go out; but as he passes through the door the
+mountain closes amid the crashing of thunder, and cuts off one of his
+heels. Alone, in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain for the
+mysterious door: it has disappeared forever, and the traveller goes on
+his way, thankful, let us hope, that he has fared no worse.
+
+Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess Ilse, who invites the
+finder of the luck-flower to help himself to her treasures, and who
+utters the enigmatical warning. The mountain where the event occurred
+may be found almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it stood in
+Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun Alraschid. In the story of the
+Forty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talisman to
+open and shut the secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and
+when the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the contemplation of the
+bags of gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula,
+he meets no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In the
+story of Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow which guides the young
+adventurer through the hillside to the grotto of the Peri Banou. In
+the tale of Baba Abdallah, it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid which
+reveals at a single glance all the treasures hidden in the bowels of the
+earth.
+
+The ancient Romans also had their rock-breaking plant, called Saxifraga,
+or "sassafras." And the further we penetrate into this charmed circle
+of traditions the more evident does it appear that the power of cleaving
+rocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive element, into
+the conception of these treasure-showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould
+has given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends concerning the
+wonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon was said to have built
+his temple. From Asmodeus, prince of the Jann, Benaiah, the son of
+Jehoiada, wrested the secret of a worm no bigger than a barley-corn,
+which could split the hardest substance. This worm was called schamir.
+"If Solomon desired to possess himself of the worm, he must find the
+nest of the moor-hen, and cover it with a plate of glass, so that the
+mother bird could not get at her young without breaking the glass. She
+would seek schamir for the purpose, and the worm must be obtained from
+her." As the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the stones
+for that temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe,
+or any tool of iron, [28] he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According to
+another account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to
+penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni,
+the wise king covered a raven's eggs with a plate of crystal, and thus
+obtained schamir which the bird brought in order to break the plate.
+[29]
+
+In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent, due to the
+prolonged intercourse between the Jews and the Persians, a new feature
+is added to those before enumerated: the rock-splitting talisman is
+always found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in the myth
+reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort, whose marvellous powers we have
+noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according
+to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps its
+young. The bird flies away, and presently returns with the springwort,
+which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a loud
+explosion. The same account is given in German folk-lore. Elsewhere,
+as in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece, the bird is an eagle, a
+swallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe.
+
+In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "raven-stone,"
+also renders its possessor invisible,--a property which it shares with
+one of the treasure-finding plants, the fern. [30] In this respect
+it resembles the ring of Gyges, as in its divining and rock-splitting
+qualities it resembles that other ring which the African magrician gave
+to Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the cavern where stood the
+wonderful lamp.
+
+According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower also will make
+its finder invisible at pleasure. But, as the myth shrewdly adds, it is
+absolutely essential that the flower be found by accident: he who seeks
+for it never finds it! Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled,
+even if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of reasoning is
+favoured by our modern dealers in mystery: somehow the "conditions"
+always are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to test their
+pretensions.
+
+In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and grotesquely
+metamorphosed. The hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried and
+prepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the
+Hand of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks, but also
+lulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its influence, it is of
+course invaluable to thieves and burglars. I quote the following story
+from Thorpe's "Northern Mythology": "Two fellows once came to Huy, who
+pretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when they had supped would
+not retire to a sleeping-room, but begged their host would allow them
+to take a nap on the hearth. But the maid-servant, who did not like the
+looks of the two guests, remained by the kitchen door and peeped through
+a chink, when she saw that one of them drew a thief's hand from his
+pocket, the fingers of which, after having rubbed them with an ointment,
+he lighted, and they all burned except one. Again they held this finger
+to the fire, but still it would not burn, at which they appeared much
+surprised, and one said, 'There must surely be some one in the house
+who is not yet asleep.' They then hung the hand with its four burning
+fingers by the chimney, and went out to call their associates. But the
+maid followed them instantly and made the door fast, then ran up stairs,
+where the landlord slept, that she might wake him, but was unable,
+notwithstanding all her shaking and calling. In the mean time the
+thieves had returned and were endeavouring to enter the house by a
+window, but the maid cast them down from the ladder. They then took a
+different course, and would have forced an entrance, had it not occurred
+to the maid that the burning fingers might probably be the cause of her
+master's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she ran to the kitchen
+and blew them out, when the master and his men-servants instantly
+awoke, and soon drove away the robbers." The same event is said to have
+occurred at Stainmore in England; and Torquermada relates of Mexican
+thieves that they carry with them the left hand of a woman who has died
+in her first childbed, before which talisman all bolts yield and all
+opposition is benumbed. In 1831 "some Irish thieves attempted to commit
+a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. They
+entered the house armed with a dead man's hand with a lighted candle in
+it, believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed in a dead
+man's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; and
+also that if a candle in a dead hand be introduced into a house, it will
+prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, however, were
+alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them." [31]
+
+In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just like the
+divining-rod, for the detection of buried treasures.
+
+Here, then, we have a large and motley group of objects--the forked
+rod of ash or hazel, the springwort and the luck-flower, leaves,
+worms, stones, rings, and dead men's hands--which are for the most part
+competent to open the way into cavernous rocks, and which all agree
+in pointing out hidden wealth. We find, moreover, that many of these
+charmed objects are carried about by birds, and that some of them
+possess, in addition to their generic properties, the specific power of
+benumbing people's senses. What, now, is the common origin of this whole
+group of superstitions? And since mythology has been shown to be the
+result of primeval attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, what
+natural phenomenon could ever have given rise to so many seemingly
+wanton conceptions? Hopeless as the problem may at first sight seem, it
+has nevertheless been solved. In his great treatise on "The Descent
+of Fire," Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and traditions are
+descended from primitive myths explanatory of the lightning and the
+storm-cloud. [32]
+
+To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed by
+science, the sky is known to be merely an optical appearance due to the
+partial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick stratum
+of atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of watery
+vapour, which descend in rain-drops when sufficiently condensed; and
+the lightning is known to be a flash of light accompanying an electric
+discharge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been
+attained only through centuries of philosophizing and after careful
+observation and laborious experiment. To the untaught mind of a child or
+of an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural and plausible to regard
+the sky as a solid dome of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains,
+or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning as a flashing dart or
+a fiery serpent. In point of fact, we find that the conceptions actually
+entertained are often far more grotesque than these. I can recollect
+once framing the hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset were
+transient apparitions, vouchsafed us by way of warning, of that burning
+Calvinistic hell with which my childish imagination had been unwisely
+terrified; [33] and I have known of a four-year-old boy who thought that
+the snowy clouds of noonday were the white robes of the angels hung out
+to dry in the sun. [34] My little daughter is anxious to know whether
+it is necessary to take a balloon in order to get to the place where
+God lives, or whether the same end can be accomplished by going to the
+horizon and crawling up the sky; [35] the Mohammedan of old was working
+at the same problem when he called the rainbow the bridge Es-Sirat, over
+which souls must pass on their way to heaven. According to the ancient
+Jew, the sky was a solid plate, hammered out by the gods, and spread
+over the earth in order to keep up the ocean overhead; [36] but the
+plate was full of little windows, which were opened whenever it became
+necessary to let the rain come through. [37] With equal plausibility
+the Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve in which the daughters
+of Danaos were vainly trying to draw water; while to the Hindu the
+rain-clouds were celestial cattle milked by the wind-god. In primitive
+Aryan lore, the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were ships
+sailing over it; and an English legend tells how one of these ships
+once caught its anchor on a gravestone in the churchyard, to the great
+astonishment of the people who were coming out of church. Charon's
+ferry-boat was one of these vessels, and another was Odin's golden ship,
+in which the souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Valhalla. Hence it
+was once the Scandinavian practice to bury the dead in boats; and in
+Altmark a penny is still placed in the mouth of the corpse, that it may
+have the means of paying its fare to the ghostly ferryman. [38] In such
+a vessel drifted the Lady of Shalott on her fatal voyage; and of similar
+nature was the dusky barge, "dark as a funeral-scarf from stem to
+stern," in which Arthur was received by the black-hooded queens. [39]
+
+But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained in one way did not
+hinder it from being explained in a dozen other ways. The fact that the
+sun was generally regarded as an all-conquering hero did not prevent
+its being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the waters, or
+Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or the stone of Sisyphos, which
+was no sooner pushed to the zenith than it rolled down to the horizon.
+So the sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but it was
+also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon wandered, the country of
+the Lotos-eaters, or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight;
+and finally it was personified and worshipped as Dyaus or Varuna, the
+Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos. The clouds, too, had
+many other representatives besides ships and cows. In a future paper it
+will be shown that they were sometimes regarded as angels or houris; at
+present it more nearly concerns us to know that they appear, throughout
+all Aryan mythology, under the form of birds. It used to be a matter of
+hopeless wonder to me that Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's egg
+to hang in the dome of his palace should have been regarded as a crime
+worthy of punishment by the loss of the wonderful lamp; the obscurest
+part of the whole affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusion
+to the egg as his master: "Wretch! dost thou command me to bring thee
+my master, and hang him up in the midst of this vaulted dome?" But the
+incident is to some extent cleared of its mystery when we learn that
+the roc's egg is the bright sun, and that the roc itself is the rushing
+storm-cloud which, in the tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starry
+firmament, symbolized as a valley of diamonds. [40] According to one
+Arabic authority, the length of its wings is ten thousand fathoms. But
+in European tradition it dwindles from these huge dimensions to the size
+of an eagle, a raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated by
+Kuhn and others as representing the storm-cloud are likewise the wren
+or "kinglet" (French roitelet); the owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo,
+stork, and sparrow; and the red-breasted robin, whose name Robert was
+originally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In certain parts of
+France it is still believed that the robbing of a wren's nest will
+render the culprit liable to be struck by lightning. The same belief was
+formerly entertained in Teutonic countries with respect to the robin;
+and I suppose that from this superstition is descended the prevalent
+notion, which I often encountered in childhood, that there is something
+peculiarly wicked in killing robins.
+
+Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir, is the
+dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or pebble which
+the bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing more
+or less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the cloud.
+"If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird, the lightnings were
+regarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fiery
+serpents, elikiai gram-moeidws feromenoi, are believed in to this day by
+the Canadian Indians, who call the thunder their hissing." [41]
+
+But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to be found
+wrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the divining-rod. The
+persons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious allegories
+about thunder-storms; they were telling stories, or giving utterance
+to superstitions, of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old
+grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails
+and partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of killing
+robins, did not add that I should be struck by lightning if I failed to
+heed their admonitions. They had never heard that the robin was the bird
+of Thor; they merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition which
+had survived to their own times, while the essential part of it had long
+since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a robin's
+life as more sacred than a partridge's had been forgotten; but it left
+behind, as was natural, a vague recognition of that mythical sanctity.
+The primitive meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as the
+primitive meaning of a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of a
+worm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderbolts
+than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees the word
+ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes the phrase good
+bye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth is
+felt, and its period of luxuriant development dates from the time when
+its physical significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek
+had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make him
+king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his
+significance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained
+such an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obvious
+pedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu.
+
+Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted merely the wonderful
+stories which their own nurses and grandmas had told them, and had no
+intention of weaving subtle allegories or wrapping up a physical
+truth in mystic emblems, it follows that they were not bound to
+avoid incongruities or to preserve a philosophical symmetry in their
+narratives. In the great majority of complex myths, no such symmetry is
+to be found. A score of different mythical conceptions would get wrought
+into the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and construct a
+single harmonious system of conceptions out of the pieces must often end
+in ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is unquestionably the sun, so is the
+eye of Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out. [42] But the Greek poet knew
+nothing of the incongruity, for he was thinking only of a superhuman
+hero freeing himself from a giant cannibal; he knew nothing of Sanskrit,
+or of comparative mythology, and the sources of his myths were as
+completely hidden from his view as the sources of the Nile.
+
+We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of the
+schamir-myth the cloud is the bird which carries the worm, while in
+another version the cloud is the rock or mountain which the talisman
+cleaves open; nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which the
+two conceptions are mingled together without regard to an incongruity
+which in the mind of the myth-teller no longer exists. [43]
+
+In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which the clouds are
+more frequently represented than by rocks or mountains. Such were the
+Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the wind-god Orpheus, parted
+to make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of solar heroes.
+[44] Such, too, were the mountains Ossa and Pelion, which the giants
+piled up one upon another in their impious assault upon Zeus, the lord
+of the bright sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould observes: "The ancient Aryan had
+the same name for cloud and mountain. To him the piles of vapour on the
+horizon were so like Alpine ranges, that he had but one word whereby to
+designate both. [45] These great mountains of heaven were opened by the
+lightning. In the sudden flash he beheld the dazzling splendour within,
+but only for a moment, and then, with a crash, the celestial rocks
+closed again. Believing these vaporous piles to contain resplendent
+treasures of which partial glimpse was obtained by mortals in a
+momentary gleam, tales were speedily formed, relating the adventures of
+some who had succeeded in entering these treasure-mountains."
+
+This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by the arrow of
+Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the spear of Odin, the trident
+of Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked streak of light is the
+archetype of the divining-rod in its oldest form,--that in which it
+not only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of the
+Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them
+to the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to the
+divining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall be
+forked.
+
+It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the ancients
+to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked
+wand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower or
+leaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash,
+hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certain
+sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too complicated
+to be satisfactorily treated within the limits of the present paper. It
+has been said that the point of resemblance between a cow and a comet,
+that both have tails, was quite enough for the primitive word-maker: it
+was certainly enough for the primitive myth-teller. [46] Sometimes the
+pinnate shape of a leaf, the forking of a branch, the tri-cleft corolla,
+or even the red colour of a flower, seems to have been sufficient to
+determine the association of ideas. The Hindu commentators of the Veda
+certainly lay great stress on the fact that the palasa, one of their
+lightning-trees, is trident-leaved. The mistletoe branch is forked, like
+a wish-bone, [47] and so is the stem which bears the forget-me-not or
+wild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the Hindu ficus religiosa
+resemble long spear-heads. [48] But in many cases it is impossible
+for us to determine with confidence the reasons which may have guided
+primitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In the case of some
+of these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity to attempt to
+assign a mythical origin for each point of detail. The ointment of the
+dervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has probably no special
+mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of the
+story, in an age when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated and
+mingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as another
+the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of Indo-European
+folk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of; for however difficult it
+may be for us to perceive any connection between them and the celestial
+phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning them are so
+numerous and explicit as to render it certain that some such connection
+was imagined by the myth-makers. The superstition concerning the hand
+of glory is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of the Finns, the
+storm-cloud is a black man with a bright copper hand; and in Hindustan,
+Indra Savitar, the deity who slays the demon of the cloud, is
+golden-handed. The selection of the hand of a man who has been hanged
+is probably due to the superstition which regarded the storm-god Odin
+as peculiarly the lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon the
+gallows is placed directly in the track of the wild huntsman, who comes
+with his hounds to carry off the victim; and hence the notion, which,
+according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in Germany and not extinct in
+England," that every suicide by hanging is followed by a storm.
+
+The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have now pursued
+them long enough I believe, to have arrived at a tolerably clear
+understanding of the original nature of the divining-rod. Its power of
+revealing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its affinity
+for water results so obviously from the character of the lightning-myth
+as to need no further comment. But its power of detecting criminals
+still remains to be accounted for.
+
+In Greek mythology, the being which detects and punishes crime is the
+Erinys, the prototype of the Latin Fury, figured by late writers as a
+horrible monster with serpent locks. But this is a degradation of the
+original conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean Fury, and
+it cannot be explained from Greek sources alone. It appears in Sanskrit
+as Saranyu, a word which signifies the light of morning creeping over
+the sky. And thus we are led to the startling conclusion that, as the
+light of morning reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night,
+so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to be regarded under one aspect
+as the terrible detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling as the
+conclusion is, it is based on established laws of phonetic change, and
+cannot be gainsaid.
+
+But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the lightning and the
+divining-rod? To the modern mind the association is not an obvious one:
+in antiquity it was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths of
+the lightning often resemble each other so closely that, except by a
+delicate philological analysis, it is difficult to distinguish the one
+from the other. The reason is obvious. In each case the phenomenon to be
+explained is the struggle between the day-god and one of the demons
+of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the mind of the
+primitive man between the Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows and
+keep them in a dark cavern all night, and the throttling snake Ahi or
+Echidna, who imprisons the waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloud
+and covers the earth with a short-lived darkness. And so the poisoned
+arrows of Bellerophon, which slay the storm-dragon, differ in no
+essential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus slaughters the
+night-demons who have for ten long hours beset his mansion. Thus the
+divining-rod, representing as it does the weapon of the god of day,
+comes legitimately enough by its function of detecting and avenging
+crime.
+
+But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives water to
+the thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under cover of darkness;
+it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of the
+Gorgon Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus the ointment
+of the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all the
+treasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man
+who tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open bars
+and bolts, benumbs also those who happen to be near it. Indeed, few of
+the favoured mortals who were allowed to visit the caverns opened by
+sesame or the luck-flower, escaped without disaster. The monkish tale of
+"The Clerk and the Image," in which the primeval mythical features are
+curiously distorted, well illustrates this point.
+
+In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its right hand
+extended and on its forefinger the words "strike here." Many wise men
+puzzled in vain over the meaning of the inscription; but at last a
+certain priest observed that whenever the sun shone on the figure, the
+shadow of the finger was discernible on the ground at a little distance
+from the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until midnight, and
+then began to dig. At last his spade struck upon something hard. It
+was a trap-door, below which a flight of marble steps descended into a
+spacious hall, where many men were sitting in solemn silence amid piles
+of gold and diamonds and long rows of enamelled vases. Beyond this he
+found another room, a gynaecium filled with beautiful women reclining
+on richly embroidered sofas; yet here, too, all was profound silence.
+A superb banqueting-hall next met his astonished gaze; then a silent
+kitchen; then granaries loaded with forage; then a stable crowded
+with motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly lighted by a
+carbuncle which was suspended in one corner of the reception-room; and
+opposite stood an archer, with his bow and arrow raised, in the act of
+taking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed back through this hall, he
+saw a diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry
+away something wherewith to accredit his story, he reached out his
+hand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The
+archer had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a
+thousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found himself
+buried alive. [49]
+
+Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead, with its
+basilisk glance, those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns, it is
+regarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings with
+which the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower as it
+revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth of
+Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds," is the
+demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering, dark
+sayings which none but the all-knowing sun may understand. The flash
+of solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down from the
+cliff with a fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides
+this, the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer
+has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the
+life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence the use of the
+divining-rod in the cure of disease; and hence the large family of
+schamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs.
+In Grimm's tale of the "Three Snake Leaves," a prince is buried alive
+(like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching her
+body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawling from
+the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going, away soon returned
+with three green leaves in its mouth; then laying the parts of the body
+together so as to join, it put one leaf on each wound, and the dead
+snake was alive again. The prince, applying the leaves to his wife's
+body, restores her also to life." [50] In the Greek story, told by
+AElian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with the corpse of Glaukos,
+which he is ordered to restore to life. He kills a dragon which is
+approaching the body, but is presently astonished at seeing another
+dragon come with a blade of grass and place it upon its dead companion,
+which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos takes the same blade of
+grass, and with it resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the
+Hindu story of Panch Phul Ranee, and in Fouque's "Sir Elidoc," which is
+founded on a Breton legend.
+
+We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic
+properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to the
+various lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of
+mistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific against
+epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed
+through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods are
+used in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, and
+horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the venom
+of serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is not
+extinct even in the United States. The other day I was told, not by an
+old granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed with a very unusual
+amount of good common-sense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go through
+fire than creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an ash-tree.
+Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who adds that if you draw
+a circle with an ash rod around the spot of ground on which a snake
+is lying, the animal must die of starvation, being as effectually
+imprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is believed
+that a blow from an ash stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ash
+shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A Swedish peasant will tell
+you that snakes may be deprived of their venom by a touch with a hazel
+wand; and when an ancient Greek had occasion to make his bed in the
+woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that the smell
+of them would drive away poisonous animals. [51]
+
+But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more clearly
+in another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of light
+coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for
+the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account
+for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship; they say that
+"their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly
+panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill." [52]
+This panther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird which
+drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkable
+conception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to
+that employed by Count Rumford in his experiments on the generation of
+heat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords around a pointed
+stick in such a way that the unwinding of the one would wind up the
+other, and then, placing the point of the stick against a circular disk
+of wood, twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. This
+instrument is called a chark, and is still used in South Africa, [53]
+in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians
+found it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, from
+Labrador to the Straits of Magellan. [54] The Hindus churned milk by
+a similar process; [55] and in order to explain the thunder-storm, a
+Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their
+opponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churning
+the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immortality. They took Mount
+Mandara for a churning-stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha
+round it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the
+Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head." [56]
+In this myth the churning-stick, with its flying serpent-cords, is
+the lightning, and the armrita, or drink of immortality, is simply the
+rain-water, which in Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues
+as the lightning. "In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which
+restores the dead earth, a water brought by a bird from the depths of a
+gloomy cave." [57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves
+to drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the
+charmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to human shape
+the victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which
+mediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce de
+Leon traversed the wilds of Florida. [58]
+
+"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and
+prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He got
+a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he cut and
+pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked
+it round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity.
+Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst
+into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark and
+roasted them."--Reade, Never too Late to Mend, chap. xxxviii.
+
+The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the peaked
+mountain Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and devils took for their
+churning-stick. The word means "a churning-stick," and it appears also,
+with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha.
+Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically
+identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole
+fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons.
+This sublime personage was originally nothing but the celestial drill
+which churns fire out of the clouds; but the Greeks had so entirely
+forgotten his origin that they interpreted his name as meaning "the one
+who thinks beforehand," and accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus,
+or "the one who thinks too late." The Greeks had adopted another name,
+trypanon, for their fire-drill, and thus the primitive character of
+Prometheus became obscured.
+
+I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely essential that
+the divining-rod should be forked. To this rule, however, there was one
+exception, and if any further evidence be needed to convince the
+most sceptical that the divining-rod is nothing but a symbol of
+the lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For this
+exceptional kind of divining-rod was made of a pointed stick rotating
+in a block of wood, and it was the presence of hidden water or treasure
+which was supposed to excite the rotatory motion.
+
+In the myths relating to Prometheus, the lightning-god appears as the
+originator of civilization, sometimes as the creator of the human race,
+and always as its friend, [59] suffering in its behalf the most fearful
+tortures at the hands of the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates man
+by making a clay image and infusing into it a spark of the fire which he
+had brought from heaven; in another story he is himself the first man.
+In the Peloponnesian myth Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under another
+name, is the first man, and his mother was an ash-tree. In Norse
+mythology, also, the gods were said to have made the first man out of
+the ash-tree Yggdrasil. The association of the heavenly fire with
+the life-giving forces of nature is very common in the myths of both
+hemispheres, and in view of the facts already cited it need not surprise
+us. Hence the Hindu Agni and the Norse Thor were patrons of marriage,
+and in Norway, the most lucky day on which to be married is still
+supposed to be Thursday, which in old times was the day of the
+fire-god. [60] Hence the lightning-plants have divers virtues in
+matters pertaining to marriage. The Romans made their wedding torches
+of whitethorn; hazel-nuts are still used all over Europe in divinations
+relating to the future lover or sweetheart; [61] and under a mistletoe
+bough it is allowable for a gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number of
+kindred superstitions are described by Mr. Kelly, to whom I am indebted
+for many of these examples. [62]
+
+Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the divining-rod, or
+as it is called in this sense the wish-rod, with its kindred talismans,
+from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to the Sangreal,
+the philosopher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. These
+symbols of the reproductive energies of nature, which give to the
+possessor every good and perfect gift, illustrate the uncurbed belief in
+the power of wish which the ancient man shared with modern children. In
+the Norse story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes a whimsical shape.
+The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of gold, when everybody had
+whatever he wanted. This was because the giant Frodi had a mill which
+ground out peace and plenty and abundance of gold withal, so that it lay
+about the roads like pebbles. Through the inexcusable avarice of
+Frodi, this wonderful implement was lost to the world. For he kept his
+maid-servants working at the mill until they got out of patience, and
+began to make it grind out hatred and war. Then came a mighty sea-rover
+by night and slew Frodi and carried away the maids and the quern. When
+he got well out to sea, he told them to grind out salt, and so they did
+with a vengeance. They ground the ship full of salt and sank it, and so
+the quern was lost forever, but the sea remains salt unto this day.
+
+Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro or Freyr, and
+observes that the magic mill is only another form of the fire-churn, or
+chark. According to another version the quern is still grinding away
+and keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it lies there is a
+prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which sucks down ships.
+
+In its completed shape, the lightning-wand is the caduceus, or rod of
+Hermes. I observed, in the preceding paper, that in the Greek conception
+of Hermes there have been fused together the attributes of two deities
+who were originally distinct. The Hermes of the Homeric Hymn is a
+wind-god; but the later Hermes Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, the
+mutilation of whose statues caused such terrible excitement in Athens
+during the Peloponnesian War, is a very different personage. He is
+a fire-god, invested with many solar attributes, and represents the
+quickening forces of nature. In this capacity the invention of fire was
+ascribed to him as well as to Prometheus; he was said to be the friend
+of mankind, and was surnamed Ploutodotes, or "the giver of wealth."
+
+The Norse wind-god Odin has in like manner acquired several of the
+attributes of Freyr and Thor. [63] His lightning-spear, which is
+borrowed from Thor, appears by a comical metamorphosis as a wish-rod
+which will administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor.
+Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an old coat, name
+your intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howl
+with pain at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale
+of "The Lad who went to the North Wind," with which we may conclude
+this discussion. The story is told, with little variation, in Hindustan,
+Germany, and Scandinavia.
+
+The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes, once blew away a
+poor woman's meal. So her boy went to the North Wind and demanded his
+rights for the meal his mother had lost. "I have n't got your meal,"
+said the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which will cover itself with an
+excellent dinner whenever you tell it to." So the lad took the cloth and
+started for home. At nightfall he stopped at an inn, spread his cloth
+on the table, and ordered it to cover itself with good things, and so
+it did. But the landlord, who thought it would be money in his pocket
+to have such a cloth, stole it after the boy had gone to bed, and
+substituted another just like it in appearance. Next day the boy went
+home in great glee to show off for his mother's astonishment what the
+North Wind had given him, but all the dinner he got that day was what
+the old woman cooked for him. In his despair he went back to the North
+Wind and called him a liar, and again demanded his rights for the meal
+he had lost. "I have n't got your meal," said the Wind, "but here's a
+ram which will drop money out of its fleece whenever you tell it to." So
+the lad travelled home, stopping over night at the same inn, and when he
+got home he found himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of its
+fleece. A third time he visited the North Wind, and obtained a bag with
+a stick in it which, at the word of command, would jump out of the bag
+and lay on until told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his
+cloth and ram, he turned in at the same tavern, and going to a bench lay
+down as if to sleep. The landlord thought that a stick carried about in
+a bag must be worth something, and so he stole quietly up to the bag,
+meaning to get the stick out and change it. But just as he got within
+whacking distance, the boy gave the word, and out jumped the stick
+and beat the thief until he promised to give back the ram and the
+tablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for the meal which the North
+Wind had blown away. October, 1870.
+
+
+
+
+III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS.
+
+IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited Zeus
+to dinner, and served up for him a dish of human flesh, in order to test
+the god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the impious
+monarch received the punishment which his crime had merited. He was
+transformed into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the viands
+with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of Olympos.
+From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each
+year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin of a certain
+lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into the water
+and became a wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed about the
+adjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during all
+this time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his clothes
+were hanging, put them on, and return to his natural form. It is further
+related of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been present at
+a human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was
+transformed into a wolf for a term of ten years. [64]
+
+These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the mediaeval
+imagination into the horrible superstition of werewolves.
+
+A werewolf, or loup-garou [65] was a person who had the power of
+transforming himself into a wolf, being endowed, while in the lupine
+state, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and the
+irresistible strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the existence
+of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the metamorphosis was supposed
+to be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the present day,
+in secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still cherished
+by peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast amount
+of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into
+insignificance. It is the business of the comparative mythologist to
+trace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may have
+sprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascertaining
+and classifying the actual facts which this particular conception was
+used to interpret.
+
+The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to illustrate
+the complicated manner in which divers mythical conceptions and
+misunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate a
+long-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that
+the whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon words; but
+the careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and
+Baring-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstances
+have been at work. The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in its
+origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious mixture
+of mythical and historical elements.
+
+With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is probably
+right. The story seems to belong to that large class of myths which have
+been devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whose
+true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios, as applied to
+Zeus, had originally no reference to wolves: it means "the bright one,"
+and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only because of the similarity
+in sound between the names for "wolf" and "brightness." Aryan mythology
+furnishes numerous other instances of this confusion. The solar deity,
+Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but popular
+etymology made a kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as
+the "wolf-born." The name of the hero Autolykos means simply the
+"self-luminous"; but it was more frequently interpreted as meaning "a
+very wolf," in allusion to the supposed character of its possessor.
+Bazra, the name of the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for
+"fortress"; but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence
+the story of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in order to measure
+the area of the place to be fortified. The old theory that the Irish
+were Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate
+the old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, "fair," seen in the
+name of the hero Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers
+identified Fena with phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like
+misunderstanding of the epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by
+the Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and the
+soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish.
+[66] So the Franks explained the name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia,
+by the story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief
+magistrate with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give": [67] the
+Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us
+with equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander overcame
+Codomannus with dorn, "the spear." A certain passage in the Alps is
+called Scaletta, from its resemblance to a staircase; but according to a
+local tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons of a
+company of Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, while
+attempting to penetrate into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes
+the town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemish
+handt werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend of the giant
+who cut of the hands of those who passed his castle without paying him
+black-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt." [68] In the myth of Bishop
+Hatto, related in a previous paper, the Mause-thurm is a corruption of
+maut-thurm; it means "customs-tower," and has nothing to do with mice
+or rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating myth
+getting fastened to this particular place; that it did not give rise
+to the myth itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in other
+places. Somewhere in England there is a place called Chateau Vert; the
+peasantry have corrupted it into Shotover, and say that it has
+borne that name ever since Little John shot over a high hill in the
+neighbourhood. [69] Latium means "the flat land"; but, according to
+Virgil, it is the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the wrath
+of his usurping son Jupiter. [70]
+
+It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear received
+its name. The Greek word arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant
+originally any bright object, and was applied to the bear--for what
+reason it would not be easy to state--and to that constellation which
+was most conspicuous in the latitude of the early home of the Aryans.
+When the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi,
+they symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as
+Max Muller observes, "the name of the Arctic regions rests on a
+misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in Central
+Asia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful observer has looked
+at these seven bright stars, wondering why they were ever called the
+Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human speech."
+Among the Algonquins the sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his
+name being compounded of michi, "great," and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabos
+also meant "white," so that the god was doubtless originally called
+simply "the Great White One." The same naive process has made bears of
+the Arkadians, whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely signified
+that they were "children of light"; and the metamorphosis of Kallisto,
+mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, rests
+apparently upon no other foundation than an erroneous etymology.
+Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but another form of
+Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his
+legend is but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time of drought
+offers to Zeus the flesh of his own offspring, the withered fruits, and
+is punished for his impiety.
+
+It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though valid as far
+as it goes, is inadequate to explain all the features of the werewolf
+superstition, or to account for its presence in all Aryan countries and
+among many peoples who are not of Aryan origin. There can be no doubt
+that the myth-makers transformed Lykaon into a wolf because of his
+unlucky name; because what really meant "bright man" seemed to them
+to mean "wolf-man"; but it has by no means been proved that a similar
+equivocation occurred in the case of all the primitive Aryan werewolves,
+nor has it been shown to be probable that among each people the
+being with the uncanny name got thus accidentally confounded with the
+particular beast most dreaded by that people. Etymology alone does not
+explain the fact that while Gaul has been the favourite haunt of the
+man-wolf, Scandinavia has been preferred by the man-bear, and Hindustan
+by the man-tiger. To account for such a widespread phenomenon we must
+seek a more general cause.
+
+Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking than the
+close community of nature which it assumes between man and brute. The
+doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all
+over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two; the
+Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow, and will
+on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but it may
+he his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M`Lennan and Mr.
+Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the primeval
+worship of ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism. [71]
+
+The worship of ancestors seems to have been every where the oldest
+systematized form of fetichistic religion. The reverence paid to the
+chieftain of the tribe while living was continued and exaggerated after
+his death The uncivilized man is everywhere incapable of grasping
+the idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized people. He cannot
+understand that a man should pass away so as to be no longer capable of
+communicating with his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade
+remains in his mind, and the savage's philosophic realism far surpasses
+that of the most extravagant mediaeval schoolmen; to him the persistence
+of the idea implies the persistence of the reality. The dead man,
+accordingly, is not really dead; he has thrown off his body like a husk,
+yet still retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to his old
+friends, especially after nightfall. He is no doubt possessed of more
+extensive powers than before his transformation, [72] and may very
+likely have a share in regulating the weather, granting or withholding
+rain. Therefore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled and
+propitiated more sedulously now than before his strange transformation.
+
+This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the state
+religion of China, and it still exists as a portion of Brahmanism; but
+in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its vigour and in all
+its naive simplicity. According to the ancient Aryan, the pitris, or
+"Fathers" (Lat. patres), live in the sky along with Yama, the great
+original Pitri of mankind. This first man came down from heaven in the
+lightning, and back to heaven both himself and all his offspring must
+have gone. There they distribute light unto men below, and they shine
+themselves as stars; and hence the Christianized German peasant, fifty
+centuries later, tells his children that the stars are angels' eyes, and
+the English cottager impresses it on the youthful mind that it is wicked
+to point at the stars, though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are not
+stars only, nor do they content themselves with idly looking down on
+the affairs of men, after the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities of
+Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather;
+they send rain, thunder, and lightning; and they especially delight
+in rushing over the housetops in a great gale of wind, led on by their
+chief, the mysterious huntsman, Hermes or Odin.
+
+It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound of
+Hermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is such
+an alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout
+all Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the
+night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the
+souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses. [73] Sometimes
+the whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a single
+dog, the messenger of the god of shades, who comes to summon the
+departing soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great ravening
+wolf who comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life,
+as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured little Red Riding-Hood
+with her robe of scarlet twilight. [74] Thus we arrive at a true
+werewolf myth. The storm-wind, or howling Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore,
+is "a great misshapen giant with red beard and red hair, with pointed
+protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human flesh; his body is
+covered with coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he looks
+from side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh and blood of men,
+to satisfy his raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst. Towards
+nightfall his strength increases manifold; he can change his shape at
+will; he haunts the woods, and roams howling through the jungle." [75]
+
+Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri who
+appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves or wish-hounds,
+or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious to the
+mythopoeic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to
+the uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer
+has shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic
+emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate
+descendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a
+beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and
+the descendant of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyaena cannot be
+pronounced unfaithful to his own style of philosophizing, if he regards
+his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of night,
+as belonging to whatever order of beasts his totem associations may
+suggest.
+
+Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject of
+metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the curious process by which
+the intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion that
+men could be transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soul
+can temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been universally
+entertained; and from the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a
+short step to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Ages
+the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the theory
+that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it. Hence it
+was very difficult for a person accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi;
+for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was innocently
+reposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was obvious that the soul may
+nevertheless have been in attendance at the witches' Sabbath or busied
+in maiming a neighbour's cattle. According to one mediaeval notion, the
+soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which remained in a trance
+until its return. [76]
+
+The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is now, I believe,
+sufficiently indicated. The belief, however, did not reach its complete
+development, or acquire its most horrible features, until the pagan
+habits of thought which had originated it were modified by contact
+with Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing necessarily
+diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. But
+Christianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions under such
+strange disguises, which degraded the "All-father" Odin into the ogre
+of the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and which blended
+the beneficent lightning-god Thor and the mischievous Hermes and the
+faun-like Pan into the grotesque Teutonic Devil, did not fail to impart
+a new and fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy
+became regarded as a species of witchcraft; the werewolf was supposed
+to have obtained his peculiar powers through the favour or connivance
+of the Devil; and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken on
+the wheel for having availed themselves of the privilege of
+beast-metamorphosis. The superstition, thus widely extended and greatly
+intensified, was confirmed by many singular phenomena which cannot
+be omitted from any thorough discussion of the nature and causes of
+lycanthropy.
+
+The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity, characteristic
+of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other countries. In times when
+killing one's enemies often formed a part of the necessary business of
+life, persons were frequently found who killed for the mere love of the
+thing; with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merely
+a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which worships
+mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the current idea of heaven
+was that of a place where people could hack each other to pieces through
+all eternity, and when the man who refused a challenge was punished with
+confiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century,
+the chief business and amusement in life was to set sail for some
+pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the coasts and
+navigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre. When at home, in the
+intervals between their freebooting expeditions, they were liable to
+become possessed by a strange homicidal madness, during which they would
+array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears, and sally forth by
+night to crack the backbones, smash the skulls, and sometimes to drink
+with fiendish glee the blood of unwary travellers or loiterers. These
+fits of madness were usually followed by periods of utter exhaustion and
+nervous depression. [77]
+
+Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was the
+celebrated "Berserker rage," not peculiar to the Northland, although
+there most conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we
+find that in comparatively civilized countries there have been many
+cases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two most celebrated cases,
+among those collected by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Marechal
+de Retz, in 1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the
+seventeenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young girls into
+her palace on divers pretexts, and then coolly murdered them, for the
+purpose of bathing in their blood. The spectacle of human suffering
+became at last such a delight to her, that she would apply with her
+own hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks of her
+victims as the epicure relishes each sip of his old Chateau Margaux.
+In this way she is said to have murdered six hundred and fifty
+persons before her evil career was brought to an end; though, when one
+recollects the famous men in buckram and the notorious trio of crows,
+one is inclined to strike off a cipher, and regard sixty-five as a
+sufficiently imposing and far less improbable number. But the case of
+the Marechal de Retz is still more frightful. A marshal of France, a
+scholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life, he became suddenly
+possessed by an uncontrollable desire to murder children. During seven
+years he continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle,
+at the rate of about TWO EACH WEEK, (?) and then put them to death in
+various ways, that he might witness their agonies and bathe in their
+blood; experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse,
+but led on by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this
+unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle was found
+to contain bins full of children's bones. The horrible details of the
+trial are to be found in the histories of France by Michelet and Martin.
+
+Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to murder
+has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of Chalons was
+sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy.
+"This wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked them
+in the gloaming when they strayed in the woods, had torn them with his
+teeth and killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their
+flesh as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great relish. The
+number of little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A whole caskful
+of bones was discovered in his house." [78] About 1850 a beggar in the
+village of Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved to have killed and eaten
+fourteen children. A house had one day caught fire and burnt to the
+ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape. The
+beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering from excessive
+hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a meal off the charred
+body. From that moment he was tormented by a craving for human flesh.
+He met a little orphan girl, about nine years old, and giving her a
+pinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like it under a tree in the
+neighbouring wood. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, and
+eaten. In the course of three years thirteen other children mysteriously
+disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an innkeeper
+missed a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of this beggar's
+honesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin, burst suddenly in at the door,
+and to his horror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak a
+severed head; a bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces of
+a thigh were cooking over the fire. [79]
+
+This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, though
+ruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been subject to any
+mental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, in
+which the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by genuine
+hallucination. Forms of insanity in which the afflicted persons imagine
+themselves to be brute animals are not perhaps very common, but they are
+not unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man who believed himself
+to be a horse, and would stand by the hour together before a manger,
+nibbling hay, or deluding himself with the presence of so doing. Many
+of the cannibals whose cases are related by Mr. Baring-Gould, in
+his chapter of horrors, actually believed themselves to have been
+transformed into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of
+thirteen, partially idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy;
+his jaws were large and projected forward, and his canine teeth were
+unnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed
+himself to be a werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls,
+he scared them out of their wits by telling them that as soon as the sun
+had set he would turn into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few days
+later, one little girl, having gone out at nightfall to look after the
+sheep, was attacked by some creature which in her terror she mistook for
+a wolf, but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean Grenier.
+She beat him off with her sheep-staff, and fled home. As several
+children had mysteriously disappeared from the neighbourhood, Grenier
+was at once suspected. Being brought before the parliament of Bordeaux,
+he stated that two years ago he had met the Devil one night in the woods
+and had signed a compact with him and received from him a wolf-skin.
+Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after dark, resuming his human
+shape by daylight. He had killed and eaten several children whom he had
+found alone in the fields, and on one occasion he had entered a house
+while the family were out and taken the baby from its cradle. A careful
+investigation proved the truth of these statements, so far as the
+cannibalism was concerned. There is no doubt that the missing children
+were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no doubt that in his own mind
+the halfwitted boy was firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here the
+lycanthropy was complete.
+
+In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some
+countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly
+mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two wolves,
+which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men
+gave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost
+them; when, suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering
+with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and
+with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were
+clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh." [80]
+
+This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature under the
+dominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to pieces
+the corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether there were
+any wolves in the case, except what the excited imaginations of the men
+may have conjured up, I will not presume to determine; but it is certain
+that Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several
+persons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced to death,
+but the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence, and charitably shut
+him up in a madhouse.
+
+The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to these of
+Grenier and Roulet. Their share in maintaining the werewolf superstition
+is undeniable; but modern science finds in them nothing that cannot be
+readily explained. That stupendous process of breeding, which we call
+civilization, has been for long ages strengthening those kindly social
+feelings by the possession of which we are chiefly distinguished from
+the brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses to die for want of
+exercise, or checking in every possible way their further expansion by
+legislative enactments. But this process, which is transforming us from
+savages into civilized men, is a very slow one; and now and then there
+occur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to an
+ancestral type of character. Now and then persons are born, in civilized
+countries, whose intellectual powers are on a level with those of the
+most degraded Australian savage, and these we call idiots. And now and
+then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetites and cravings
+of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty and his liking for human flesh.
+Modern physiology knows how to classify and explain these abnormal
+cases, but to the unscientific mediaeval mind they were explicable only
+on the hypothesis of a diabolical metamorphosis. And there is nothing
+strange in the fact that, in an age when the prevailing habits of
+thought rendered the transformation of men into beasts an easily
+admissible notion, these monsters of cruelty and depraved appetite
+should have been regarded as capable of taking on bestial forms. Nor is
+it strange that the hallucination under which these unfortunate wretches
+laboured should have taken such a shape as to account to their feeble
+intelligence for the existence of the appetites which they were
+conscious of not sharing with their neighbours and contemporaries. If
+a myth is a piece of unscientific philosophizing, it must sometimes
+be applied to the explanation of obscure psychological as well as of
+physical phenomena. Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and says,
+"Arrested development," the terrified ancient made the sign of the cross
+and cried, "Werewolf."
+
+We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for a
+moment to examine the wild superstitions about "changelings," which
+contributed, along with so many others, to make the lives of our
+ancestors anxious and miserable. These superstitions were for the most
+part attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and other
+obscure nervous diseases. A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health,
+and whose actions have been consistent and rational, suddenly loses all
+self-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself. Modern
+science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it was
+explicable only on the hypothesis that a demon had entered the body
+of the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man and
+substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in stature and
+features. Hence the numerous legends of changelings, some of which
+are very curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one Rickard,
+surnamed the Rake, from his worthless character. A good-natured, idle
+fellow, he spent all his evenings in dancing,--an accomplishment in
+which no one in the village could rival him. One night, in the midst of
+a lively reel, he fell down in a fit. "He's struck with a fairy-dart,"
+exclaimed all the friends, and they carried him home and nursed him; but
+his face grew so thin and his manner so morose that by and by all began
+to suspect that the true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his
+place. Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician; and so,
+in order to put the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in the
+room by the side of his bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day,
+when all were supposed to be in the field making hay, some members
+of the family secreted in a clothes-press saw the bedroom door open a
+little way, and a lean, foxy face, with a pair of deep-sunken eyes, peer
+anxiously about the premises. Having satisfied itself that the coast
+was clear, the face withdrew, the door was closed, and presently such
+ravishing strains of music were heard as never proceeded from a bagpipe
+before or since that day. Soon was heard the rustle of innumerable
+fairies, come to dance to the changeling's music. Then the "fairy-man"
+of the village, who was keeping watch with the family, heated a pair
+of tongs red-hot, and with deafening shouts all burst at once into the
+sick-chamber. The music had ceased and the room was empty, but in at the
+window glared a fiendish face, with such fearful looks of hatred, that
+for a moment all stood motionless with terror. But when the fairy-man,
+recovering himself, advanced with the hot tongs to pinch its nose, it
+vanished with an unearthly yell, and there on the bed was Rickard, safe
+and sound, and cured of his epilepsy. [81]
+
+Comparing this legend with numerous others relating to changelings,
+and stripping off the fantastic garb of fairy-lore with which popular
+imagination has invested them, it seems impossible to doubt that they
+have arisen from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the obscure
+phenomena of mental disease. If this be so, they afford an excellent
+collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same mental
+habits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic person as a
+changeling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy as the temporary
+departure of a witch's soul from its body, would enable them to
+attribute a wolf's nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal
+appetites. And when the myth-forming process had got thus far, it would
+not stop short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine
+body; for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such a
+transformation.
+
+It remains for us to sum up,--to tie into a bunch the keys which
+have helped us to penetrate into the secret causes of the werewolf
+superstition. In a previous paper we saw what a host of myths,
+fairy-tales, and superstitious observances have sprung from attempts to
+interpret one simple natural phenomenon,--the descent of fire from the
+clouds. Here, on the other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude
+of mythical elements may combine to build up in course of time a single
+enormous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and fancy have
+co-operated in keeping the superstition from falling. In the first place
+the worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion
+of the transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves; and this
+notion was confirmed by the ambiguous explanation of the storm-wind
+as the rushing of a troop of dead men's souls or as the howling of
+wolf-like monsters. Mediaeval Christianity retained these conceptions,
+merely changing the superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally the
+occurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by
+lycanthropic hallucinations, being interpreted as due to such demoniacal
+metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle
+Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently
+ascribe the origin of the entire superstition, seemed to me to have
+played a very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose that Jean
+Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf
+sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a
+light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as
+far as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless
+helped to sustain the delusion.
+
+Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creature
+of undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be quite
+imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by which
+his change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf
+was commonly called a "skin-changer" or "turn-coat" (versipellis), and
+similar epithets were applied to him in the Middle Ages The mediaeval
+theory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form, his hair grew
+inwards; when he wished to become a wolf, he simply turned himself
+inside out. In many trials on record, the prisoners were closely
+interrogated as to how this inversion might be accomplished; but I am
+not aware that any one of them ever gave a satisfactory answer. At
+the moment of change their memories seem to have become temporarily
+befogged. Now and then a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off,
+or was partially flayed, in order that the ingrowing hair might be
+detected. [82] Another theory was, that the possessed person had merely
+to put on a wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the lupine form
+and character; and in this may perhaps be seen a vague reminiscence of
+the alleged fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the woods
+by night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears. [83] Such a wolfskin
+was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand, confessed to
+using a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of becoming a werewolf
+was to obtain a girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases are
+related in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology." One hot day in harvest-time
+some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade; when one of them, who could
+not sleep, saw the man next him arise quietly and gird him with a strap,
+whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up from among the
+sleepers and ran off across the fields. Another man, who possessed such
+a girdle, once went away from home without remembering to lock it
+up. His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and as he
+proceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became instantly transformed
+into a strange-looking beast. Just then his father came in, and seizing
+the girdle restored the child to his natural shape. The boy said that no
+sooner had he buckled it on than he was tormented with a raging hunger.
+
+Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. At
+Caseburg, as a man and his wife were making hay, the woman threw down
+her pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beast
+should come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it.
+Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him. The man threw his hat at it,
+but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the animal
+with his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's dead body lay
+at his feet.
+
+A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to have the hat thrown
+at her, in order that she might be henceforth free from her liability
+to become a werewolf. A man was one night returning with his wife from
+a merry-making when he felt the change coming on. Giving his wife the
+reins, he jumped from the wagon, telling her to strike with her apron
+at any animal which might come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to
+the side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with her apron, it
+bit off a piece and ran away. Presently the man returned with the
+piece of apron in his mouth and consoled his terrified wife with the
+information that the enchantment had left him forever.
+
+A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into the
+annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked
+by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast
+made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily,
+or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its
+fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of
+his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend, to whom he
+exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a woman's hand,
+upon which was a wedding-ring. His wife's ring was at once recognized by
+the other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his
+wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden
+beneath her apron, when the husband, seizing her by the arm, found his
+terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidently
+just fresh from the wound. She was given into custody, and in the event
+was burned at Riom, in presence of thousands of spectators." [84]
+
+Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recognizing him while in his
+brute shape. A Swedish legend tells of a cottager who, on entering the
+forest one day without recollecting to say his Patter Noster, got into
+the power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For many years his
+wife mourned him as dead. But one Christmas eve the old Troll, disguised
+as a beggarwoman, came to the house for alms; and being taken in and
+kindly treated, told the woman that her husband might very likely appear
+to her in wolf-shape. Going at night to the pantry to lay aside a joint
+of meat for tomorrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws on
+the window-sill, looking wistfully in at her. "Ah, dearest," said she,
+"if I knew that thou wert really my husband, I would give thee a bone."
+Whereupon the wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her in
+the same old clothes which he had on the day that the Troll got hold of
+him.
+
+In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to creep through a
+colt's placental membrane stretched between four sticks, she would for
+the rest of her life bring forth children without pain or illness; but
+all the boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls Maras,
+or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition appears that curious
+kinship between the werewolf and the wife or maiden of supernatural
+race, which serves admirably to illustrate the nature of both
+conceptions, and the elucidation of which shall occupy us throughout the
+remainder of this paper.
+
+It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality of the
+nightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine. The Mara was a female
+demon, [85] who would come at night and torment men or women by
+crouching on their chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration.
+The scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's picture, though the
+frenzied-looking horse which there accompanies the demon has no place
+in the original superstition. A Netherlandish story illustrates the
+character of the Mara. Two young men were in love with the same damsel.
+One of them, being tormented every night by a Mara, sought advice from
+his rival, and it was a treacherous counsel that he got. "Hold a sharp
+knife with the point towards your breast, and you'll never see the Mara
+again," said this false friend. The lad thanked him, but when he lay
+down to rest he thought it as well to be on the safe side, and so held
+the knife handle downward. So when the Mara came, instead of forcing the
+blade into his breast, she cut herself badly, and fled howling; and let
+us hope, though the legend here leaves us in the dark, that this poor
+youth, who is said to have been the comelier of the two, revenged
+himself on his malicious rival by marrying the young lady.
+
+But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting shape, and became the
+mistress or even the wife of some mortal man to whom she happened to
+take a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on being recognized. There
+is a well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who, journeying one day
+through the forest, found a beautiful lady stripped naked and tied to a
+tree, her back all covered with deep gashes streaming with blood, from a
+flogging which some bandits had given her. Of course he took her home
+to his castle and married her, and for a while they lived very happily
+together, and the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that kings and
+emperors held tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight used
+to go to mass every Sunday, and greatly was he scandalized when he found
+that his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but would always
+get up and walk out of church just as the choir struck up. All her
+husband's coaxing was of no use; threats and entreaties were alike
+powerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At last
+the good man determined to use force; and so one Sunday, as the lady got
+up to go out, according to custom, he seized her by the arm and sternly
+commanded her to remain. Her whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and her
+dark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly brilliancy. The services paused
+for a moment, and all eyes were turned toward the knight and his
+lady. "In God's name, tell me what thou art," shouted the knight; and
+instantly, says the chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady melted
+away, and was seen no more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror,
+an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel
+roof asunder, and disappeared in the air."
+
+In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, or
+Swan-maidens. A peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in the habit
+of coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until he
+discovered her creeping into the room through a small knot-hole in the
+door. Next day he made a peg, and after she had come to him, drove in
+the peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and lived
+together many years; but one night it happened that the man, joking with
+his wife about the way in which he had secured her, drew the peg from
+the knot-hole, that she might see how she had entered his room. As she
+peeped through, she became suddenly quite small, passed out, and was
+never seen again.
+
+The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient to
+account for the mediaeval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's bosom
+and hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legends
+relating to the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is needed
+to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may interfere with our
+breathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through keyholes,
+nor does it bring wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to an
+ancient family, and in passing from the regions of monkish superstition
+to those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf,
+she had once seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara,
+and adopted the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures as
+agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight's
+wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale the
+Mara appears as one of that large family of supernatural wives who are
+permitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who are
+compelled to flee away when these conditions are broken, as is always
+sure to be the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest of this family
+is the Hindu nymph Urvasi, whose love adventures with Pururavas are
+narrated in the Puranas, and form the subject of the well-known and
+exquisite Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live with
+Pururavas so long as she does not see him undressed. But one night her
+kinsmen, the Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, vexed at her long absence from
+heaven, resolved to get her away from her mortal companion, They stole
+a pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of her couch, whereat she
+bitterly upbraided her husband. In rage and mortification, Pururavas
+sprang up without throwing on his tunic, and grasping his sword sought
+the robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and
+Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly vanished.
+
+The different versions of this legend, which have been elaborately
+analyzed by comparative mythologists, leave no doubt that Urvasi is
+one of the dawn-nymphs or bright fleecy clouds of early morning, which
+vanish as the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the preceding
+paper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the sky as a sea or great lake,
+and that the clouds were explained variously as Phaiakian ships with
+bird-like beaks sailing over this lake, or as bright birds of divers
+shapes and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as mermaids, or
+as swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage. In Sanskrit they are called
+Apsaras, or "those who move in the water," and the Elves and Maras of
+Teutonic mythology have the same significance. Urvasi appears in one
+legend as a bird; and a South German prescription for getting rid of
+the Mara asserts that if she be wrapped up in the bedclothes and
+firmly held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the room, leaving the
+bedclothes empty. [86]
+
+In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as a kind of mermaid,
+but in other respects the legend resembles that of Urvasi. Raymond,
+Count de la Foret, of Poitou, having by an accident killed his patron
+and benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and despair
+into the deep recesses of the forest. All the afternoon and evening he
+wandered through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he came upon
+a strange scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became less
+interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his horse, crashing
+through the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant glade, white with
+rime, and illumined by the new moon; in the midst bubbled up a limpid
+fountain, and flowed away over a pebbly-floor with a soothing murmur.
+Near the fountain-head sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses,
+with long waving golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty." [87]
+One of them advanced to meet Raymond, and according to all mythological
+precedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due time the
+fountain-nymph [88] became Countess de la Foret, but her husband was
+given to understand that all her Saturdays would be passed in strictest
+seclusion, upon which he must never dare to intrude, under penalty of
+losing her forever. For many years all went well, save that the fair
+Melusina's children were, without exception, misshapen or disfigured.
+But after a while this strange weekly seclusion got bruited about all
+over the neighbourhood, and people shook their heads and looked grave
+about it. So many gossiping tales came to the Count's ears, that he
+began to grow anxious and suspicious, and at last he determined to know
+the worst. He went one Saturday to Melusina's private apartments, and
+going through one empty room after another, at last came to a locked
+door which opened into a bath; looking through a keyhole, there he
+saw the Countess transformed from the waist downwards into a fish,
+disporting herself like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could not
+keep the secret, but when some time afterwards they quarrelled, must
+needs address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his honourable
+race." So she disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hovered
+about her husband's castle of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one of
+its lords was about to die.
+
+The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save that
+the naiad's desire to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign to
+the spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which Christianity had
+inflicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of Dasent's tales the
+water-maiden is replaced by a kind of werewolf. A white bear marries a
+young girl, but assumes the human shape at night. She is never to look
+upon him in his human shape, but how could a young bride be expected
+to obey such an injunction as that? She lights a candle while he is
+sleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in the world; unluckily
+she drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the story. But she is more
+fortunate than poor Raymond, for after a tiresome journey to the "land
+east of the sun and west of the moon," and an arduous washing-match
+with a parcel of ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends her
+husband's enchantment. [89]
+
+In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or cloud-maiden,
+has a shirt of swan's feathers which plays the same part as the wolfskin
+cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get hold of a werewolf's
+sack and burn it, a permanent cure was effected. No danger of a relapse,
+unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. So the swan-maiden
+kept her human form, as long as she was deprived of her tunic of
+feathers. Indo-European folk-lore teems with stories of swan-maidens
+forcibly wooed and won by mortals who had stolen their clothes. A man
+travelling along the road passes by a lake where several lovely girls
+are bathing; their dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintily
+woven, lie on the shore. He approaches the place cautiously and steals
+one of these dresses. [90] When the girls have finished their bathing,
+they all come and get their dresses and swim away as swans; but the one
+whose dress is stolen must needs stay on shore and marry the thief. It
+is needless to add that they live happily together for many years,
+or that finally the good man accidentally leaves the cupboard door
+unlocked, whereupon his wife gets back her swan-shirt and flies away
+from him, never to return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers. In
+one German story, a nobleman hunting deer finds a maiden bathing in a
+clear pool in the forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes her
+necklace, at which she loses the power to flee. They are married, and
+she bears seven sons at once, all of whom have gold chains about their
+necks, and are able to transform themselves into swans whenever they
+like. A Flemish legend tells of three Nixies, or water-sprites, who came
+out of the Meuse one autumn evening, and helped the villagers celebrate
+the end of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never been seen in
+Flanders, and they could sing as well as they could dance. As the night
+was warm, one of them took off her gloves and gave them to her partner
+to hold for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two started off
+in hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry for gloves. The lad would
+keep them as love-tokens, and so the poor Nixie had to go home without
+them; but she must have died on the way, for next morning the waters of
+the Meuse were blood-red, and those damsels never returned.
+
+In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off their skins every
+ninth night, assume human forms, and sing and dance like men and women
+until daybreak, when they resume their skins and their seal natures.
+Of course a man once found and hid one of these sealskins, and so got
+a mermaid for a wife; and of course she recovered the skin and escaped.
+[91] On the coasts of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an ordinary
+thing for young sea-fairies to get human husbands in this way; the
+brazen things even come to shore on purpose, and leave their red caps
+lying around for young men to pick up; but it behooves the husband to
+keep a strict watch over the red cap, if he would not see his children
+left motherless.
+
+This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the superstitions of
+witchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red James was aroused from sleep
+one night by noises in the kitchen. Going down to the door, he saw a
+lot of old women drinking punch around the fireplace, and laughing and
+joking with his housekeeper. When the punchbowl was empty, they all put
+on red caps, and singing
+
+     "By yarrow and rue,
+     And my red cap too,
+     Hie me over to England,"
+
+they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room, and seized the
+housekeeper's cap, and went along with them. They flew across the sea to
+a castle in England, passed through the keyholes from room to room and
+into the cellar, where they had a famous carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, being
+unused to such good cheer, got drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when
+the others did. So next morning the lord's butler found him dead-drunk
+on the cellar floor, surrounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to be
+hung without any trial worth speaking of; but as he was carted to the
+gallows an old woman cried out, "Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would you be afther
+dyin' in a strange land without your red birredh?" The lord made no
+objections, and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Accordingly
+when Jimmy had got to the gallows and was making his last speech for the
+edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat irrelevantly
+exclaimed, "By yarrow and rue," etc., and was off like a rocket,
+shooting through the blue air en route for old Ireland. [92]
+
+In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of a
+great house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins,
+so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their
+exuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feel
+inclined to ask. He desires only "an ould coat, to keep the chill off of
+him these could nights"; but as soon as he gets into the coat he resumes
+his human form and bids them good by, and thenceforth they may wash
+their own dishes and scour their own tins, for all him.
+
+But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maidens, and are in danger
+of losing ourselves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which is more
+intricate than any that Daidalos ever planned. The significance of
+all these sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid caps and
+werewolf-girdles may best be sought in the etymology of words like the
+German leichnam, in which the body is described as a garment of flesh
+for the soul. [93] In the naive philosophy of primitive thinkers, the
+soul, in passing from one visible shape to another, had only to put on
+the outward integument of the creature in which it wished to incarnate
+itself. With respect to the mode of metamorphosis, there is little
+difference between the werewolf and the swan-maiden; and the similarity
+is no less striking between the genesis of the two conceptions. The
+original werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a manlike deity and
+now as a howling lupine fiend; and the original swan-maiden is the
+light fleecy cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess or as a
+bird swimming in the sky sea. The one conception has been productive of
+little else but horrors; the other has given rise to a great variety
+of fanciful creations, from the treacherous mermaid and the fiendish
+nightmare to the gentle Undine, the charming Nausikaa, and the stately
+Muse of classic antiquity.
+
+We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast,
+is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the
+wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a
+sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also
+been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land.
+The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered over
+Scandinavian battle-fields to receive the souls of falling heroes, were
+identical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of the Mussulman belong
+to the same family. Even for the angels,--women with large wings, who
+are seen in popular pictures bearing mortals on high towards heaven,--we
+can hardly claim a different kinship. Melusina, when she leaves
+the castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a common
+superstition among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with her
+comb and looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all on
+board.
+
+October, 1870.
+
+
+
+
+IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS.
+
+WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie of
+the nursery," he unwittingly made a remark as suggestive in point of
+philology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined
+with the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or
+"Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only with
+the fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the
+Slavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both
+of which are names for the Supreme Being. If we proceed further, and
+inquire after the ancestral form of these epithets,--so strangely
+incongruous in their significations,--we shall find it in the Old Aryan
+"Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and has
+left a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus "Bagaios."
+It seems originally to have denoted either the unclouded sun or the sky
+of noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sayana's commentary on the
+Rig-Veda, Bhaga is enumerated among the seven (or eight) sons of Aditi,
+the boundless Orient; and he is elsewhere described as the lord of life,
+the giver of bread, and the bringer of happiness. [94]
+
+Thus the same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time
+of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majesty
+of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend,
+closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable
+to think without laughing. Such is the irony of fate toward a deposed
+deity. The German name for idol--Abgott, that is, "ex-god," or
+"dethroned god"--sums up in a single etymology the history of the
+havoc wrought by monotheism among the ancient symbols of deity. In
+the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans a niche was always
+in readiness for every new divinity who could produce respectable
+credentials; but the triumph of monotheism converted the stately mansion
+into a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist an "ex-god"
+was simply a devilish deceiver of mankind whom the true God had
+succeeded in vanquishing; and thus the word demon, which to the ancient
+meant a divine or semi-divine being, came to be applied to fiends
+exclusively. Thus the Teutonic races, who preserved the name of their
+highest divinity, Odin,--originally, Guodan,--by which to designate
+the God of the Christian, [95] were unable to regard the Bog of ancient
+tradition as anything but an "ex-god," or vanquished demon.
+
+The most striking illustration of this process is to be found in the
+word devil itself: To a reader unfamiliar with the endless tricks which
+language delights in playing, it may seem shocking to be told that the
+Gypsies use the word devil as the name of God. [96] This, however, is
+not because these people have made the archfiend an object of worship,
+but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the Sanskrit,
+has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the English
+language has received only in its debased and perverted sense. The
+Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may all
+be traced back to the Zend dev, [97] a name in which is implicitly
+contained the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to
+history. The influence of the so-called Zoroastrian reform upon the
+long-subsequent development of Christianity will receive further notice
+in the course of this paper; for the present it is enough to know that
+it furnished for all Christendom the name by which it designates the
+author of evil. To the Parsee follower of Zarathustra the name of the
+Devil has very nearly the same signification as to the Christian; yet,
+as Grimm has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption of deva, the
+Sanskrit name for God. When Zarathustra overthrew the primeval Aryan
+nature-worship in Bactria, this name met the same evil fate which in
+early Christian times overtook the word demon, and from a symbol of
+reverence became henceforth a symbol of detestation. [98] But throughout
+the rest of the Aryan world it achieved a nobler career, producing the
+Greek theos, the Lithuanian diewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modern
+French Dieu, all meaning God.
+
+If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive source in that
+once lost but now partially recovered mother-tongue from which all our
+Aryan languages are descended, we find a root div or dyu, meaning "to
+shine." From the first-mentioned form comes deva, with its numerous
+progeny of good and evil appellatives; from the latter is derived the
+name of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyu,
+as a noun, means "sky" and "day"; and there are many passages in the
+Rig-Veda where the character of the god Dyaus, as the personification
+of the sky or the brightness of the ethereal heavens, is unmistakably
+apparent. This key unlocks for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology.
+So long as there was for Zeus no better etymology than that which
+assigned it to the root zen, "to live," [99] there was little hope
+of understanding the nature of Zeus. But when we learn that Zeus is
+identical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to understand
+Horace's expression, "sub Jove frigido," and the prayer of the
+Athenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians, and on
+the fields." [100] Such expressions as these were retained by the Greeks
+and Romans long after they had forgotten that their supreme deity
+was once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical
+significance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of
+him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and
+in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of
+the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followed
+into Old German, where Zio is the god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon,
+where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.
+
+Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from the
+examination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the supreme Aryan
+god, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never have
+been interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to the
+sun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples, when similarly
+analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power,
+nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light
+of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originator
+of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted
+to believe the source, not only of "the golden light," [101] but of
+everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, in
+accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, we
+must be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythology
+are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither
+Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the
+ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeus
+or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic
+paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to
+sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy. Philology itself
+teaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was originally
+the bright sky and nothing more. Although his name became generalized,
+in the classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite certain that in
+early days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no such exalted
+significance. It was only in Greece and Rome--or, we may say, among
+the still united Italo-Hellenic tribes--that Jupiter-Zeus attained a
+pre-eminence over all other deities. The people of Iran quite
+rejected him, the Teutons preferred Thor and Odin, and in India he was
+superseded, first by Indra, afterwards by Brahma and Vishnu. We need
+not, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among the old Aryans;
+nor may we expect to find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism in
+the primitive intelligence of uncivilized men. [102] The whole fabric
+of comparative mythology, as at present constituted, and as described
+above, in the first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that the
+earliest religion was pure fetichism.
+
+In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods are
+presented to us only as vague powers, with their nature and attributes
+dimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and often
+contradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one
+deity to another. The same pair of divinities appear now as father and
+daughter, now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and again
+they quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere natural
+phenomena. As Muller observes, "The poets of the Veda indulged freely in
+theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions.
+They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god
+of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by no
+means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that
+their Agni [Latin ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of two
+fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap
+of Aditi." [103] Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented
+as the offspring, of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several
+brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching
+firmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here
+but so many different names for what is at bottom one and the same
+conception. The common element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga and
+Indra, was made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, and
+life of day, as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming death
+of the night-time. And this common element was personified in as many
+different ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper saw
+fit to devise. [104]
+
+Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like the sun, the sky,
+the dawn, and the night, should be represented in mythology by such
+a host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For at one time the Sun is
+represented as the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away from
+men the golden treasures of light and warmth, and at another time he is
+represented as a weary voyager traversing the sky-sea amid many perils,
+with the steadfast purpose of returning to his western home and
+his twilight bride; hence the different conceptions of Herakles,
+Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is represented as the son of the Dawn,
+and again, with equal propriety, as the son of the Night, and the fickle
+lover of the Dawn; hence we have, on the one hand, stories of a virgin
+mother who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the other hand,
+stories of a beautiful maiden who is forsaken and perhaps cruelly slain
+by her treacherous lover. Indeed, the Sun's adventures with so many
+dawn-maidens have given him quite a bad character, and the legends are
+numerous in which he appears as the prototype of Don Juan. Yet again his
+separation from the bride of his youth is described as due to no fault
+of his own, but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him away
+as Aineias was compelled to abandon Dido. Or, according to a third
+and equally plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic virtues, and the
+dawn-maiden is a wicked enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite,
+who vainly endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odysseus these
+various conceptions are blended together. When enticed by artful women,
+[105] he yields for a while to the temptation; but by and by his longing
+to see Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record which Penelope
+might not altogether have liked. Again, though the Sun, "always roaming
+with a hungry heart," has seen many cities and customs of strange men,
+he is nevertheless confined to a single path,--a circumstance which
+seems to have occasioned much speculation in the primeval mind.
+Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain Peruvian Inca, who seems to
+have been an "infidel" with reference to the orthodox mythology of his
+day, that he thought the Sun was not such a mighty god after all; for
+if he were, he would wander about the heavens at random instead of
+going forever, like a horse in a treadmill, along the same course. The
+American Indians explained this circumstance by myths which told how the
+Sun was once caught and tied with a chain which would only let him swing
+a little way to one side or the other. The ancient Aryan developed the
+nobler myth of the labours of Herakles, performed in obedience to the
+bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs destroy its parents,
+the Night and the Dawn; and accordingly his parents, forewarned by
+prophecy, expose him in infancy, or order him to be put to death; but
+his tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter.
+And again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own, is sometimes
+represented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleus
+and Meleagros: he is short-lived and ill-fated, born to do much good
+and to be repaid with ingratitude; his life depends on the duration of a
+burning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die.
+
+The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the
+multiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career of
+the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oracle
+that he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipous
+was therefore exposed on the hillside, but, like Romulus and Remus, and
+all infants similarly situated in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken
+to Corinth, where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, he
+got into a quarrel with an old man whom he met on the road, and slew
+him, who was none other than his father, Laios. Reaching Thebes, he
+found the city harassed by the Sphinx, who afflicted the land with
+drought until she should receive an answer to her riddles. Oidipous
+destroyed the monster by solving her dark sayings, and as a reward
+received the kingdom, with his own mother, Iokaste, as his bride. Then
+the Erinyes hastened the discovery of these dark deeds; Iokaste died in
+her bridal chamber; and Oidipous, having blinded himself, fled to the
+grove of the Eumenides, near Athens, where, amid flashing lightning and
+peals of thunder, he died.
+
+Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from Herakles and
+Perseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he performs his marvellous deeds at
+the behest of others. His father, Laios, is none other than the
+Vedic Dasyu, the night-demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar
+offspring In the evening, Oidipous is united to the Dawn, the mother who
+had borne him at daybreak; and here the original story doubtless ended.
+In the Vedic hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne),
+the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight, marries. To the
+Indian mind the story was here complete; but the Greeks had forgotten
+and outgrown the primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipous
+and Iokaste were human, or at least anthropomorphic beings; and a
+marriage between them was a fearful crime which called for bitter
+expiation. Thus the latter part of the story arose in the effort to
+satisfy a moral feeling As the name of Laios denotes the dark night, so,
+like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the word Iokaste signifies the delicate
+violet tints of the morning and evening clouds. Oidipous was exposed,
+like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the earth"), because the
+sunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside. [106] He is borne on
+to the destruction of his father and the incestuous marriage with his
+mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun cannot but slay the
+darkness and hasten to the couch of the violet twilight. [107] The
+Sphinx is the storm-demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the
+rain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna, and Chimaira, and is
+akin to the throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous Here sent to
+destroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was not derived from Egypt, but
+the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling their conception of
+the Sphinx, called them by the same name. The omniscient Sun comprehends
+the sense of her dark mutterings, and destroys her, as Indra slays
+Vritra, bringing down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, who
+bring to light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a
+previous paper, as the personification of daylight, which reveals the
+evil deeds done under the cover of night. The grove of the Erinyes, like
+the garden of the Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network of clouds,
+which are the first to receive and the last to lose the light of the sun
+in the morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a
+thunder-storm, yet the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is
+one of deep peace and tranquillity." [108] To the last remains with him
+his daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite," the pale light which
+springs up opposite to the setting sun.
+
+These examples show that a story-root may be as prolific of
+heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak,
+"to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate,
+conspicsuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple
+representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyrically
+given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those
+of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the types
+upon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some clever
+playwright--I believe it was Scribe--has said that there are only seven
+possible dramatic situations; that is, all the plays in the world may be
+classed with some one of seven archetypal dramas. [109] If this be
+true, the astonishing complexity of mythology taken in the concrete, as
+compared with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need not surprise
+us.
+
+The extreme limits of divergence between stories descended from a common
+root are probably reached in the myths of light and darkness with which
+the present discussion is mainly concerned The subject will be best
+elucidated by taking a single one of these myths and following its
+various fortunes through different regions of the Aryan world. The myth
+of Hercules and Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an essay which
+is one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the study of
+comparative mythology; and while following his footsteps our task will
+be an easy one.
+
+The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest of the
+traditions common to the whole Indo-European race, appears in Italy as
+a purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighth
+book of the AEneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his history; and
+by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules, journeying through Italy after his
+victory over Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the Tiber. While he is
+taking his repose, the three-headed monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan and
+a formidable brigand, comes and steals his cattle, and drags them
+tail-foremost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But the lowing of the
+cows arouses Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern where the robber,
+already frightened, has taken refuge. Armed with a huge flinty rock, he
+breaks open the entrance of the cavern, and confronts the demon within,
+who vomits forth flames at him and roars like the thunder in the
+storm-cloud. After a short combat, his hideous body falls at the feet
+of the invincible hero, who erects on the spot an altar to Jupiter
+Inventor, in commemoration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient Rome
+teemed with reminiscences of this event, which Livy regarded as first
+in the long series of the exploits of his countrymen. The place where
+Hercules pastured his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium;
+near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of the monster's
+triple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sight-seers were shown
+the cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine. Every tenth day
+the earlier generations of Romans celebrated the victory with solemn
+sacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of triumph the fortunate
+general deposited there a tithe of his booty, to be distributed among
+the citizens.
+
+In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originally
+figure. The Latin Hercules was an essentially peaceful and domestic
+deity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin to
+Terminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar
+divinity at all. But the purely accidental resemblance of his name to
+that of the Greek deity Herakles, [110] and the manifest identity of the
+Cacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led
+to the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend,
+who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. Now
+Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky,"
+a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The
+same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the
+alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. The
+corrupted title Cacus was supposed to be identical with the Greek word
+kakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet of
+Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however,
+the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or darkens," and it corresponds
+literally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb,
+preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the clouds. [111]
+
+Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The three-headed
+Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros,
+and of the three-headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the dark
+regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa, the
+fiend of the storm who steals the bright cattle of Helios, and hides
+them in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards rescued
+by the schamir or lightning-stone of the solar hero. The physical
+character of the myth is apparent even in the description of Virgil,
+which reads wonderfully like a Vedic hymn in celebration of the exploits
+of Indra. But when we turn to the Veda itself, we find the correctness
+of the interpretation demonstrated again and again, with inexhaustible
+prodigality of evidence. Here we encounter again the three-headed
+Orthros under the identical title of Vritra, "he who shrouds or
+envelops," called also Cushna, "he who parches," Pani, "the robber," and
+Ahi, "the strangler." In many hymns of the Rig-Veda the story is told
+over and over, like a musical theme arranged with variations. Indra,
+the god of light, is a herdsman who tends a herd of bright golden or
+violet-coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster with three heads,
+steals them and hides them in a cavern, but Indra slays him as Jupiter
+slew Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The language of the myth is
+so significant, that the Hindu commentators of the Veda have
+themselves given explanations of it similar to those proposed by modern
+philologists. To them the legend never became devoid of sense, as the
+myth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars like Apollodoros. [112]
+
+These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of purple and gold,
+are the clouds lit up by the solar rays; but the demon who steals them
+is not always the fiend of the storm, acting in that capacity. They are
+stolen every night by Vritra the concealer, and Caecius the darkener,
+and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking for them, sending Sarama,
+the inconstant twilight, to negotiate for their recovery. Between
+the storm-myth and the myth of night and morning the resemblance is
+sometimes so close as to confuse the interpretation of the two. Many
+legends which Max Muller explains as myths of the victory of day over
+night are explained by Dr. Kuhn as storm-myths; and the disagreement
+between two such powerful champions would be a standing reproach to what
+is rather prematurely called the SCIENCE of comparative mythology,
+were it not easy to show that the difference is merely apparent and
+non-essential. It is the old story of the shield with two sides; and a
+comparison of the ideas fundamental to these myths will show that there
+is no valid ground for disagreement in the interpretation of them. The
+myths of schamir and the divining-rod, analyzed in a previous paper,
+explain the rending of the thunder-cloud and the procuring of water
+without especial reference to any struggle between opposing divinities.
+But in the myth of Hercules and Cacus, the fundamental idea is the
+victory of the solar god over the robber who steals the light. Now
+whether the robber carries off the light in the evening when Indra has
+gone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against the sky during the
+daytime, causing darkness to spread over the earth, would make little
+difference to the framers of the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse
+is the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly. Why,
+then, should the primitive thinker have made a distinction between
+the darkening of the sky caused by black clouds and that caused by
+the rotation of the earth? He had no more conception of the scientific
+explanation of these phenomena than the chicken has of the scientific
+explanation of an eclipse. For him it was enough to know that the solar
+radiance was stolen, in the one case as in the other, and to suspect
+that the same demon was to blame for both robberies.
+
+The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that the victory of
+Indra over Vritra is essentially the same as his victory over the Panis.
+Vritra, the storm-fiend, is himself called one of the Panis; yet the
+latter are uniformly represented as night-demons. They steal Indra's
+golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to a dark hiding-place
+near the eastern horizon. Indra sends the dawn-nymph, Sarama, to search
+for them, but as she comes within sight of the dark stable, the Panis
+try to coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee our sister, do not
+go away again; we will give thee part of the cows, O darling." [113]
+According to the text of this hymn, she scorns their solicitations, but
+elsewhere the fickle dawn-nymph is said to coquet with the powers of
+darkness. She does not care for their cows, but will take a drink of
+milk, if they will be so good as to get it for her. Then she goes back
+and tells Indra that she cannot find the cows. He kicks her with his
+foot, and she runs back to the Panis, followed by the god, who smites
+them all with his unerring arrows and recovers the stolen light. From
+such a simple beginning as this has been deduced the Greek myth of the
+faithlessness of Helen. [114]
+
+These night-demons, the Panis, though not apparently regarded with any
+strong feeling of moral condemnation, are nevertheless hated and dreaded
+as the authors of calamity. They not only steal the daylight, but they
+parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation during
+the winter months. As Caecius, the "darkener," became ultimately changed
+into Cacus, the "evil one," so the name of Vritra, the "concealer," the
+most famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized until it came to
+mean "enemy," like the English word fiend, and began to be applied
+indiscriminately to any kind of evil spirit. In one place he is called
+Adeva, the "enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly equivalent to the
+Persian dev.
+
+In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules and Cacus has given rise to a
+vast system of theology. The fiendish Panis are concentrated in Ahriman
+or Anro-mainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of darkness," and
+who carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahuramazda, who
+is described by his ordinary surname, Spentomainyas, as the "spirit of
+light." The ancient polytheism here gives place to a refined dualism,
+not very different from what in many Christian sects has passed current
+as monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who struggles with Ormuzd, not
+for the possession of a herd of perishable cattle, but for the dominion
+of the universe. Ormuzd creates the world pure and beautiful, but
+Ahriman comes after him and creates everything that is evil in it. He
+not only keeps the earth covered with darkness during half of the day,
+and withholds the rain and destroys the crops, but he is the author of
+all evil thoughts and the instigator of all wicked actions. Like his
+progenitor Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under the
+form of a serpent; and the destruction which ultimately awaits these
+demons is also in reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day of
+reckoning, when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless,
+or when, according to another account, he will be converted to
+righteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the case with
+Satan.
+
+This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful influence
+upon the development of Christian theology. The very idea of an
+archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems either
+to have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have
+derived its principal characteristics from that source. There is no
+evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed
+the conception of a Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier
+books of the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his
+own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad. [115] The
+story of the serpent in Eden--an Aryan story in every particular,
+which has crept into the Pentateuch--is not once alluded to in the Old
+Testament; and the notion of Satan as the author of evil appears only
+in the later books, composed after the Jews had come into close contact
+with Persian ideas. [116] In the Book of Job, as Reville observes, Satan
+is "still a member of the celestial court, being one of the sons of the
+Elohim, but having as his special office the continual accusation of
+men, and having become so suspicious by his practice as public accuser,
+that he believes in the virtue of no one, and always presupposes
+interested motives for the purest manifestations of human piety." In
+this way the character of this angel became injured, and he became more
+and more an object of dread and dislike to men, until the later Jews
+ascribed to him all the attributes of Ahriman, and in this singularly
+altered shape he passed into Christian theology. Between the Satan of
+the Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the metamorphosis is as great
+as that which degraded the stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light,
+into the demon-like Fury who torments wrong-doers in Tartarus; and,
+making allowance for difference of circumstances, the process of
+degradation has been very nearly the same in the two cases.
+
+The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound of
+elements derived from all the systems of pagan mythology which
+Christianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelled
+from heaven along with his followers, like the giants who attempted
+to scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend who
+revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent prince
+of the outer darkness, he retains the old characteristics of Vritra,
+Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna. As the black dog which appears behind the
+stove in Dr. Faust's study, he is the classic hell-hound Kerberos, the
+Vedic Carvara. From the sylvan deity Pan he gets his goat-like body, his
+horns and cloven hoofs. Like the wind-god Orpheus, to whose music the
+trees bent their heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the
+bagpipes. Like those other wind-gods the psychopomp Hermes and the wild
+huntsman Odin, he is the prince of the powers of the air: his flight
+through the midnight sky, attended by his troop of witches mounted on
+their brooms, which sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves from
+the trees, is the same as the furious chase of the Erlking Odin or the
+Burckar Vittikab. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine to flow from
+the dry wood, alike on the deck of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and in
+Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a skilful
+worker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic fire-god
+Hephaistos or Vulcan; and, like Hephaistos, he is lame from the effects
+of his fall from heaven. From the lightning-god Thor he obtains his red
+beard, his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts; and, like that
+ancient deity, he is in the habit of beating his wife behind the door
+when the rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes a hint from
+Poseidon and from the swan-maidens, and appears as a water-imp or Nixy
+(whence probably his name of Old Nick), and as the Davy (deva) whose
+"locker" is situated at the bottom of the sea. [117]
+
+According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, the Devil is
+a learned scholar and profound thinker. Having profited by six thousand
+years of intense study and meditation, he has all science, philosophy,
+and theology at his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased with
+age, he is far more than a match for mortals in cunning. [118] Such,
+however, is not the view taken by mediaeval mythology, which usually
+represents his stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory of
+Hercules over Cacus is repeated in a hundred mediaeval legends in which
+the Devil is overreached and made a laughing-stock. The germ of this
+notion may be found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which
+is itself a victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and which
+curiously reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The
+Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when
+the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether he
+can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another day;
+and when he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that the
+operation cannot be performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound
+with his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned he asks the
+man's name. The reply is Issi (`himself'). When the lead is melted, the
+Devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is
+blinded, he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which he had
+been bound; and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thus
+treated him, his answer is, 'Issi teggi' (`Self did it'). With a laugh
+they bid him lie on the bed which he has made: 'selbst gethan, selbst
+habe.' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was never seen again."
+
+In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently foiled by
+the superior cunning of mortals. Once, he agreed to build a house for
+a peasant in exchange for the peasant's soul; but if the house were not
+finished before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and void. Just as
+the Devil was putting on the last tile the man imitated a cockcrow and
+waked up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend had
+his labour for his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold himself to
+the Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches for seven years, and
+then came to get him. The merchant "took the Devil in a friendly manner
+by the hand and, as it was just evening, said, 'Wife, bring a light
+quickly for the gentleman.' 'That is not at all necessary,' said the
+Devil; 'I am merely come to fetch you.' 'Yes, yes, that I know very
+well,' said the merchant, 'only just grant me the time till this little
+candle-end is burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to put
+on my coat.' 'Very well,' said the Devil, 'but only till the candle is
+burnt out.' 'Good,' said the merchant, and going into the next room,
+ordered the maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to a
+very deep pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also carried,
+each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they were
+ordered each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchant
+then returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more than about an inch
+of candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will
+soon be burnt out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to
+your word, and stay till it IS burnt.' 'Of course,' answered the Devil;
+'I stick to my word.' 'It is dark in the next room,' continued the
+merchant, 'but I must find the great book with clasps, so let me just
+take the light for one moment.' 'Certainly,' said the Devil, 'but I'll
+go with you.' He did so, and the merchant's trepidation was now on the
+increase. When in the next room he said on a sudden, 'Ah, now I know,
+the key is in the garden door.' And with these words he ran out with the
+light into the garden, and before the Devil could overtake him, threw it
+into the pit, and the men and the maids poured water upon it, and then
+filled up the hole with earth. Now came the Devil into the garden and
+asked, 'Well, did you get the key? and how is it with the candle? where
+is it?' 'The candle?' said the merchant. 'Yes, the candle.' 'Ha, ha, ha!
+it is not yet burnt out,' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and will not
+be burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies there a hundred fathoms
+deep in the earth.' When the Devil heard this he screamed awfully, and
+went off with a most intolerable stench." [119]
+
+One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit a bird
+at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the Devil in order to become a
+Freischutz. The fiend was to come for him in seven years, but must be
+always able to name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise the
+compact was to be nullified. After that day the fowler never missed his
+aim, and never did a fowler command such wages. When the seven years
+were out the fowler told all these things to his wife, and the twain hit
+upon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped herself,
+daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled herself up in a
+feather-bed, cut open for this purpose. Then she hopped and skipped
+about the field where her husband stood parleying with Old Nick.
+"there's a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. "Of course I'll
+fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else our
+agreement is cancelled, Old Boy." There was no help for it; the
+Devil had to own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of
+brimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his good woman.
+[120]
+
+In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more ingloriously
+defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being jilted by his sweetheart,
+went out into the woods to hang himself. As he was sitting on the bough,
+with the cord about his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge,
+suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared before him, and offered
+his services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and make his
+sweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty years
+he must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was struck, for
+Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy one's self in, and
+perhaps the Devil might get him in any event; as well be hung for a
+sheep as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented chiming-bells and
+lager-beer, for both of which achievements his name is held in grateful
+remembrance by the Teuton. No sooner had the Holy Roman Emperor quaffed
+a gallon or two of the new beverage than he made Gambrinus Duke of
+Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the fiddler's turn to
+laugh at the discomfiture of his old sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear of
+women, says the legend, and so lived in peace. For thirty years he sat
+beneath his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drinking beer with his
+nobles and burghers around him. Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his
+imps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jocko
+was, like Swiveller's Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, never
+having drunk of it even in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too much
+for him. He fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon
+next day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to go
+back to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a century or
+two, and drank so much beer that he turned into a beer-barrel. [121]
+
+The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these legends
+is probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk," of Northern
+mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elves
+and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but their
+pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White Ladies," were
+not originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to the
+swan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was to
+be dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having no
+place for such beings, degraded them into something like imps; the most
+charitable theory being that they were angels who had remained neutral
+during Satan's rebellion, in punishment for which Michael expelled them
+from heaven, but has left their ultimate fate unannounced until the day
+of judgment. The Jinn appear to have been similarly degraded on the rise
+of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of darkness. They are
+descended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern paganism, and
+they correspond to the Panis, or night-demons of the Veda. In many Norse
+tales they are said to burst when they see the risen sun. [122] They eat
+human flesh, are ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the deepest
+recesses of the forest or in caverns on the hillside, where the sunlight
+never penetrates. Some of these characteristics may very likely have
+been suggested by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from whom the
+Aryan invaders wrested the dominion of Europe. [123] In some legends the
+Trolls are represented as an ancient race of beings now superseded by
+the human race. "'What sort of an earth-worm is this?' said one Giant to
+another, when they met a man as they walked. 'These are the earth-worms
+that will one day eat us up, brother,' answered the other; and soon
+both Giants left that part of Germany." "'See what pretty playthings,
+mother!' cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and shows
+her a plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back with them this instant,'
+cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down as carefully as you can,
+for these playthings can do our race great harm, and when these come we
+must budge.'" Very naturally the primitive Teuton, possessing already
+the conception of night-demons, would apply it to these men of the
+woods whom even to this day his uneducated descendants believe to be
+sorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever contributions
+historical fact may have added to his character, the Troll is originally
+a creation of mythology, like Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his
+uncouth person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready
+gullibility is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with the
+Troll." Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the counterpart alike
+of Jack the Giant-killer, and of Odysseus, is the youngest of three
+brothers who go into a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears and
+threatens to kill any one who dares to meddle with his timber. The elder
+brothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese out of
+his scrip and squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out. "Hold your
+tongue, you dirty Troll," said he, "or I'll squeeze you as I squeeze
+this stone." So the Troll grew timid and begged to be spared, [124] and
+Boots let him off on condition that he would hew all day with him.
+They worked till nightfall, and the Troll's giant strength accomplished
+wonders. Then Boots went home with the Troll, having arranged that he
+should get the water while his host made the fire. When they reached the
+hut there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy that none but a Troll
+could lift them, but Boots was not to be frightened. "Bah!" said he. "Do
+you suppose I am going to get water in those paltry hand-basins? Hold
+on till I go and get the spring itself!" "O dear!" said the Troll, "I'd
+rather not; do you make the fire, and I'll get the water." Then when the
+soup was made, Boots challenged his new friend to an eating-match; and
+tying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to pour soup into it by the
+ladleful. By and by the giant threw down his spoon in despair, and owned
+himself conquered. "No, no! don't give it up yet," said Boots, "just cut
+a hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat forever." And suiting
+the action to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Troll
+cut himself open and died, and Boots carried off all his gold and
+silver.
+
+Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-and-Weather, and Saint Olaf
+hired him to build a church. If the church were completed within a
+certain specified time, the Troll was to get possession of Saint Olaf.
+The saint then planned such a stupendous edifice that he thought the
+giant would be forever building it; but the work went on briskly, and at
+the appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the spire.
+In his consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed by the Troll's
+den, when he heard the giantess telling her children that their father,
+Wind-and-Weather, was finishing his church, and would be home to-morrow
+with Saint Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church and bawled out,
+"Hold on, Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crooked!" Then the giant
+tumbled down from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces. As in the
+cases of the Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end as
+soon as the enchanter was called by name.
+
+These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of carrying
+off beautiful princesses. This is strictly in keeping with their
+character as night-demons, or Panis. In the stories of Punchkin and
+the Heartless Giant, the night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden after
+having turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or Indra, in
+search of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the Troll's castle, and
+then the dawn-nymph, true to her fickle character, cajoles the Giant
+and enables Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which serves as the
+basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon Fafnir
+steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a castle on the
+Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be found powerful enough
+to rescue her. The castle is as hard to enter as that of the Sleeping
+Beauty; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus, riding on his deathless
+horse, and wielding his resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slays
+Fafnir, and recovers the Valkyrie.
+
+In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to the class
+of cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and that of Hercules
+and Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit clouds
+which are represented in the one as cows are in the other represented
+as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they reappear as the Golden
+Fleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves
+Niblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there guarded by a
+dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a fiend of darkness,
+and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the demon. And--remembering
+what Scribe said about the fewness of dramatic types--I believe we are
+warranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely women held in
+bondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks,
+such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar
+myths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say that
+the story-tellers who beguiled their time in stringing together the
+incidents which make up these legends were conscious of their solar
+character. They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weave
+allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story of Perseus
+and Andromeda, the Arabians who devised the tale of Codadad and
+his brethren, the Flemings who listened over their beer-mugs to
+the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not thinking of sun-gods or
+dawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no theory of mythology can be sound
+which implies such an extravagance. Most of these stories have lived
+on the lips of the common people; and illiterate persons are not in
+the habit of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical
+commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that the sun
+and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed to
+be actuated by wills analogous to the human will; that they were
+personified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that their
+doings were described in language which applied so well to the deeds of
+human or quasi-human beings that in course of time its primitive purport
+faded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths
+of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology itself
+shows that the names employed in them are the names of the great
+phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories had thus
+arisen,--when once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and how
+Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how Odysseus blinded the Kyklops,--then
+certain mythic or dramatic types had been called into existence; and to
+these types, preserved in the popular imagination, future stories would
+inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no hesitation in admitting
+a common origin for the vanquished Panis and the outwitted Troll or
+Devil; we may securely compare the legends of St. George and Jack the
+Giant-killer with the myth of Indra slaying Vritra; we may see in the
+invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a doughty knight-errant of
+romance; and we may learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh emphasis by
+modern scholarship, that in the deepest sense there is nothing new under
+the sun.
+
+I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me that the
+unguarded language of many students of mythology is liable to give rise
+to misapprehensions, and to discredit both the method which they employ
+and the results which they have obtained. If we were to give full weight
+to the statements which are sometimes made, we should perforce believe
+that primitive men had nothing to do but to ponder about the sun and the
+clouds, and to worry themselves over the disappearance of daylight. But
+there is nothing in the scientific interpretation of myths which obliges
+us to go any such length. I do not suppose that any ancient Aryan,
+possessed of good digestive powers and endowed with sound common-sense,
+ever lay awake half the night wondering whether the sun would come back
+again. [125] The child and the savage believe of necessity that the
+future will resemble the past, and it is only philosophy which raises
+doubts on the subject. [126] The predominance of solar legends in most
+systems of mythology is not due to the lack of "that Titanic assurance
+with which we say, the sun MUST rise"; [127] nor again to the fact
+that the phenomena of day and night are the most striking phenomena in
+nature. Eclipses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of the most
+terrible and astounding kind, and they have all generated myths;
+yet their contributions to folk-lore are scanty compared with those
+furnished by the strife between the day-god and his enemies. The
+sun-myths have been so prolific because the dramatic types to which
+they have given rise are of surpassing human interest. The dragon who
+swallows the sun is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toils
+for others, who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tears
+of fair-haired damsels, and achieves success in spite of incredible
+obstacles, is a being with whom we can all sympathize, and of whom we
+never weary of hearing.
+
+With many of these legends which present the myth of light and darkness
+in its most attractive form, the reader is already acquainted, and it is
+needless to retail stories which have been told over and over again in
+books which every one is presumed to have read. I will content myself
+with a weird Irish legend, narrated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy, [128]
+in which we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythical
+symbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming through the crystal of
+quartz.
+
+Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at Muskerry a
+Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard work and close economy
+had amassed enormous wealth. His only son did not resemble him. When the
+young Sculloge looked about the house, the day after his father's
+death, and saw the big chests full of gold and silver, and the cupboards
+shining with piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed with
+large and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever be
+able to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and gambled, and
+wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing, until after a while he
+found the chests empty and the cupboards poverty-stricken, and the
+stockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and
+gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that
+a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to
+look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water
+in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all
+gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat
+of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a
+horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his habits.
+
+As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt, passing
+through a lonely glen he came upon an old man playing backgammon,
+betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and cursing
+because the right WOULD win. "Come and bet with me," said he to
+Sculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world," was the reply;
+"but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old
+man, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas." So
+the game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was always the
+winner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil with
+them.
+
+Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young farmer went
+home and began to pay his debts, and next week he went to the glen
+and won another game, and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So Sculloge
+became prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a third time,
+and won a game played for a beautiful wife. The Druid sent her to his
+house the next morning before he was out of bed, and his servants came
+knocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up! Master Sculloge,
+there's a young lady here to see you." "Bedad, it's the vanithee [129]
+herself," said Sculloge; and getting up in a hurry, he spent three
+quarters of an hour in dressing himself. At last he went down stairs,
+and there on the sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland!
+Naturally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as he
+begged the lady's pardon for this Druidic style of wooing, and besought
+her not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really liked him.
+But the young lady, who was a king's daughter from a far country, was
+wondrously charmed with the handsome farmer, and so well did they get
+along that the priest was sent for without further delay, and they were
+married before sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warned
+her husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old man of
+the glen. So for a while all went happily, and the Druidic bride was as
+good as she was beautiful But by and by Sculloge began to think he was
+not earning money fast enough. He could not bear to see his wife's white
+hands soiled with work, and thought it would be a fine thing if he could
+only afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with Sabina
+in an elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and adorned with
+jewels.
+
+"I will play one more game and set the stakes high," said Sculloge to
+himself one evening, as he sat pondering over these things; and so,
+without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the glen, and played a game
+for ten thousand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to pounce
+on his prey, and he did not play as of old. Sculloge broke into a cold
+sweat with agony and terror as he saw the left hand win! Then the face
+of Lassa Buaicht grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge the curse
+which is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that he should never
+sleep twice under the same roof, or ascend the couch of the dawn-nymph,
+his wife, until he should have procured and brought to him the sword of
+light. When Sculloge reached home, more dead than alive, he saw that his
+wife knew all. Bitterly they wept together, but she told him that with
+courage all might be set right. She gave him a Druidic horse, which bore
+him swiftly over land and sea, like the enchanted steed of the Arabian
+Nights, until he reached the castle of his wife's father who, as
+Sculloge now learned, was a good Druid, the brother of the evil Lassa
+Buaicht. This good Druid told him that the sword of light was kept by
+a third brother, the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in an
+enchanted castle, which many brave heroes had tried to enter, but
+the dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three high walls surrounded
+the castle, and many had scaled the first of these, but none had ever
+returned alive. But Sculloge was not to be daunted, and, taking from
+his father-in-law a black steed, he set out for the fortress of Fiach
+O'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped the magic horse, and
+Sculloge called aloud on the Druid to come out and surrender his sword.
+Then came out a tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair and
+melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with the flaming
+blade. But the Druidic beast sprang back over the wall in the twinkling
+of an eye and rescued his rider, leaving, however, his tail behind in
+the court-yard. Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his father-in-law's
+palace, and the night was spent in feasting and revelry.
+
+Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when he got to Fiach's
+castle, he saw the first wall lying in rubbish. He leaped the second,
+and the same scene occurred as the day before, save that the horse
+escaped unharmed.
+
+The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp like that of
+Orpheus in his hand, and as he swept its strings the grass bent to
+listen and the trees bowed their heads. The castle walls all lay in
+ruins, and Sculloge made his way unhindered to the upper room, where
+Fiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He seized the sword
+of light, which was hung by the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard, and
+making the best of his way back to the good king's palace, mounted his
+wife's steed, and scoured over land and sea until he found himself in
+the gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still crying and cursing and
+betting on his left hand against his right.
+
+"Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light!" shouted Sculloge in
+tones of thunder; and as he drew it from its sheath the whole valley
+was lighted up as with the morning sun, and next moment the head of the
+wretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet wife, who had come
+to meet him, was laughing and crying in his arms. November, 1870.
+
+
+
+
+V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD.
+
+THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preceding papers, and
+illustrated by the examination of numerous myths relating to the
+lightning, the storm-wind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was originally
+framed with reference solely to the mythic and legendary lore of the
+Aryan world. The phonetic identity of the names of many Western gods and
+heroes with the names of those Vedic divinities which are obviously
+the personifications of natural phenomena, suggested the theory which
+philosophical considerations had already foreshadowed in the works
+of Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis of Greek, Hindu,
+Keltic, and Teutonic legends has amply confirmed. Let us now, before
+proceeding to the consideration of barbaric folk-lore, briefly
+recapitulate the results obtained by modern scholarship working strictly
+within the limits of the Aryan domain.
+
+In the first place, it has been proved once for all that the languages
+spoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Slaves, and
+Teutons are all descended from a single ancestral language, the Old
+Aryan, in the same sense that French, Italian, and Spanish are descended
+from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact it is an inevitable
+inference that these various races contain, along with other elements,
+a race-element in common, due to their Aryan pedigree. That the
+Indo-European races are wholly Aryan is very improbable, for in every
+case the countries overrun by them were occupied by inferior races,
+whose blood must have mingled in varying degrees with that of their
+conquerors; but that every Indo-European people is in great part
+descended from a common Aryan stock is not open to question.
+
+In the second place, along with a common fund of moral and religious
+ideas and of legal and ceremonial observances, we find these kindred
+peoples possessed of a common fund of myths, superstitions, proverbs,
+popular poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother amuses her child
+with fairy-tales which often correspond, even in minor incidents, with
+stories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells them in
+words which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and Gaelic. No
+doubt many of these stories might have been devised in a dozen different
+places independently of each other; and no doubt many of them have
+been transmitted laterally from one people to another; but a careful
+examination shows that such cannot have been the case with the great
+majority of legends and beliefs. The agreement between two such stories,
+for instance, as those of Faithful John and Rama and Luxman is so
+close as to make it incredible that they should have been independently
+fabricated, while the points of difference are so important as to make
+it extremely improbable that the one was ever copied from the other.
+Besides which, the essential identity of such myths as those of Sigurd
+and Theseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us back historically to a
+time when the scattered Indo-European tribes had not yet begun to
+hold commercial and intellectual intercourse with each other, and
+consequently could not have interchanged their epic materials or their
+household stories. We are therefore driven to the conclusion--which,
+startling as it may seem, is after all the most natural and plausible
+one that can be stated--that the Aryan nations, which have inherited
+from a common ancestral stock their languages and their customs, have
+inherited also from the same common original their fireside legends.
+They have preserved Cinderella and Punchkin just as they have preserved
+the words for father and mother, ten and twenty; and the former case,
+though more imposing to the imagination, is scientifically no less
+intelligible than the latter.
+
+Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales may be grouped in
+a few pretty well defined classes; and that the archetypal myth of each
+class--the primitive story in conformity to which countless subsequent
+tales have been generated--was originally a mere description of physical
+phenomena, couched in the poetic diction of an age when everything was
+personified, because all natural phenomena were supposed to be due to
+the direct workings of a volition like that of which men were conscious
+within themselves. Thus we are led to the striking conclusion that
+mythology has had a common root, both with science and with religious
+philosophy. The myth of Indra conquering Vritra was one of the theorems
+of primitive Aryan science; it was a provisional explanation of the
+thunder-storm, satisfactory enough until extended observation and
+reflection supplied a better one. It also contained the germs of a
+theology; for the life-giving solar light furnished an important part
+of the primeval conception of deity. And finally, it became the fruitful
+parent of countless myths, whether embodied in the stately epics of
+Homer and the bards of the Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler legends of
+St. George and William Tell and the ubiquitous Boots.
+
+Such is the theory which was suggested half a century ago by the
+researches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so far as concerns the mythology
+of the Aryan race, is now victorious along the whole line. It remains
+for us to test the universality of the general principles upon which it
+is founded, by a brief analysis of sundry legends and superstitions
+of the barbaric world. Since the fetichistic habit of explaining the
+outward phenomena of nature after the analogy of the inward phenomena of
+conscious intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ancestors,
+but is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of the conditions
+under which uncivilized thinking proceeds, we may expect to find the
+barbaric mind personifying the powers of nature and making myths about
+their operations the whole world over. And we need not be surprised if
+we find in the resulting mythologic structures a strong resemblance to
+the familiar creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point of fact, we
+shall often be called upon to note such resemblance; and it accordingly
+behooves us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity between
+mythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a common traditional
+origin, and how far it may be interpreted as due merely to the similar
+workings of the untrained intelligence in all ages and countries.
+
+Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages will here be of service
+to us, if used discreetly; otherwise they are likely to bewilder far
+more than to enlighten us. A theorem which Max Muller has laid down
+for our guidance in this kind of investigation furnishes us with an
+excellent example of the tricks which a superficial analogy may play
+even with the trained scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actuated
+by a praiseworthy desire to raise the study of myths to something like
+the high level of scientific accuracy already attained by the study of
+words, Max Muller endeavours to introduce one of the most useful canons
+of philology into a department of inquiry where its introduction could
+only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest lessons to be
+learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness of
+comparing together directly the words contained in derivative languages.
+For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with the
+Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity without
+any hope of reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them:
+least of all would you suspect that they are descended from the same
+radical. But if you take each word by itself and trace it back to its
+primitive shape, explaining every change of every letter as you go, you
+will at last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of both
+these strangely metamorphosed words. [130] Nor will it do, on the other
+hand, to trust to verbal similarity without a historical inquiry into
+the origin of such similarity. Even in the same language two words of
+quite different origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look
+as like one another as two pebbles. The French words souris, a "mouse,"
+and souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes from
+Latin sorex and the other from Latin subridere.
+
+Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is indispensable
+in the study of words, is equally indispensable in the study of myths.
+[131] That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of the
+Heartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although the
+two correspond in every essential incident. In both legends a magician
+turns several members of the same family into stone; the youngest member
+of the family comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives of
+sundry grateful beasts; arrived at the magician's castle, he finds
+a captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part of
+Delilah to the enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's life
+depends on the integrity of something which is elaborately hidden in
+a far-distant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed by
+the artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of grateful beasts,
+succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantage
+to free all his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds to
+destroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness. Yet, in spite of
+this agreement, Max Muller, if I understand him aright, would not have
+us infer the identity of the two stories until we have taken each
+one separately and ascertained its primitive mythical significance.
+Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resemblance may be purely
+accidental, like that of the French words for "mouse" and "smile."
+
+A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this perplexity, and
+assure us that the alleged analogy between the comparison of words and
+the comparison of stories is utterly superficial. The transformations
+of words--which are often astounding enough--depend upon a few
+well-established physiological principles of utterance; and since
+philology has learned to rely upon these principles, it has become
+nearly as sure in its methods and results as one of the so-called "exact
+sciences." Folly enough is doubtless committed within its precincts by
+writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this
+science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of
+the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained
+astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and
+swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are
+the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with
+each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than the
+astronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of Venus
+while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in the
+atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every
+philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may
+dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible
+etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into
+a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the
+philologist will shake his head.
+
+Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut and
+dried for us to go by. There is no uniform psychological principle
+which determines that the three-headed snake in one story shall become a
+three-headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology which
+decides that a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a Norwegian
+Troll or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not so
+simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short, the study of
+myths, though it can be made sufficiently scientific in its methods and
+results, does not constitute a science by itself, like philology. It
+stands on a footing similar to that occupied by physical geography,
+or what the Germans call "earth-knowledge." No one denies that all the
+changes going on over the earth's surface conform to physical laws; but
+then no one pretends that there is any single proximate principle which
+governs all the phenomena of rain-fall, of soil-crumbling, of magnetic
+variation, and of the distribution of plants and animals. All these
+things are explained by principles obtained from the various sciences
+of physics, chemistry, geology, and physiology. And in just the same way
+the development and distribution of stories is explained by the help
+of divers resources contributed by philology, psychology, and history.
+There is therefore no real analogy between the cases cited by Max
+Muller. Two unrelated words may be ground into exactly the same shape,
+just as a pebble from the North Sea may be undistinguishable from
+another pebble on the beach of the Adriatic; but two stories like
+those of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant are no more likely to arise
+independently of each other than two coral reefs on opposite sides of
+the globe are likely to develop into exactly similar islands.
+
+Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between legends is proof
+of kinship, and go our way without further misgivings? Unfortunately
+we cannot dispose of the matter in quite so summary a fashion; for it
+remains to decide what kind and degree of similarity shall be considered
+satisfactory evidence of kinship. And it is just here that doctors may
+disagree. Here is the point at which our "science" betrays its weakness
+as compared with the sister study of philology. Before we can decide
+with confidence in any case, a great mass of evidence must be brought
+into court. So long as we remained on Aryan ground, all went smoothly
+enough, because all the external evidence was in our favour. We knew
+at the outset, that the Aryans inherit a common language and a common
+civilization, and therefore we found no difficulty in accepting the
+conclusion that they have inherited, among other things, a common stock
+of legends. In the barbaric world it is quite otherwise. Philology does
+not pronounce in favour of a common origin for all barbaric culture,
+such as it is. The notion of a single primitive language, standing in
+the same relation to all existing dialects as the relation of old Aryan
+to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was a
+notion suited only to the infancy of linguistic science. As the case now
+stands, it is certain that all the languages actually existing cannot be
+referred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable that
+there never was any such common ancestor. I am not now referring to the
+question of the unity of the human race. That question lies entirely
+outside the sphere of philology. The science of language has nothing to
+do with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words can tell us
+whether the black men are brethren of the white men, or whether
+yellow and red men have a common pedigree: these questions belong to
+comparative physiology. But the science of language can and does tell us
+that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the production
+of a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread to give birth to
+numerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric languages are neither
+widespread nor durable. Among savages each little group of families has
+its own dialect, and coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in the
+course of two or three generations a dialect gets so strangely altered
+as virtually to lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns,
+which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost every few
+years in Polynesia. Since the time of Captain Cook the Tahitian language
+has thrown away five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced them
+by brand-new ones; and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent command
+of some Indian dialect, and then, coming back after twenty years, find
+yourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated
+and useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savages
+originated a language which has held its own like the old Aryan and
+become the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects now
+in existence! Before a durable language can arise, there must be an
+aggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may be
+need of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be
+strengthened. Wherever mankind have associated in nations, permanent
+languages have arisen, and their derivative dialects bear the
+conspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have remained in their
+primitive savage isolation, their languages have remained sporadic and
+transitory, incapable of organic development, and showing no traces of a
+kinship which never existed.
+
+The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion of
+barbaric myths is obvious. The development of a common stock of legends
+is, of course, impossible, save where there is a common language; and
+thus philology pronounces against the kinship of barbaric myths with
+each other and with similar myths of the Aryan and Semitic worlds.
+Similar stories told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a common
+pedigree, because the persons who have preserved them in recollection
+speak a common language and have inherited the same civilization. But
+similar stories told in Labrador and South Africa are not likely to
+be genealogically related, because it is altogether probable that the
+Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their present race characteristics
+before either of them possessed a language or a culture sufficient
+for the production of myths. According to the nature and extent of the
+similarity, it must be decided whether such stories have been carried
+about from one part of the world to another, or have been independently
+originated in many different places.
+
+Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be found
+useful. In comparing, the vocabularies of different languages, those
+words which directly imitate natural sounds--such as whiz, crash,
+crackle--are not admitted as evidence of kinship between the languages
+in which they occur. Resemblances between such words are obviously no
+proof of a common ancestry; and they are often met with in languages
+which have demonstrably had no connection with each other. So in
+mythology, where we find two stories of which the primitive character is
+perfectly transparent, we need have no difficulty in supposing them to
+have originated independently. The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk is
+found all over the world; but the idea of a country above the sky, to
+which persons might gain access by climbing, is one which could hardly
+fail to occur to every barbarian. Among the American tribes, as well
+as among the Aryans, the rainbow and the Milky-Way have contributed the
+idea of a Bridge of the Dead, over which souls must pass on the way to
+the other world. In South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits of
+the fox and of his brother the jackal have given rise to fables in which
+brute force is overcome by cunning. In many parts of the world we find
+curiously similar stories devised to account for the stumpy tails of the
+bear and hyaena, the hairless tail of the rat, and the blindness of
+the mole. And in all countries may be found the beliefs that men may be
+changed into beasts, or plants, or stones; that the sun is in some way
+tethered or constrained to follow a certain course; that the storm-cloud
+is a ravenous dragon; and that there are talismans which will
+reveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions are so obvious to the
+uncivilized intelligence, that stories founded upon them need not
+be supposed to have a common origin, unless there turns out to be a
+striking similarity among their minor details. On the other hand, the
+numerous myths of an all-destroying deluge have doubtless arisen partly
+from reminiscences of actually occurring local inundations, and partly
+from the fact that the Scriptural account of a deluge has been carried
+all over the world by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. [132]
+
+By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite a few of the
+American myths so carefully collected by Dr. Brinton in his admirable
+treatise. We shall not find in the mythology of the New World the wealth
+of wit and imagination which has so long delighted us in the stories
+of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The mythic lore of
+the American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits the
+product of a lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not
+only are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but there
+is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferior
+imagination. Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differences
+in the artistic method of treatment, there is between the mythologies of
+the Old and the New Worlds a fundamental resemblance. We come upon solar
+myths and myths of the storm curiously blended with culture-myths, as in
+the cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and Kadmos. The American parallels to
+these are to be found in the stories of Michabo, Viracocha, Ioskeha, and
+Quetzalcoatl. "As elsewhere the world over, so in America, many tribes
+had to tell of.... an august character, who taught them what they
+knew,--the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art of
+picture-writing, the secrets of magic; who founded their institutions
+and established their religions; who governed them long with glory
+abroad and peace at home; and finally did not die, but, like Frederic
+Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished
+mysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to
+return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness."
+[133] Everyone is familiar with the numerous legends of white-skinned,
+full-bearded heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl, who in times long
+previous to Columbus came from the far East to impart the rudiments of
+civilization and religion to the red men. By those who first heard
+these stories they were supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer to
+pre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like that of the
+Northmen in the tenth century. But a scientific study of the subject has
+dissipated such notions. These legends are far too numerous, they are
+too similar to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to admit
+of any such interpretation. By comparing them carefully with each other,
+and with correlative myths of the Old World, their true character soon
+becomes apparent.
+
+One of the most widely famous of these culture-heroes was Manabozho or
+Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the
+various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, the
+Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the
+Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without
+exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old
+missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan,
+which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect." Not only
+was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes,--he was the
+founder of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing, the
+ruler of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth and heaven.
+"From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean he
+fashioned the habitable land, and set it floating on the waters till it
+grew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died
+of old age ere he reached its limits." He was also, like Nimrod, a
+mighty hunter. "One of his footsteps measured eight leagues, the Great
+Lakes were the beaver-dams he built, and when the cataracts impeded his
+progress he tore them away with his hands." "Sometimes he was said
+to dwell in the skies with his brother, the Snow, or, like many great
+spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far North on some floe of ice
+in the Arctic Ocean..... But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries
+he was alleged to reside toward the East; and in the holy formulae of
+the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the
+East is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and
+there, at the edge of the earth where the sun rises, on the shore of the
+infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and sends the
+luminaries forth on their daily journeys." [134] From such accounts as
+this we see that Michabo was no more a wise instructor and legislator
+than Minos or Kadmos. Like these heroes, he is a personification of the
+solar life-giving power, which daily comes forth from its home in the
+east, making the earth to rejoice. The etymology of his name confirms
+the otherwise clear indications of the legend itself. It is compounded
+of michi, "great," and wabos, which means alike "hare" and "white."
+"Dialectic forms in Algonquin for white are wabi, wape, wampi, etc.; for
+morning, wapan, wapanch, opah; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc.; for day,
+wompan, oppan; for light, oppung." So that Michabo is the Great White
+One, the God of the Dawn and the East. And the etymological confusion,
+by virtue of which he acquired his soubriquet of the Great Hare, affords
+a curious parallel to what has often happened in Aryan and Semitic
+mythology, as we saw when discussing the subject of werewolves.
+
+Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let us note how full
+of meaning are the myths concerning him. In the first cycle of these
+legends, "he is grandson of the Moon, his father is the West Wind,
+and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of
+conception. For the Moon is the goddess of night; the Dawn is her
+daughter, who brings forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the act;
+and the West, the spirit of darkness, as the East is of light, precedes,
+and as it were begets the latter, as the evening does the morning.
+Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural
+father to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long and
+desperate struggle. It began on the mountains. The West was forced to
+give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and
+lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he,
+'my son, you know my power, and that it is impossible to kill me.' What
+is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on from
+what time 'the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,'
+across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, for
+both the opponents are immortal?" [135]
+
+Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative than this.
+The Iroquois tradition is very similar. In it appear twin brothers,
+[136] born of a virgin mother, daughter of the Moon, who died in giving
+them life. Their names, Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida
+dialect the White One and the Dark One. Under the influence of Christian
+ideas the contest between the brothers has been made to assume a moral
+character, like the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such
+intention appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton has shown that
+none of the American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When the
+quarrel came to blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; and
+the victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother, "established his
+lodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the sun
+comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special guardian of
+the Iroquois." He caused the earth to bring forth, he stocked the woods
+with game, and taught his children the use of fire. "He it was who
+watched and watered their crops; 'and, indeed, without his aid,' says
+the old missionary, quite out of patience with their puerilities,
+'they think they could not boil a pot.'" There was more in it than poor
+Brebouf thought, as we are forcibly reminded by recent discoveries in
+physical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil a
+pot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will,--Ioskeha,
+Michabo, or Phoibos,--the beneficent Sun is the master and sustainer
+of us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like
+Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better than to select him
+as our chief object of worship.
+
+The same principles by which these simple cases are explained furnish
+also the key to the more complicated mythology of Mexico and Peru. Like
+the deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas,
+rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys westward, slaying
+with his lightnings the creatures who oppose him, until he finally
+disappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his name
+the evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the sea"; and
+hence the "White One" (l'aube), the god of light rising white on the
+horizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras spoke
+of their original ancestors as white; and to this day, as Dr. Brinton
+informs us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha. The myth of
+Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these solar heroes
+present in most of their qualities and achievements a striking likeness
+to those of the Old World. They combine the attributes of Apollo,
+Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey from east to west,
+smiting the powers of darkness, storm, and winter with the thunderbolts
+of Zeus or the unerring arrows of Phoibos, and sinking in a blaze
+of glory on the western verge of the world, where the waves meet the
+firmament. Or like Hermes, in a second cycle of legends, they rise with
+the soft breezes of a summer morning, driving before them the bright
+celestial cattle whose udders are heavy with refreshing rain, fanning
+the flames which devour the forests, blustering at the doors of wigwams,
+and escaping with weird laughter through vents and crevices. The white
+skins and flowing beards of these American heroes may be aptly compared
+to the fair faces and long golden locks of their Hellenic compeers.
+Yellow hair was in all probability as rare in Greece as a full beard
+in Peru or Mexico; but in each case the description suits the solar
+character of the hero. One important class of incidents, however is
+apparently quite absent from the American legends. We frequently see the
+Dawn described as a virgin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day;
+but nowhere do we remember seeing her pictured as a lovely or valiant or
+crafty maiden, ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her solar lover.
+Perhaps in no respect is the superior richness and beauty of the Aryan
+myths more manifest than in this. Brynhild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne,
+Oinone, and countless other kindred heroines, with their brilliant
+legends, could not be spared from the mythology of our ancestors
+without, leaving it meagre indeed. These were the materials which
+Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen found
+ready, awaiting their artistic treatment. But the mythology of the New
+World, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords hardly enough,
+either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grand
+epic or a genuine tragedy.
+
+But little reflection is needed to assure us that the imagination of the
+barbarian, who either carries away his wife by brute force or buys her
+from her relatives as he would buy a cow, could never have originated
+legends in which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which their
+favour is won by the performance of deeds of valour. These stories
+owe their existence to the romantic turn of mind which has always
+characterized the Aryan, whose civilization, even in the times before
+the dispersion of his race, was sufficiently advanced to allow of his
+entertaining such comparatively exalted conceptions of the relations
+between men and women. The absence of these myths from barbaric
+folk-lore is, therefore, just what might be expected; but it is a fact
+which militates against any possible hypothesis of the common origin
+of Aryan and barbaric mythology. If there were any genetic relationship
+between Sigurd and Ioskeha, between Herakles and Michabo, it would be
+hard to tell why Brynhild and Iole should have disappeared entirely
+from one whole group of legends, while retained, in some form or
+other, throughout the whole of the other group. On the other hand, the
+resemblances above noticed between Aryan and American mythology fall
+very far short of the resemblances between the stories told in different
+parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaric
+growth, has yet been cited which resembles any Aryan legend as the story
+of Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless Giant. The myths
+of Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of natural
+phenomena, just as imitative words are direct copies of natural sounds.
+Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European had any choice as to the main
+features of the career of his solar divinity. He must be born of the
+Night,--or of the Dawn,--must travel westward, must slay harassing
+demons. Eliminating these points of likeness, the resemblance between
+the Aryan and barbaric legends is at once at an end. Such an identity
+in point of details as that between the wooden horse which enters
+Ilion, and the horse which bears Sigurd into the place where Brynhild
+is imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps with Sculloge over the
+walls of Fiach's enchanted castle, is, I believe, nowhere to be found
+after we leave Indo-European territory.
+
+Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the legends of the Aryan
+and the non-Aryan worlds contain common mythical elements, the legends
+themselves are not of common origin. The fact that certain mythical
+ideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in each case
+a similar human intelligence has been at work explaining similar
+phenomena; but in order to prove a family relationship between the
+culture of these different races, we need something more than this.
+We need to prove not only a community of mythical ideas, but also a
+community between the stories based upon these ideas. We must show not
+only that Michabo is like Herakles in those striking features which
+the contemplation of solar phenomena would necessarily suggest to
+the imagination of the primitive myth-maker, but also that the two
+characters are similarly conceived, and that the two careers agree in
+seemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the case in the stories of
+Punchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, all
+over the world, travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness is of
+great value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but it
+is of no value as evidence for or against an alleged community of
+civilization between different races. The same is true of the sacredness
+universally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the
+sanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due to
+a primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes very probable
+when we recollect that the similar pre-eminence of seven is almost
+demonstrably connected with the adoration of the sun, moon, and
+five visible planets, which has left its record in the structure and
+nomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic week. [137]
+
+In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric myths
+with each other and with the legends of the Aryan world becomes doubly
+interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of the
+untrained intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw how
+the moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Europeans, as a
+man with a thorn-bush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on a
+pole. In Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half
+starved in the forest, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to him
+to be slain and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it on
+high in the moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvel
+at its piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are supposed
+to be portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammering
+something with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like a
+bread-fruit that the woman asked it to come down and let her child
+eat off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled up
+woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may still
+behold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the Hare to
+inform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men die
+and again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot the purport of the
+message, and, coming down to the earth, proclaimed it far and wide that
+though the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever she died, mankind,
+on the other hand, should die and go to the Devil. When the silly brute
+returned to the lunar country and told what he had done, the Moon was so
+angry that she took up an axe and aimed a blow at his head to split it.
+But the axe missed and only cut his lip open; and that was the origin
+of the "hare-lip." Maddened by the pain and the insult, the Hare flew at
+the Moon and almost scratched her eyes out; and to this day she bears on
+her face the marks of the Hare's claws. [138]
+
+Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene cast Endymion into
+a profound slumber because he refused her love, and how at sundown she
+used to come and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch him as
+he lay asleep on the marble steps of a temple half hidden among drooping
+elm-trees, over which clambered vines heavy with dark blue grapes. This
+represents the rising moon looking down on the setting sun; in Labrador
+a similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat different story. Among
+the Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden and the Moon is her brother, who
+is overcome by a wicked passion for her. Once, as this girl was at a
+dancing-party in a friend's hut, some one came up and took hold of her
+by the shoulders and shook her, which is (according to the legend) the
+Esquimaux manner of declaring one's love. She could not tell who it was
+in the dark, and so she dipped her hand in some soot and smeared one of
+his cheeks with it. When a light was struck in the hut, she saw, to her
+dismay, that it was her brother, and, without waiting to learn any more,
+she took to her heels. He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran till
+they got to the end of the world,--the jumping-off place,--when they
+both jumped into the sky. There the Moon still chases his sister, the
+Sun; and every now and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth,
+when he becomes so dark that you cannot see him. [139]
+
+Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as well
+as Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens. In the
+island of Celebes it is said that "seven heavenly nymphs came down from
+the sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who thought first
+that they were white doves, but in the bath he saw that they were women.
+Then he stole one of the thin robes that gave the nymphs their power of
+flying, and so he caught Utahagi, the one whose robe he had stolen,
+and took her for his wife, and she bore him a son. Now she was called
+Utahagi from a single white hair she had, which was endowed with magic
+power, and this hair her husband pulled out. As soon as he had done
+it, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi went up to heaven. The child
+cried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was in great grief, and cast about
+how he should follow Utahagi up into the sky." Here we pass to the myth
+of Jack and the Beanstalk. "A rat gnawed the thorns off the rattans, and
+Kasimbaha clambered up by them with his son upon his back, till he came
+to heaven. There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and
+after various adventures he took up his abode among the gods." [140]
+
+In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which also reminds us of
+the story of the Heartless Giant. A certain Samojed once went out to
+catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded by
+gloomy pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore. He
+crept up and stole one of these dresses, and by and by the swan-maiden
+came to him shivering with cold and promising to become his wife if he
+would only give her back her garment of feathers. The ungallant fellow,
+however, did not care for a wife, but a little revenge was not unsuited
+to his way of thinking. There were seven robbers who used to prowl about
+the neighbourhood, and who, when they got home, finding their hearts
+in the way, used to hang them up on some pegs in the tent. One of these
+robbers had killed the Samojed's mother; and so he promised to return
+the swan-maiden's dress after she should have procured for him these
+seven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and the Samojed smashed six of
+them, and then woke up the seventh robber, and told him to restore his
+mother to life, on pain of instant death, Then the robber produced a
+purse containing the old woman's soul, and going to the graveyard shook
+it over her bones, and she revived at once. Then the Samojed smashed the
+seventh heart, and the robber died; and so the swan-maiden got back her
+plumage and flew away rejoicing. [141]
+
+Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, found among the
+Minussinian Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons, like the
+Greek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in battle.
+There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight;
+but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black storm-fiend, who
+rages for blood, like a werewolf.
+
+In South Africa we find the werewolf himself. [142] A certain Hottentot
+was once travelling with a Bushwoman and her child, when they perceived
+at a distance a troop of wild horses. The man, being hungry, asked the
+woman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these horses, that
+they might eat of it; whereupon the woman set down her child, and taking
+off a sort of petticoat made of human skin became instantly transformed
+into a lioness, which rushed across the plain, struck down a wild horse
+and lapped its blood. The man climbed a tree in terror, and conjured his
+companion to resume her natural shape. Then the lioness came back, and
+putting on the skirt made of human skin reappeared as a woman, and took
+up her child, and the two friends resumed their journey after making a
+meal of the horse's flesh. [143]
+
+The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished with his
+wolf-skin sack; but neither in America nor in Africa is he the genuine
+European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for human
+flesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men can be changed
+into beasts or have in some cases descended from beast ancestors, but
+the application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibal
+cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf of
+the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man,--he was an insane
+cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of the
+Devil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shape
+of it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kind
+of thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races, while
+believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a
+sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception of
+diabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the mediaeval European was
+a phenomenon so strange as to demand a mythological explanation,
+would not impress the barbarian as either very exceptional or very
+blameworthy.
+
+In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most quick-witted and
+intelligent of African races, the cannibal possesses many features in
+common with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a liking for human
+flesh. As we saw in the preceding paper, the Troll has very likely
+derived some of his characteristics from reminiscences of the barbarous
+races who preceded the Aryans in Central and Northern Europe. In like
+manner the long-haired cannibal of Zulu nursery literature, who is
+always represented as belonging to a distinct race, has been supposed to
+be explained by the existence of inferior races conquered and displaced
+by the Zulus. Nevertheless, as Dr. Callaway observes, neither the
+long-haired mountain cannibals of Western Africa, nor the Fulahs,
+nor the tribes of Eghedal described by Barth, "can be considered as
+answering to the description of long-haired as given in the Zulu legends
+of cannibals; neither could they possibly have formed their historical
+basis..... It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends
+are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they
+are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors." Very
+probably they may have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin to
+those which begot the Panis of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. The
+parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one which can be found in
+comparing barbaric with Aryan folk-lore. Like the Panis and Trolls, the
+cannibals are represented as the foes of the solar hero Uthlakanyana,
+who is almost as great a traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence of
+mind amid trying circumstances is not to be surpassed by that of the
+incomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles or Hermes.
+He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he entered the world than
+he begins to outwit other people and get possession of their property.
+He works bitter ruin for the cannibals, who, with all their strength and
+fleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit than the Trolls, whom
+Boots invariably victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana fell
+in with a cannibal. Their greetings were cordial enough, and they ate a
+bit of leopard together, and began to build a house, and killed a couple
+of cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat.
+Then the crafty traveller, fearing that his companion might insist upon
+having the fat cow, turned and said, "'Let the house be thatched now
+then we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall get wet.' The
+cannibal said, 'You are right, child of my sister; you are a man indeed
+in saying, let us thatch the house, for we shall get wet.'
+Uthlakanyana said, 'Do you do it then; I will go inside, and push the
+thatching-needle for you, in the house.' The cannibal went up. His hair
+was very, very long. Uthlakanyana went inside and pushed the needle for
+him. He thatched in the hair of the cannibal, tying it very tightly; he
+knotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by separate locks and
+fastening it firmly, that it might be tightly fastened to the house."
+Then the rogue went outside and began to eat of the cow which was
+roasted. "The cannibal said, 'What are you about, child of my sister?
+Let us just finish the house; afterwards we can do that; we will do it
+together.' Uthlakanyana replied, 'Come down then. I cannot go into the
+house any more. The thatching is finished.' The cannibal assented. When
+he thought he was going to quit the house, he was unable to quit it.
+He cried out saying, 'Child of my sister, how have you managed your
+thatching?' Uthlakanyana said, 'See to it yourself. I have thatched
+well, for I shall not have any dispute. Now I am about to eat in peace;
+I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am now alone with my cow.'"
+So the cannibal cried and raved and appealed in vain to Uthlakanyana's
+sense of justice, until by and by "the sky came with hailstones and
+lightning Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house; he stayed in
+the house and lit a fire. It hailed and rained. The cannibal cried on
+the top of the house; he was struck with the hailstones, and died there
+on the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said, 'Uncle, just
+come down, and come to me. It has become clear. It no longer rains, and
+there is no more hail, neither is there any more lightning. Why are you
+silent?' So Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it. He
+then went on his way." [144]
+
+In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and shut up
+in the rock Itshe-likantunjambili, which, like the rock of the Forty
+Thieves, opens and shuts at the command of those who understand its
+secret. She gets possession of the secret and escapes, and when the
+monsters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabash full of sesame,
+which they stop to eat. At last, getting tired of running, she climbs a
+tree, and there she finds her brother, who, warned by a dream, has come
+out to look for her. They ascend the tree together until they come to a
+beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They kill an ox, and while
+its flesh is roasting they amuse themselves by making a stout thong of
+its hide. By and by one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking meat,
+comes to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy and girl
+in the sky-country! They invite him up there; to share in their feast,
+and throw him an end of the thong by which to climb up. When the
+cannibal is dangling midway between earth and heaven, they let go the
+rope, and down he falls with a terrible crash. [145]
+
+In this story the enchanted rock opened by a talismanic formula brings
+us again into contact with Indo-European folk-lore. And that the
+conception has in both cases been suggested by the same natural
+phenomenon is rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in which the
+cannibal's cave is opened by a swallow which flies in the air. Here we
+have the elements of a genuine lightning-myth. We see that among these
+African barbarians, as well as among our own forefathers, the clouds
+have been conceived as birds carrying the lightning which can cleave
+the rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent. The Dakotahs
+explain the thunder as "the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings,"
+and the Caribs describe the lightning as a poisoned dart which the bird
+blows through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting. [146]
+On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloud-bird, but
+explain the lightning as something analogous to the flames of a volcano.
+The Kamtchatkans say that when the mountain goblins have got their
+stoves well heated up, they throw overboard, with true barbaric
+shiftlessness, all the brands not needed for immediate use, which makes
+a volcanic eruption. So when it is summer on earth, it is winter in
+heaven; and the gods, after heating up their stoves, throw away their
+spare kindlingwood, which makes the lightning. [147]
+
+When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the unvarying,
+unresting course of the sun variously explained as due to the subjection
+of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to
+the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked
+at the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are more
+childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used
+to race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight
+to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an inventive genius, named
+Maui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun in a noose and making
+him go more deliberately. He plaited ropes and made a strong net, and,
+arming himself with the jawbone of his ancestress, Muri-ranga-whenua,
+called together all his brethren, and they journeyed to the place where
+the Sun rises, and there spread the net. When the Sun came up, he stuck
+his head and fore-paws into the net, and while the brothers tightened
+the ropes so that they cut him and made him scream for mercy, Maui beat
+him with the jawbone until he became so weak that ever since he has
+only been able to crawl through the sky. According to another Polynesian
+myth, there was once a grumbling Radical, who never could be satisfied
+with the way in which things are managed on this earth. This bold
+Radical set out to build a stone house which should last forever; but
+the days were so short and the stones so heavy that he despaired of
+ever accomplishing his project. One night, as he lay awake thinking the
+matter over, it occurred to him that if he could catch the Sun in a net,
+he could have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish his
+house. So he borrowed a noose from the god Itu, and, it being autumn,
+when the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary. The
+Sun cried till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned the
+island; but it was of no use; there he is tethered to this day.
+
+Similar stories are met with in North America. A Dog-Rib Indian once
+chased a squirrel up a tree until he reached the sky. There he set a
+snare for the squirrel and climbed down again. Next day the Sun was
+caught in the snare, and night came on at once. That is to say, the sun
+was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there," thought the Indian, "I must
+have caught the Sun"; and so he sent up ever so many animals to release
+the captive. They were all burned to ashes, but at last the mole, going
+up and burrowing out through the GROUND OF THE SKY, (!) succeeded in
+gnawing asunder the cords of the snare. Just as it thrust its head out
+through the opening made in the sky-ground, it received a flash of light
+which put its eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind. The Sun got
+away, but has ever since travelled more deliberately. [148]
+
+These sun-myths, many more of which are to be found collected in Mr.
+Tylor's excellent treatise on "The Early History of Mankind," well
+illustrate both the similarity and the diversity of the results obtained
+by the primitive mind, in different times and countries, when engaged
+upon similar problems. No one would think of referring these stories to
+a common traditional origin with the myths of Herakles and Odysseus; yet
+both classes of tales were devised to explain the same phenomenon. Both
+to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast but deliberate journey
+of the sun through the firmament was a strange circumstance which called
+for explanation; but while the meagre intelligence of the barbarian
+could only attain to the quaint conception of a man throwing a noose
+over the sun's head, the rich imagination of the Indo-European created
+the noble picture of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in
+accordance with the resistless decree of fate.
+
+Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar are the mental habits
+of uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a
+great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling
+is familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise,
+swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his back; but by and
+by, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will grow
+weary and sink under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed
+by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demons
+took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to make
+ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the
+bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon.
+But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original
+conception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a
+boundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower plate which
+covers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell which covers his back is
+the sky; and the human race lives and moves and has its being inside of
+the tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of Redskins
+hold substantially the same theory of the universe. They regard the
+tortoise as the symbol of the world, and address it as the mother of
+mankind. Once, before the earth was made, the king of heaven quarrelled
+with his wife, and gave her such a terrible kick that she fell down into
+the sea. Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded
+to raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the mother
+of mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the
+ground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too
+far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea and
+drowned all the human race save one man. [149] In Finnish mythology the
+world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part is
+the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In
+India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the
+Yorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, one
+making a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beast
+called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very
+large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it
+was winter, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow
+over his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated
+in his name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this
+group of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish,
+which lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon
+its back, and at last it became covered with trees. And lastly, passing
+from barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest level
+of Indo-European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and Kepler
+amusing themselves with speculations in which the earth figures as a
+stupendous animal?
+
+
+
+
+VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI. [150]
+
+
+TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and the
+Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the warning addressed by
+Agamemnon to the priest of Apollo,
+
+     "Let not Nemesis catch me by the swift ships."
+
+he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to classical
+studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been, they have yielded
+to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground,--a desire as strong
+in the breast of the classical scholar as was the yearning which led
+Odysseus to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so that he might
+but once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his
+native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the World," Mr.
+Gladstone discusses the same questions which were treated in his earlier
+work; and the main conclusions reached in the "Studies on Homer"
+are here so little modified with reference to the recent progress of
+archaeological inquiries, that the book can hardly be said to have had
+any other reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the
+ships of the Argives, and of returning thither as often as possible.
+
+The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a very
+appropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the point of
+view from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readily
+acquiesce in its use, and pass it by without comment, trusting that
+the author understood himself when he adopted it, were it not that by
+incidental references, and especially by his allusions to the legendary
+literature of the Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that he means more by the
+title than it can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks to
+determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and Danaos, and
+Abraham, is at once liable to the suspicion of holding very inadequate
+views as to the character of the epoch which may properly be termed the
+"youth of the world." Often in reading Mr. Gladstone we are reminded
+of Renan's strange suggestion that an exploration of the Hindu Kush
+territory, whence probably came the primitive Aryans, might throw some
+new light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be more futile.
+The primitive Aryan language has already been partly reconstructed for
+us; its grammatical forms and syntactic devices are becoming familiar to
+scholars; one great philologist has even composed a tale in it; yet
+in studying this long-buried dialect we are not much nearer the first
+beginnings of human speech than in studying the Greek of Homer, the
+Sanskrit of the Vedas, or the Umbrian of the Igovine Inscriptions. The
+Aryan mother-tongue had passed into the last of the three stages of
+linguistic growth long before the break-up of the tribal communities
+in Aryana-vaedjo, and at that early date presented a less primitive
+structure than is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our own
+times. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, and well
+illustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees less primitive than that
+which is revealed to us by the archaeological researches either of
+Pictet and Windischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Lennan. We shall
+gather evidences of this as we proceed. Meanwhile let us remember that
+at least eleven thousand years before the Homeric age men lived in
+communities, and manufactured pottery on the banks of the Nile; and let
+us not leave wholly out of sight that more distant period, perhaps a
+million years ago, when sparse tribes of savage men, contemporaneous
+with the mammoths of Siberia and the cave-tigers of Britain, struggled
+against the intense cold of the glacial winters.
+
+Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a late one when
+considered with reference to the whole career of the human race, there
+is a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as the "youth of
+the world." However long man may have existed upon the earth, he becomes
+thoroughly and distinctly human in the eyes of the historian only at the
+epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature. As far back
+as we can trace the progress of the human race continuously by means of
+the written word, so far do we feel a true historical interest in its
+fortunes, and pursue our studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse of
+time is powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history never
+has been and never will be written, whose career on the earth, dateless
+and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by palaeontology,
+excites in us a very different feeling. Though with the keenest interest
+we ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface for information
+about him, we are all the while aware that what we are studying is
+human zoology and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a
+character. We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name, who
+were his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His language
+has died with him, and he can render no account of himself. We can only
+regard him specifically as Homo Anthropos, a creature of bigger brain
+than his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater promise. But
+this, we say, is physical science, and not history.
+
+For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various social
+relations, the youth of the world is the period at which literature
+begins. We regard the history of the western world as beginning about
+the tenth century before the Christian era, because at that date we find
+literature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw direct light
+upon the social and intellectual condition of a portion of mankind.
+That great empires, rich in historical interest and in materials for
+sociological generalizations, had existed for centuries before that
+date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they appear at the
+dawn of history with all the marks of great antiquity; but the only
+steady historical light thrown upon them shines from the pages of Greek
+and Hebrew authors, and these know them only in their latest period. For
+information concerning their early careers we must look, not to history,
+but to linguistic archaeology, a science which can help us to general
+results, but cannot enable us to fix dates, save in the crudest manner.
+
+We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period at
+which we can begin to study human society in general and Greek society
+in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking,
+the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The
+earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of the Olympiad
+of Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems
+were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly
+prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who have
+not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might
+have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must
+be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of
+critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from
+reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence." We do not
+know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all
+probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question
+are not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will ever be
+discovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in an
+obscurity as deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between the
+seven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the
+poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. The
+feebleness of the evidence brought into court may be judged from the
+fact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's blindness rest
+alike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides
+(III. 104) accepted as authentic. The majority of modern critics have
+consoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as between the two
+great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least belonged to
+the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons for doubting this
+opinion. He has pointed out several instances in which the poems seem
+to betray a closer topographical acquaintance with European than with
+Asiatic Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos have at least as
+good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna.
+
+It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion as
+to the date of the Homeric poems, than that we should seek to determine
+the exact locality in which they originated. Yet the one question is
+hardly less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiquity
+assigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which the earliest is
+separated from the most recent by an interval of four hundred and sixty
+years,--a period as long as that which separates the Black Prince from
+the Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the Christian era.
+While Theopompos quite preposterously brings him down as late as the
+twenty-third Olympiad, Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C.
+The date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is the one assigned by
+Herodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me
+convincing, for doubting or rejecting this date.
+
+I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles, which
+seems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy testimony, provided
+it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone in
+not regarding the legend as historical in its present shape. In my
+apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have no value
+whatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any
+date earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return of
+the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legend
+of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless embodies
+a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as scholarlike or
+philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the whole
+narrative nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when the
+Dorian tribes--described in the legend as the allies of the Children of
+Herakles--conquered Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequent
+to the composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliad
+and the Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Peloponnesos,
+if there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the time
+when the poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorously
+consistent in their use of ethnical appellatives; and their author, in
+speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples
+directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes and
+Scotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling in
+Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhabiting
+Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the
+Greeks in general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly.
+When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas, but
+as Achaia,--the whole country taking its name from the Achaians,
+the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the truly
+historical period, in the eighth century B. C., all this is changed.
+The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes; the Dorians rule in
+Peloponnesos, while their lands are tilled by Argive Helots; and the
+Achaians appear only as an insignificant people occupying the southern
+shore of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place we cannot tell.
+The explanation of it can never be obtained from history, though some
+light may perhaps be thrown upon it by linguistic archaeology. But at
+all events it was a great change, and could not have taken place in a
+moment. It is fair to suppose that the Helleno-Dorian conquest must have
+begun at least a century before the first Olympiad; for otherwise the
+geographical limits of the various Greek races would not have been so
+completely established as we find them to have been at that date. The
+Greeks, indeed, supposed it to have begun at least three centuries
+earlier, but it is impossible to collect evidence which will either
+refute or establish that opinion. For our purposes it is enough to know
+that the conquest could not have taken place later than 900 B. C.; and
+if this be the case, the MINIMUM DATE for the composition of the Homeric
+poems must be the tenth century before Christ; which is, in fact, the
+date assigned by Aristotle. Thus far, and no farther, I believe it
+possible to go with safety. Whether the poems were composed in the
+tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be determined. We
+are justified only in placing them far enough back to allow the
+Helleno-Dorian conquest to intervene between their composition and the
+beginning of recorded history. The tenth century B. C. is the latest
+date which will account for all the phenomena involved in the case, and
+with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this showing, the Iliad
+and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan literature,
+save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-Veda and the sacred books of the
+Avesta.
+
+The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for three or four
+centuries without the aid of writing may seem at first sight to justify
+the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere collections of ancient
+ballads, like those which make up the Mahabharata, preserved in the
+memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first arranged under the orders
+of Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is seen to
+raise more difficulties than it solves. What was there in the position
+of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the sixth century B. C., so
+authoritative as to compel all Greeks to recognize the recension then
+and there made of their revered poet? Besides which the celebrated
+ordinance of Solon respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges
+us to infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous to
+550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of Peisistratos
+"presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main
+lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many
+of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both by
+omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations
+conformably with such understood general type, Peisistratos might hope
+both to procure respect for Athens and to constitute a fashion for the
+rest of Greece. But this step of 'collecting the torn body of sacred
+Homer' is something generically different from the composition of a new
+Iliad out of pre-existing songs: the former is as easy, suitable, and
+promising as the latter is violent and gratuitous." [151]
+
+As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too long to
+have been preserved by memory, it may be met by a simple denial. It is a
+strange objection indeed, coming from a man of Wolf's retentive memory.
+I do not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be regarded as
+such a very arduous task; and if literature were as scanty now as in
+Greek antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would long since
+have had them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but little
+conscious effort, managed to carry in his head a very considerable
+portion of Greek and Latin classic literature; and Niebuhr (who
+once restored from recollection a book of accounts which had been
+accidentally destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book and
+chapter of an ancient author without consulting his notes. Nay, there
+is Professor Sophocles, of Harvard University, who, if you suddenly stop
+and interrogate him in the street, will tell you just how many times any
+given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in AEschylos, or in Plato, and
+will obligingly rehearse for you the context. If all extant copies of
+the Homeric poems were to be gathered together and burnt up to-day,
+like Don Quixote's library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of which
+Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets of Granada, the poems
+could very likely be reproduced and orally transmitted for several
+generations; and much easier must it have been for the Greeks
+to preserve these books, which their imagination invested with a
+quasi-sanctity, and which constituted the greater part of the literary
+furniture of their minds. In Xenophon's time there were educated
+gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim.
+(Xenoph. Sympos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know that at Chios there was
+a company of bards, known as Homerids, whose business it was to recite
+these poems from memory; and from the edicts of Solon and the Sikyonian
+Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same in
+other parts of Greece. Passages from the Iliad used to be sung at the
+Pythian festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV.
+638), and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean there were
+regular competitive exhibitions by trained young men, at which prizes
+were given to the best reciter. The difficulty of preserving the poems,
+under such circumstances, becomes very insignificant; and the Wolfian
+argument quite vanishes when we reflect that it would have been no
+easier to preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long ones.
+Nay, the coherent, orderly arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey would
+make them even easier to remember than a group of short rhapsodies not
+consecutively arranged.
+
+When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in them quite
+convincing evidence that they were originally composed for the ear
+alone, and without reference to manuscript assistance. They abound in
+catchwords, and in verbal repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships," as Mr.
+Gladstone has acutely observed, is arranged in well-defined sections,
+in such a way that the end of each section suggests the beginning of
+the next one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in old-fashioned
+grammars. But the most convincing proof of all is to be found in the
+changes which Greek pronunciation went through between the ages of
+Homer and Peisistratos. "At the time when these poems were composed, the
+digamma (or w) was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the
+structure of the verse; at the time when they were committed to writing,
+it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in any
+of the manuscripts,--insomuch that the Alexandrian critics, though they
+knew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkaios and Sappho,
+never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities
+of metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma, were corrected by
+different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost
+letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the
+supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time
+to the memory, the voice, and the ear exclusively." [152]
+
+Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the Wolfians; but
+the inference drawn from them, that the Homeric poems began to exist in
+a piecemeal condition, is, as we have seen, unnecessary. These poems may
+indeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the early sacred and
+epic literature of the Jews, Indians, and Teutons. But if we assign a
+plurality of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata,
+the Vedas, and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence furnished
+by the books themselves, and not because these books could not have been
+preserved by oral tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems any
+such internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished by
+the interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch? A
+careful investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar who
+has given some attention to the subject can readily distinguish the
+Elohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch; and, save in
+the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics coincide in the
+separation which they make between the two. But the attempts which have
+been made to break up the Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no such
+harmonious agreement. There are as many systems as there are critics,
+and naturally enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much alike
+as two peas, and the resemblance which holds between the two holds also
+between the different parts of each poem. From the appearance of the
+injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the intervention of Athene
+on the field of contest at Ithaka, we find in each book and in each
+paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same
+habits of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the faculty
+of observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the observation
+slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in
+ballad-literature, this argument from similarity might not carry with it
+much conviction. But when we reflect that throughout the whole course
+of human history no other works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare,
+have ever been written which for combined keenness of observation,
+elevation of thought, and sublimity of style can compare with the
+Homeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great weight
+indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and twenty-fourth books
+of the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminent
+champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors.
+Human speech has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of its
+capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam and
+Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview between Hektor
+and Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power of
+language. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether it
+is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn of
+expression, and alike exhibiting the same unapproachable degree of
+excellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And the
+physiologist--with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's
+theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass the
+negroes--has a right to ask whether it is in the natural course of
+things for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in their
+minutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the same time.
+And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we reflect that
+it is the coexistence of not two only, but at least twenty such geniuses
+which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That theory
+worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly assumed that the
+Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to ballad poetry. But, except in the
+simplicity of the primitive diction, there is no such analogy. The
+power and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it is
+rendered into the style of a modern ballad. One might as well attempt
+to preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas by
+turning it into the light Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by a
+Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which defies translation,
+is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with a
+sustained elevation of style, which can be explained only as due to
+individual genius.
+
+The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artistic
+structure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey in particular,
+Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughly
+integral, that no considerable portion could be subtracted without
+converting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment. The
+Iliad stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakable
+peculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote, who
+utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up of
+two poems; although he inclines to the belief that the later poem
+was grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of further
+elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added a
+new part to "Faust." According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originally
+conceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated in
+the opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and
+the unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot of
+this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I., VIII., and
+XI.-XXII.; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the
+symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration of
+the Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly
+anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is
+therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of
+an inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books,
+with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet,
+with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad,
+describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this
+hypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the
+one best entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point connected
+with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory rests
+solely upon imagined difficulties which have no real existence. I doubt
+if any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by
+these alleged inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested
+by some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in spite of
+Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of these
+over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an account
+of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the siege, and
+it does not continue to the capture of the city. It is simply occupied
+with an episode in the war,--with the wrath of Achilleus and its
+consequences, according to the plan marked out in the opening lines. The
+supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to the poem
+a somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate changed its primitive
+character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem even called for by the
+original conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have inserted
+the battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the
+Greeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would have
+been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis,
+must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell determination. And
+after the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias,
+Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful intervention
+of Achilleus appears in far grander proportions than would otherwise
+be possible. As for the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, I
+am unable to see how the final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be
+complete without it. As Mr. Gladstone well observes, what Achilleus
+wants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon offers no apology
+until the nineteenth book. In his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleus
+scornfully rejects the proposals which imply that the mere return of
+Briseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be accompanied
+with that public humiliation to which circumstances have not yet
+compelled the leader of the Greeks to subject himself. Achilleus is not
+to be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the Greeks in the
+thirteenth book does not prevail upon him; nor is there anything in the
+poem to show that he ever would have laid aside his wrath, had not the
+death of Patroklos supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen motive.
+It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after the death of his
+friend would lose half its poetic effect, were it not preceded by some
+such scene as that in the ninth book, in which he is represented as deaf
+to all ordinary inducements. As for the two concluding books, which Mr.
+Grote is inclined to regard as a subsequent addition, not necessitated
+by the plan of the poem, I am at a loss to see how the poem can be
+considered complete without them. To leave the bodies of Patroklos
+and Hektor unburied would be in the highest degree shocking to Greek
+religious feelings. Remembering the sentence incurred, in far less
+superstitious times, by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to
+believe that any conclusion which left Patroklos's manes unpropitiated,
+and the mutilated corpse of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied
+either the poet or his hearers. For further particulars I must refer
+the reader to the excellent criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to the
+article on "Greek History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's
+"Dissertations and Discussions." A careful study of the arguments of
+these writers, and, above all, a thorough and independent examination of
+the Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the student that this great
+poem is from beginning to end the consistent production of a single
+author.
+
+The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and Odyssey, taken
+as wholes, to two different authors, rest chiefly upon some apparent
+discrepancies in the mythology of the two poems; but many of these
+difficulties have been completely solved by the recent progress of the
+science of comparative mythology. Thus, for example, the fact that,
+in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while in the
+Odyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited even by
+Mr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are not by the same author. It
+seems to me that one such discrepancy, in the midst of complete general
+agreement, would be much better explained as Cervantes explained his own
+inconsistency with reference to the stealing of Sancho's mule, in the
+twenty-second chapter of "Don Quixote." But there is no discrepancy.
+Aphrodite, though originally the moon-goddess, like the German
+Horsel, had before Homer's time acquired many of the attributes of the
+dawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had been to a
+great extent transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated
+character, as goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite became identified with
+Charis, who appears in the Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-Homeric
+mythology, the two were again separated, and Charis, becoming divided in
+personality, appears as the Charites, or Graces, who were supposed to be
+constant attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems the two are
+still identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife
+of the fire-god, without inconsistency.
+
+Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite right in
+maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are, from beginning to end,
+with the exception of a few insignificant interpolations, the work of a
+single author, whom we have no ground for calling by any other name than
+that of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this author lived before the
+beginning of authentic history, and that we can determine neither his
+age nor his country with precision. We can only decide that he was a
+Greek who lived at some time previous to the year 900 B.C.
+
+Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr. Gladstone, and
+shall henceforth unfortunately have frequent occasion to differ from him
+on points of fundamental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only regards
+the Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic history, but
+he even goes much further than this. He would not only fix the date of
+Homer positively in the twelfth century B. C., but he regards the
+Trojan war as a purely historical event, of which Homer is the authentic
+historian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he even takes the word
+of the poet as proof conclusive of the historical character of events
+happening several generations before the Troika, according to the
+legendary chronology. He not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus,
+and Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same reality to
+characters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of the Pelopid
+and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos, with as much confidence
+as if he were dealing with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch of
+the Crusades.
+
+It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has been
+finally settled by writers like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis,
+to come upon such views in the work of a man of scholarship and
+intelligence. One begins to wonder how many more times it will be
+necessary to prove that dates and events are of no historical value,
+unless attested by nearly contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch
+were able men no doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; but
+what these writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of
+Homer, and the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the critical
+historian, since even in the time of Thukydides these events were
+as completely obscured by lapse of time as they are now. There is no
+literary Greek history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three
+centuries subsequent to the first recorded Olympiad. A portion of this
+period is satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these fail us
+before we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable date.
+Even the career of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems to belong to
+the commencement of the eighth century B. C., presents us, from lack of
+anything like contemporary records, with many insoluble problems. The
+Helleno-Dorian conquest, as we have seen, must have occurred at some
+time or other; but it evidently did not occur within two centuries of
+the earliest known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imagine
+that we can determine its date or ascertain the circumstances which
+attended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in Greek
+antiquity directly known to us,--the existence of the Homeric poems. The
+belief that there was a Trojan war rests exclusively upon the contents
+of those poems: there is no other independent testimony to it whatever.
+But the Homeric poems are of no value as testimony to the truth of the
+statements contained in them, unless it can be proved that their author
+was either contemporary with the Troika, or else derived his information
+from contemporary witnesses. This can never be proved. To assume, as Mr.
+Gladstone does, that Homer lived within fifty years after the Troika, is
+to make a purely gratuitous assumption. For aught the wisest historian
+can tell, the interval may have been five hundred years, or a thousand.
+Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it is dealing with an
+ancient state of things which no longer exists. It is difficult to see
+what else can be meant by the statement that the heroes of the Troika
+belong to an order of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V.
+304.) Most assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son
+of Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary mortals, such
+as might have been seen and conversed with by the poet's grandfather.
+They belong to an inferior order of gods, according to the peculiar
+anthropomorphism of the Greeks, in which deity and humanity are so
+closely mingled that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and
+the other ends. Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the gentle
+Aphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the terrible Ares.
+Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we are told, not two men
+among the poet's contemporaries could by their united exertions raise
+and place upon a table. Aias and Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses
+of rock as easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All this
+shows that the poet, in his naive way, conceiving of these heroes as
+personages of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as possible to
+ascribe to them the attributes of superior beings. If all that were
+divine, marvellous, or superhuman were to be left out of the poems, the
+supposed historical residue would hardly be worth the trouble of saving.
+As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative
+that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, and
+before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimants
+for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of the
+Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no other purpose
+than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the
+sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord of
+undying horses, goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own; that
+his wrath is roused because he is robbed of the maiden Briseis, and that
+henceforth he takes no part in the strife until his friend Patroklos has
+been slain; that then he puts on the new armour which Thetis brings to
+him from the anvil of Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the victory. The
+details are throughout of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converses
+with Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bear
+away the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the far-off
+land of light." In view of all this it is evident that Homer was not
+describing, like a salaried historiographer, the state of things which
+existed in the time of his father or grandfather. To his mind the
+occurrences which he described were those of a remote, a wonderful, a
+semi-divine past.
+
+This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by reference to
+the Iliad itself, becomes irresistible as soon as we take into account
+the results obtained during the past thirty years by the science of
+comparative mythology. As long as our view was restricted to Greece,
+it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and Paris should be taken for
+exaggerated copies of actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid the
+foundations of the science of mythology, all this has been changed. It
+is now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena are to be found, not
+only in the Iliad, but also in the Rig-Veda, and therefore, as mythical
+conceptions, date, not from Homer, but from a period preceding the
+dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath of Achilleus, far
+from originating with Homer, far from being recorded by the author of
+the Iliad as by an eyewitness, must have been known in its essential
+features in Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when the Indian, the
+Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the same. For the story has
+been retained by the three races alike, in all its principal features;
+though the Veda has left it in the sky where it originally belonged,
+while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth,
+the one locating it in Asia Minor, and the other in Northwestern Europe.
+[153]
+
+In the Rig-Veda the Panis are the genii of night and winter,
+corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of the Mist," in the
+Teutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in the Greek
+myth of the Golden Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun (Indra,
+Helios, Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to a dark cave
+eastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to find and
+recover them. The Panis then tamper with Sarama, and try their best to
+induce her to betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailed
+upon to dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give Indra the
+information needful in order that he might conquer the Panis, just
+as Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately returns to her
+western home, carrying with her the treasures (ktemata, Iliad, II. 285)
+of which Paris had robbed Menelaos. But, before the bright Indra and his
+solar heroes can reconquer their treasures they must take captive the
+offspring of Brisaya, the violet light of morning. Thus Achilleus,
+answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the daughter of
+Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from the morning-light, to
+return to it again just before setting, so Achilleus loses Briseis,
+and regains her only just before his final struggle. In similar wise
+Herakles is parted from Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from
+Brynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires from the conflict, and his
+Myrmidons are no longer seen on the battle-field, as the sun hides
+behind the dark cloud and his rays no longer appear about him. Yet
+toward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might, clothed
+in the dazzling armour wrought for him by the fire-god Hephaistos, and
+with his invincible spear slays the great storm-cloud, which during his
+absence had wellnigh prevailed over the champions of the daylight. But
+his triumph is short-lived; for having trampled on the clouds that had
+opposed him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the sharp
+arrow of the night-demon Paris slays him at the Western Gates. We have
+not space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's "Mythology of the
+Aryan Nations," and "Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find the
+entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated by
+comparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs.
+
+Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern in
+comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded. The
+date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never be
+determined; but I do not see how any competent scholar can well place it
+at less than eight hundred or a thousand years before the time of Homer.
+Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages
+had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore,
+than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth of the world," in
+which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and possessing
+no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the
+Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The Veda,
+though composed much later than this,--perhaps as late as the
+Iliad,--nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of this
+period. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the fickle
+twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive to coax her from her
+allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of action in the sky. But
+the Homeric Greek had long since forgotten that Helena and Paris were
+anything more than semi-divine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the
+son of the Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the
+bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one") the dawn,
+and spoke significantly when he called the latter the daughter of the
+former. But the Greek could not know that Zeus was derived from a root
+div, "to shine," or that Helena belonged to a root sar, "to creep."
+Phonetic change thus helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism.
+His nature-gods became thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably no
+more remembered that Achilleus originally signified the sun, than we
+remember that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast of
+conceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-wind. Indeed, when the
+fetichistic tendency led the Greek again to personify the powers of
+nature, he had recourse to new names formed from his own language. Thus,
+beside Apollo we have Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos
+beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further consequence of this
+decomposition and new development of the old Aryan mythology, we find,
+as might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistent
+in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon,
+is--to Max Muller's perplexity--invested with many of the attributes of
+the bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he
+is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed in
+his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar
+heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark
+night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they are
+alike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night and
+the dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The exposure of the child in
+infancy represents the long rays of the morning-sun resting on the
+hillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the wine-coloured one"), but
+meets her again at the gloaming when she lays herself by his side amid
+the crimson flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is
+made to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his
+friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the Lykians, or
+"children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn,
+from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus and
+the gods of Olympos.
+
+The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages before
+the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be
+conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the
+legend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of
+mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition. In this view
+I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman,
+who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the
+problem before us.
+
+The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed to
+have been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the French nation nor
+the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is
+represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of
+until long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne
+are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology.
+He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,--an avatar, or at
+least a representative, of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his case
+legend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for us
+as unreal as Agamemnon.
+
+History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German in
+race, name, and language, who was one of the two or three greatest men
+of action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth century
+ruled over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in many
+particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact,
+which without the information supplied by history we might perhaps set
+down as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy,
+and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman has well
+observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are good evidence that
+there were crusades, although the real Karl had nothing whatever to do
+with one.
+
+Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne, except
+that we no longer have history to help us in rectifying the legend.
+The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large portion of
+the islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject to a
+common suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly suggested,
+the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or Sparta
+or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence of the
+trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the legend was
+constrained by some remembered fact, instead of being guided by general
+probability. Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred in
+romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Paris, says Mr.
+Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to Aachen.
+Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by historic
+records, is here at least supported by archaeologic remains, which prove
+Mykenai to have been at some time or other a place of great consequence.
+Then, as to the Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several times
+crossed the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of Asia
+Minor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their homes
+many warlike communities of Lydians and Bithynians, and we may be
+sure that this was not done without prolonged fighting. There may very
+probably have been now and then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece,
+as there was in mediaeval Europe; and whether the great suzerain at
+Mykenai ever attended one or not, legend would be sure to send him on
+such an expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade.
+
+It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may represent
+dimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their characters and actions
+distorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solar
+myth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that of
+the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther, seem to be mere
+personifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich are none
+other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attributes; and
+even the conception of Brunhild has been supposed to contain elements
+derived from the traditional recollection of the historical Brunehault.
+When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true sun-god, to have died by
+a wound from a sharp instrument in the only vulnerable part of his body,
+we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts himself in many
+respects like a solar deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents
+the sun ensnared and held captive by the pale goddess of night, the
+legend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies
+a portion of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic
+have been substituted for Odin; we may suspect that with the mythical
+impersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures may
+be blended. We should remember that in early times the solar-myth was a
+sort of type after which all wonderful stories would be patterned, and
+that to such a type tradition also would be made to conform.
+
+In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism.
+If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which
+the labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have
+satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history can
+be obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out
+the mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence
+of an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in mythical
+phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can it be construed
+into history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr. Gladstone
+to attempt to base historical conclusions upon the fact that Helena is
+always called "Argive Helen," or to draw ethnological inferences from
+the circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the Greek
+heroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so described. The
+Argos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though doubtless
+so construed even in Homer's time. It is "the bright land" where Zeus
+resides, and the epithet is applied to his wife Here and his daughter
+Helena, as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with Sarameyas
+in the Veda. As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that Greeks have
+ever commonly possessed it; but no other colour would do for a solar
+hero, and it accordingly characterizes the entire company of them,
+wherever found, while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is not
+required.
+
+A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained during
+the past thirty years by the comparative study of languages and
+mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to reconsider many of his views
+concerning the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to cut out
+half or two thirds of his book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on
+the divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be rewritten, and
+the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation abandoned. One can hardly
+preserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone derives Apollo from the
+Hebrew Messiah, and Athene from the Logos. To accredit Homer with an
+acquaintance with the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until
+the time of Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian form
+until the middle of the second century after Christ, is certainly a
+strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that the
+authors of the Volsunga Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd from
+the "Thirty-Nine Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene and
+Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any
+of the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr.
+Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated. For all
+Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of futurity, and in the maid Athene
+we have perhaps the highest conception of deity to which the Greek mind
+had attained in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the
+dawn; but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories of
+daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the impersonation of the
+illuminating and knowledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she
+is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from his
+forehead; but, according to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies
+that she shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdom
+of Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the peculiar
+privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty position, sees everything that
+takes place upon the earth. Even the secondary divinity Helios possesses
+this prerogative to a certain extent.
+
+Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry for the
+Greek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance with the old Aryan
+mythology vitiates all his conclusions. No doubt the Greek mythology is
+in some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions. Aphrodite was
+originally a purely Greek divinity, but in course of time she acquired
+some of the attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improved
+by the change. Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported into
+Greece. But the same cannot be proved of Poseidon; [154] far less of
+Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas, the rising wind,
+the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome wind-god, who invented
+music, and conducts the souls of dead men to the house of Hades, even
+as his counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-tops leading
+the host of the departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus,
+referred to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's promise to Noah, one
+is at a loss to understand the relationship between the two conceptions.
+Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks than to call the rainbow the
+messenger of the sky-god to earth-dwelling men; to call it a token set
+in the sky by Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a very different thing.
+We may admit the very close resemblance between the myth of Bellerophon
+and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha; but the fact that the Greek
+story is explicable from Aryan antecedents, while the Hebrew story is
+isolated, might perhaps suggest the inference that the Hebrews were the
+borrowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of the myth of Eden.
+Lastly, to conclude that Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reigns
+in the East over Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pure
+Greek for the sun? and where should his sacred island be placed, if not
+in the East? As for his oxen, which wrought such dire destruction to the
+comrades of Odysseus, and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they
+are those very same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by the
+storm-demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and which furnished endless
+material for legends to the poets of the Veda.
+
+But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be terra
+incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the even tenour of his way in
+utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf.
+He takes no note of the Rig-Veda, nor does he seem to realize that there
+was ever a time when the ancestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshipped
+the same gods. Two or three times he cites Max Muller, but makes no
+use of the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only work
+which seems really to have attracted his attention is M. Jacolliot's
+very discreditable performance called "The Bible in India." Mr.
+Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly approve of this book; but
+neither does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of
+charlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudiments of the
+subject which he professes to handle.
+
+Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to treat purely
+philological questions. Of the science of philology, as based upon
+established laws of phonetic change, he seems to have no knowledge
+whatever. He seems to think that two words are sufficiently proved to
+be connected when they are seen to resemble each other in spelling or in
+sound. Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the name Themis from
+an assumed verb them, "to speak," whereas it is notoriously derived from
+tiqhmi, as statute comes ultimately from stare. His reference of hieros,
+"a priest," and geron, "an old man," to the same root, is utterly
+baseless; the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, "a powerful man," the other
+is the Sanskrit jaran, "an old man." The lists of words on pages 96-100
+are disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole purpose for
+which they are given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's philology is in
+arrears. The theory of Niebuhr--that the words common to Greek and
+Latin, mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgian--was
+serviceable enough in its day, but is now rendered wholly antiquated
+by the discovery that such words are Aryan, in the widest sense. The
+Pelasgian theory works very smoothly so long as we only compare the
+Greek with the Latin words,--as, for instance, sugon with jugum; but
+when we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit yugam, it is evident that
+we have got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But what shall we say
+when we find Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus in support of
+this antiquated theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is, or should be,
+significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a Latin word at
+all, except by adoption. One might as well cite the word ensemble to
+prove the original identity or kinship between English and French.
+
+When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and applied
+philology, confines himself to illustrating the contents of the Homeric
+poems, he is always excellent. His chapter on the "Outer Geography" of
+the Odyssey is exceedingly interesting; showing as it does how much
+may be obtained from the patient and attentive study of even a single
+author. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the SURFACE of the Iliad and
+Odyssey, so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he attempts
+to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the treasures hidden in the
+bowels of the earth, that he shows himself unprovided with the talisman
+of the wise dervise, which alone can unlock those mysteries. But modern
+philology is an exacting science: to approach its higher problems
+requires an amount of preparation sufficient to terrify at the outset
+all but the boldest; and a man who has had to regulate taxation, and
+make out financial statements, and lead a political party in a great
+nation, may well be excused for ignorance of philology. It is difficult
+enough for those who have little else to do but to pore over treatises
+on phonetics, and thumb their lexicons, to keep fully abreast with the
+latest views in linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever
+broach a new hypothesis without misgivings lest somebody, in some weekly
+journal published in Germany, may just have anticipated and refuted it.
+Yet while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philology,
+it is far less excusable that he should sit down to write a book about
+Homer, abounding in philological statements, without the slightest
+knowledge of what has been achieved in that science for several years
+past. In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abiding
+taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain kind
+of praise. I hope,--though just now the idea savours of the
+ludicrous,--that the day may some time arrive when OUR Congressmen and
+Secretaries of the Treasury will spend their vacations in writing books
+about Greek antiquities, or in illustrating the meaning of Homeric
+phrases.
+
+July, 1870.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD.
+
+NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten or wholly
+outlived the feeling of delight awakened by the first perusal of Max
+Muller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative Mythology,"--a work in which
+the scientific principles of myth-interpretation, though not newly
+announced, were at least brought home to the reader with such an amount
+of fresh and striking concrete illustration as they had not before
+received. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader that, while
+the analyses of myths contained in this noble essay are in the main
+sound in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless the author's
+theory of the genesis of myth is expressed, and most likely conceived,
+in a way that is very suggestive of carelessness and fallacy. There are
+obvious reasons for doubting whether the existence of mythology can be
+due to any "disease," abnormity, or hypertrophy of metaphor in language;
+and the criticism at once arises, that with the myth-makers it was not
+so much the character of the expression which originated the thought,
+as it was the thought which gave character to the expression. It is not
+that the early Aryans were myth-makers because their language abounded
+in metaphor; it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphor
+because the men and women who spoke it were myth-makers. And they were
+myth-makers because they had nothing but the phenomena of human will and
+effort with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it was that
+they spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer,
+and classified inanimate no less than animate objects as masculine and
+feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay
+and in his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of the
+curious manner in which he combines a marvellous penetration into the
+significance of details with a certain looseness of general conception.
+[155] The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable
+aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the
+powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinking
+persons; but before we can get at the secret of the myth-making tendency
+itself, we must leave philology and enter upon a psychological study.
+We must inquire into the characteristics of that primitive style of
+thinking to which it seemed quite natural that the sun should be an
+unerring archer, and the thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robber
+finding his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant Lord of
+Light.
+
+Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting problem,
+we shall find it advantageous to give especial attention to Mr. Tylor's
+"Primitive Culture," [156] one of the few erudite works which are at
+once truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning displayed
+in it would do credit to a German specialist, both for extent and for
+minuteness, while the orderly arrangement of the arguments and the
+elegant lucidity of the style are such as we are accustomed to expect
+from French essay-writers. And what is still more admirable is the
+way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and original
+speculator is tempered by the patience and caution of a cool-headed
+critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed than in writers
+who deal with mythology and with primitive religious ideas; but these
+qualities are too seldom found in combination with the speculative
+boldness which is required when fresh theories are to be framed or new
+paths of investigation opened. The state of mind in which the explaining
+powers of a favourite theory are fondly contemplated is, to some extent,
+antagonistic to the state of mind in which facts are seen, with the
+eye of impartial criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromising
+reality. To be able to preserve the balance between the two opposing
+tendencies is to give evidence of the most consummate scientific
+training. It is from the want of such a balance that the recent great
+work of Mr. Cox is at times so unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seem
+ill-natured to say so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays
+every available illustration of the physical theory of the origin of
+myths has now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader's
+conviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part, though by no
+means inclined to waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted on good
+grounds, I never felt so much like rebelling against the mythologic
+supremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes.
+That Mr. Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory, awakens no
+such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception and realization
+of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a single formula
+such many-sided correspondences as those which primitive poetry end
+philosophy have discerned between the life of man and the life of
+outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elf-land of popular
+fancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode of myth into some
+answering physical event, his only criterion being outward resemblance,
+cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns for
+evidence he is sure to find something that can be made to serve as such.
+As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or nursery rhyme is safe from
+his hermeneutics. "Should he, for instance, demand as his property
+the nursery 'Song of Sixpence,' his claim would be easily
+established,--obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the
+four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying
+earth covered with the overarching sky,--how true a touch of nature
+it is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the birds
+begin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is
+pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae; the Queen is
+the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the
+'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs
+out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird,
+who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of
+sunrise." In all this interpretation there is no a priori improbability,
+save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and completeness. That
+some points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antique
+interpretations of physical events, is in harmony with all that we know
+concerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the time-honoured rhyme really
+wants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof
+by some argument more valid than analogy." The character of the argument
+which is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to the rhyme about
+Jack and Jill, explained some time since in the paper on "The Origins of
+Folk Lore." If the argument be thought valid which shows these ill-fated
+children to be the spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists,
+not in the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but
+in the fact that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of our
+own day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an explanation
+of the moon-spots. To the neglect of this distinction between what is
+plausible and what is supported by direct evidence, is due much of the
+crude speculation which encumbers the study of myths.
+
+It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the wider
+inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of thinking in
+which myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practical
+value of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety which
+everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer who
+can treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his head over
+allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a savage
+is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, but
+a plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feeble
+intelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such
+modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is
+no part of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of
+a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which we
+shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their primitive
+constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs which, in an advanced
+stage of culture, seem meaningless save when characterized by
+some quaintly wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seem
+meaningless in the lower culture which gave birth to them. Myths, like
+words, survive their primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is
+part and parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation
+which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one which would
+most readily occur to any one thinking on the theme with which the myth
+is concerned. But by and by the mode of philosophizing has changed;
+explanations which formerly seemed quite obvious no longer occur to any
+one, but the myth has acquired an independent substantive existence, and
+continues to be handed down from parents to children as something true,
+though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly, the myth itself
+gradually fades from remembrance, often leaving behind it some utterly
+unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd superstitious notion. For
+example,--to recur to an illustration already cited in a previous
+paper,--it is still believed here and there by some venerable granny
+that it is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the belief
+to the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient existence, would
+be making one of the blunders which are always committed by those
+who reason a priori about historical matters without following the
+historical method. At an earlier date the superstition existed in the
+shape of a belief that the killing of a robin portends some calamity;
+in a still earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again,
+still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward reveals that
+the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that he is the bird
+of Thor, the lightning god; and finally we reach that primitive stage
+of philosophizing in which the lightning is explained as a red bird
+dropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the
+belief that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of
+a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case of
+survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition it is held
+that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and thus we
+pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the seizing of the
+unfortunate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry
+at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge
+against the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him.
+
+The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning as
+the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are parts of that primitive
+philosophy of nature in which all forces objectively existing are
+conceived as identical with the force subjectively known as volition.
+It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr.
+Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism," which
+we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications.
+When we have properly characterized some of the processes which the
+untrained mind habitually goes through, we shall have incidentally
+arrived at a fair solution of the genesis of mythology.
+
+Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or uncultivated mind
+reaches all manner of apparently fanciful conclusions through reckless
+reasoning from analogy. It is through the operation of certain laws of
+ideal association that all human thinking, that of the highest as well
+as that of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law of
+gravitation, as well as the invention of such a superstition as the
+Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association of ideas. The
+difference between the scientific and the mythologic inference consists
+solely in the number of checks which in the former case combine to
+prevent any other than the true conclusion from being framed into a
+proposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences
+have taught the modern that there are many associations of ideas which
+do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the
+world of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newly
+framed notions the rigid test of verification. Besides which the same
+accumulation of experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal
+associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions
+have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who
+is to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these
+multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer to
+what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized
+modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of
+the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testing
+any of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest.
+Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the
+course of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he
+arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparently
+at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which European
+and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which the myth-maker
+was but reasoning according to the best methods at his command. To this
+simplest class, in which the association of ideas is determined by mere
+analogy, belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of
+wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is about
+to trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape the
+conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket,--a symbolic
+way of repudiating manhood." [157] A similar style of thinking underlies
+the mediaeval necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his
+enemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the
+enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in a
+previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be administered
+to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined
+to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless
+familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so
+amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field
+of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
+imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of
+caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking of
+a mirror heralds a death in the family,--probably because of the
+destruction of the reflected human image; that the "hair of the dog that
+bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that the
+tears shed by human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring down
+showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's remark, "that
+the king had been ill, and that people generally expected the illness
+to be fatal, because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the king's age,
+had just died. 'So wild and capricious is the human mind,'" observes
+the elegant letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the
+thought was neither wild nor capricious; it was simply such an argument
+from analogy as the educated world has at length painfully learned to be
+worthless, but which, it is not too much to declare, would to this
+day carry considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the human
+race." Upon such symbolism are based most of the practices of divination
+and the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story, that
+when two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, the
+physician, concluded from the coincidence that they were twins, but
+Poseidonios, the astrologer, considered rather that they were born under
+the same constellation; we may add that either argument would be thought
+reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is attacked, the
+besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the moon. The moon
+represents the fortress; and if it appears below the companion planet,
+the besiegers will carry the day, otherwise they will be repulsed.
+Equally primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the
+memorable day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as to
+the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by throwing a
+stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss, sign of damnation!"
+The tree being a large one and very near at hand, the result of the
+experiment was reassuring, and the young philosopher walked away without
+further misgivings concerning this momentous question. [158]
+
+When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result only in
+speculations of this childlike character, is confronted with the
+phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make of them.
+His practical knowledge of psychology is too limited to admit of his
+distinguishing between the solidity of waking experience and what we may
+call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned
+that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu,
+for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logic
+achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go by
+contraries." But the Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan
+learned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being purely
+subjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture,
+the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much objective
+reality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours. When the savage
+relates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain dogs, dead warriors,
+or demons last night, the implication being that the things seen were
+objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language
+fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw,
+doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language
+it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to
+others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in
+the absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of
+those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has been
+away and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among
+various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the
+early civilized races." [159]
+
+Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER SELF, for
+upon this is based the great mass of crude inference which constitutes
+the primitive man's philosophy of nature. The hypothesis of the OTHER
+SELF, which serves to account for the savage's wanderings during sleep
+in strange lands and among strange people, serves also to account for
+the presence in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be
+dead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and converses with
+the other selves of his dead brethren, joins with them in the hunt, or
+sits down with them to the wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief
+in an ever-present world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire
+experience of uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. The
+existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute of
+religious belief has often been hastily asserted and as often called in
+question. But there is no question that, while many savages are unable
+to frame a conception so general as that of godhood, on the other hand
+no tribe has ever been found so low in the scale of intelligence as
+not to have framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities,
+capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with. Indeed it is
+not improbable a priori that the original inference involved in the
+notion of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fall
+within the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilized
+man. An authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being
+accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his
+haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball placed on the
+chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play with him.
+[160] Such a fact as this is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte's
+suggestion that such intelligent animals as dogs, apes, and elephants
+may be capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of
+the terrier here rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the
+same sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which implies, not
+that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in his
+mind the distinction between life and inanimate existence has never been
+thoroughly established. Just this confusion between things living
+and things not living is present throughout the whole philosophy of
+fetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things dreamed,
+which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to this same
+twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearly
+demonstrated his immeasurable superiority to the brutes. [161]
+
+The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away from
+the body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from the
+phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy, [162] which occur
+less rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than
+among civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer, "is
+afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence
+of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen
+that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his body
+has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed'
+by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and
+insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect
+that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken,
+lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to
+foul play, [163] we must readily admit that the weird reflection of the
+person and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools
+will go far to intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but
+uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe within
+two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the voices of mocking
+fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well regard as the
+utterances of his other self.
+
+With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it fall
+into the hands of some enemy who may injure him by conjuring with it,
+may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward telling
+his name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar
+ghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriously
+associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its
+getting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly
+originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may resent such
+meddling with his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak will
+not allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the chief" or
+"jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man with
+the fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord";
+while in more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talk
+of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also compare such
+expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for the Furies, and other
+like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil mortuis nisi bonum had most
+likely at one time a fetichistic flavour.
+
+In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above specified,
+the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously "tabu," that common
+words and even syllables resembling that name in sound must be omitted
+from the language. In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or
+"knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu,
+"star," had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became tiai,
+etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with the
+languages of these islands by this ever-recurring necessity. Among the
+Kafirs the women have come to speak a different dialect from the men,
+because words resembling the names of their lords or male relatives are
+in like manner "tabu." The student of human culture will trace among
+such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce
+the name of Jehovah; and hence we may perhaps have before us the
+ultimate source of the horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards
+such forms of light swearing--"Mon Dieu," etc.--as are still tolerated
+on the continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in
+Puritanic England and America. The reader interested in this group of
+ideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp.
+142, 363; Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th edition, Vol. II. p. 37;
+Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146.
+
+Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely
+diffused family of legends, which show that a man's shadow has been
+generally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritual
+attendant of the body, which under certain circumstances it may
+permanently forsake. It is in strict accordance with this idea that not
+only in the classic languages, but in various barbaric tongues, the
+word for "shadow" expresses also the soul or other self. Tasmanians,
+Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited by
+Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow with
+the ghost or phantasm seen in dreams; the Basutos going so far as to
+think "that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his
+shadow in the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person
+is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily detached from
+his body, and the convalescent is at times "reproached for exposing
+himself before his shadow was safely settled down in him." If the sick
+man has been plunged into stupor, it is because his other self has
+travelled away as far as the brink of the river of death, but not being
+allowed to cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon a
+similar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and raise a hue
+and cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr. Tylor, "in
+various countries the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular part
+of the sorcerer's or priest's profession." [164] On Aryan soil we find
+the notion of a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date
+in the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath while her
+earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The primeval conception
+reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference to his
+living contemporaries whose souls he met with in the vaults of hell,
+while their bodies were still walking about on the earth, inhabited by
+devils.
+
+The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and supposes the
+shadow to depart with the sickness and death of the body, would seem
+liable to be attended with some difficulties in the way of verification,
+even to the dim intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of
+identifying soul and breath is borne out by all primeval experience. The
+breath, which really quits the body at its decease, has furnished the
+chief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew, the Sanskrit, and the
+classic tongues; not only to German and English, where geist, and ghost,
+according to Max Muller, have the meaning of "breath," and are akin
+to such words as gas, gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbaric
+languages. Among the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in
+West Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze which
+passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders,
+according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the breath and
+the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in
+childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting
+spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use.....
+Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who
+can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like
+a little white cloud." [165] It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where a
+well-known witch died a few years since; "but before she could 'shuffle
+off this mortal coil' she must needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to
+some trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring
+township was consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was
+immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed between them has
+never fully transpired, but it is confidently affirmed that at the close
+of the interview this associate RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTO
+HER MOUTH AND WITH IT HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thus
+ceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were transferred to her
+companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn we
+can point out a farmhouse at no great distance with whose thrifty matron
+no neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel." [166]
+
+Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak further on.
+At present let us not pass over the fact that the other self is not only
+conceived as shadow or breath, which can at times quit the body during
+life, but is also supposed to become temporarily embodied in the visible
+form of some bird or beast. In discussing elsewhere the myth of Bishop
+Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the form of a
+rat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the belief that
+the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the night-wind, have
+taken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these
+quaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock
+(live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant place,
+and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing spirit which has
+already left his body and so conveying it back." [167] In Castren's
+great work on Finnish mythology, we find the story of the giant who
+could not be killed because he kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headed
+snake which he carried in a bag as he rode on horseback; only when the
+secret was discovered and the snake carefully killed, did the giant
+yield up his life. In this Finnish legend we have one of the thousand
+phases of the story of the "Giant who had no Heart in his Body," but
+whose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in a duck's egg, or in a
+pigeon, carefully disposed in some belfry at the world's end a million
+miles away, or encased in a wellnigh infinite series of Chinese boxes.
+[168] Since, in spite of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart
+invariably came to grief, we need not wonder at the Karen superstition
+that the soul is in danger when it quits the body on its excursions, as
+exemplified in countless Indo-European stories of the accidental killing
+of the weird mouse or pigeon which embodies the wandering spirit.
+Conversely it is held that the detachment of the other self is fraught
+with danger to the self which remains. In the philosophy of "wraiths"
+and "fetches," the appearance of a double, like that which troubled
+Mistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been from
+time out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New Zealand it is ominous to see
+the figure of an absent person, for if it be shadowy and the face not
+visible, his death may erelong be expected, but if the face be seen he
+is dead already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story) were
+seated round a fire in the open air, when there appeared, seen only by
+two of them, the figure of a relative, left ill at home; they exclaimed,
+the figure vanished, and on the return of the party it appeared that
+the sick man had died about the time of the vision." [169] The belief in
+wraiths has survived into modern times, and now and then appears in the
+records of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism,"
+as, for example, in the case of the lady who "thought she saw her own
+father look in at the church-window at the moment he was dying in his
+own house."
+
+The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine which identifies
+soul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in barbaric thought the
+other self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it has
+customarily been associated. In various savage superstitions the minute
+resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The Australian, for
+instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb
+of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from
+throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion
+to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the
+spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian
+doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self
+that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive
+conception that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the
+coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if
+it likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in some
+parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides by
+attended by his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are opened,
+in order that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hindered
+from joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after
+the Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing an
+unfortunate captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like the
+fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the
+distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congo
+negroes abstained for a whole year after a death from sweeping the
+house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost";
+and even now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is wrong
+to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it." [172] Dante's
+experience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished at
+his weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied by the
+sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back in the night to
+suckle the baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed
+down in the bed where she lay." Almost universally ghosts, however
+impervious to thrust of sword or shot of pistol, can eat and drink like
+Squire Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls
+sufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the case of the
+negro widows who, wishing to marry a second time, will go and duck
+themselves in the pond, in order to drown the souls of their departed
+husbands, which are supposed to cling about their necks; while,
+according to the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must go
+through a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in which, if he
+succeeds, he will enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be killed over
+again and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly company.
+
+From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms, as above
+illustrated, it is not a wide step to the conception of beast-souls
+which, like human souls, survive the death of the tangible body. The
+wide-spread superstitions concerning werewolves and swan-maidens, and
+the hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that primitive
+culture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophy
+between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more direct
+evidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who has
+killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and, lest the
+elephant's soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off and bury
+the trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled to the spirit-land.
+In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about
+the body offering excuses and laying the blame on the Russians; and the
+American redskin will even put the pipe of peace into the dead animal's
+mouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed. In Assam it is believed that
+the ghosts of slain animals will become in the next world the property
+of the hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales expressly declare
+that all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after death,--a belief,
+which, in our own day, has been indorsed on philosophical grounds by an
+eminent living naturalist. [173] The Greenlanders, too, give evidence
+of the same belief by supposing that when after an exhausting fever the
+patient comes up in unprecedented health and vigour, it is because he
+has lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a young child
+or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest fancies of primeval
+savagery are thinly disguised in a jargon learned from the superficial
+reading of modern books of science, M. Figuier maintains that human
+souls are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; in
+general, the souls of precocious musical children like Mozart come from
+nightingales, while the souls of great architects have passed into them
+from beavers, etc., etc. [174]
+
+The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is in
+some parts of the world extended to the case of plants. When the
+Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it is
+obviously because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghost
+which in the next life may need to be propitiated. And the doctrine of
+transmigration distinctly includes plants along with animals among the
+future existences into which the human soul may pass.
+
+As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a much
+less conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible that the
+savage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process of
+anthropomorphisation does not end here. Not only the horse and dog,
+the bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such as the
+hatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possess
+other selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other
+contemporary savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this is
+their belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away
+flies its soul for the service of the gods." The Algonquins told
+Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than
+men and women, it follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must
+pass along with human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land. In this
+we see how simple and consistent is the logic which guides the savage,
+and how inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our
+minds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaric
+world. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have souls
+may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be held
+consistently by the savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than human
+friends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them followed
+by shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices, dull
+or ringing, when they are struck; and who watches their doubles
+fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across the
+stream. [175] To minds, even in civilized countries, which are unused to
+the severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be alleged
+than what is called "the evidence of the senses"; for it is only long
+familiarity with science which teaches us that the evidence of the
+senses is trustworthy only in so far as it is correctly interpreted by
+reason. For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and beasts,
+trees and axes, the savage has undeniably the evidence of his senses
+which have so often seen, heard, and handled these other selves.
+
+The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate this crude
+philosophy, and receive fresh illustration from it. On the primitive
+belief in the ghostly survival of persons and objects rests the almost
+universal custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs of
+the departed chief of the tribe, as well as of presenting at his shrine
+sacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons, and money. Among the
+Kayans the slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are enjoined to
+take great care of their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo it, and to
+nurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all whom they kill in this
+world shall attend them as slaves after death," and for this reason the
+thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would not allow their young men to
+marry until they had acquired some post mortem property by procuring at
+least one human head. It is hardly necessary to do more than allude
+to the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives of the deceased at his
+funeral, or to the equally well-known Hindu rite of suttee. Though, as
+Wilson has shown, the latter rite is not supported by any genuine Vedic
+authority, but only by a shameless Brahmanic corruption of the sacred
+text, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite right in arguing that unless the
+horrible custom had received the sanction of a public opinion bequeathed
+from pre-Vedic times, the Brahmans would have had no motive for
+fraudulently reviving it; and this opinion is virtually established
+by the fact of the prevalence of widow sacrifice among Gauls,
+Scandinavians, Slaves, and other European Aryans. [176] Though under
+English rule the rite has been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic
+sentiments which so long maintained it are not yet extinct. Within the
+present year there has appeared in the newspapers a not improbable story
+of a beautiful and accomplished Hindu lady who, having become the wife
+of a wealthy Englishman, and after living several years in England amid
+the influences of modern society, nevertheless went off and privately
+burned herself to death soon after her husband's decease.
+
+The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral offerings of
+food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory of object-souls, will
+probably suggest that such offerings may be mere memorials of affection
+or esteem for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to be in many
+countries after surviving the phase of culture in which they originated;
+but there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they were
+presented in the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or otherwise
+employed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout club which is buried
+with the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him that he may be able to
+defend himself against the hostile ghosts which will lie in ambush for
+him on the road to Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him. Sometimes the
+club is afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use, since
+its ghost is all that the dead man needs. In like manner, "as the Greeks
+gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and the old Prussians
+furnished him with spending money, to buy refreshment on his weary
+journey, so to this day German peasants bury a corpse with money in
+his mouth or hand," and this is also said to be one of the regular
+ceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar purport were the funeral feasts
+and oblations of food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made with
+ghee" destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's kingdom, and the meat
+and gruel offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his ancestors. "Many
+travellers have described the imagination with which the Chinese
+make such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume the
+impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse material
+substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuous
+feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfy
+their appetite, and then fall to themselves." [177] So in the Homeric
+sacrifice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet savour
+and consumed the curling steam that rises ghost-like from the roasting
+viands, "the assembled warriors devour the remains." [178]
+
+Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have traced out,
+with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not always obvious to the modern
+inquirer without considerable concrete illustration. The remainder
+of the process, resulting in that systematic and complete
+anthropomorphisation of nature which has given rise to mythology, may
+be more succinctly described. Gathering together the conclusions already
+obtained, we find that daily or frequent experience of the phenomena
+of shadows and dreams has combined with less frequent experience of the
+phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate in the mind of
+uncultured man the notion of a twofold existence appertaining alike to
+all animate or inanimate objects: as all alike possess material
+bodies, so all alike possess ghosts or souls. Now when the theory
+of object-souls is expanded into a general doctrine of spirits, the
+philosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once habituated to the
+conception of souls of knives and tobacco-pipes passing to the land
+of ghosts, the savage cannot avoid carrying the interpretation still
+further, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited with
+indwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul which inhabits the human
+frame. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose impelling will the
+trees are rooted up and the storm-clouds driven across the sky should
+resemble a freed human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured
+man has not attained to the conception of physical force acting in
+accordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to his mind
+the manifestations of capricious volition. If the fire burns down his
+hut, it is because the fire is a person with a soul, and is angry with
+him, and needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or
+sacrifice. Thus the savage has a priori no alternative but to regard
+fire-soul as something akin to human-soul; and in point of fact we find
+that savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human ghost
+and the elemental demon or deity. This is sufficiently proved by
+the universal prevalence of the worship of ancestors. The essential
+principle of manes-worship is that the tribal chief or patriarch, who
+has governed the community during life, continues also to govern it
+after death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes, rewarding
+brave warriors, and punishing traitors and cowards. Thus from the
+conception of the living king we pass to the notion of what Mr. Spencer
+calls "the god-king," and thence to the rudimentary notion of deity.
+Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the doctrine of divine ancestors
+has been developed to the extent of recognizing a first ancestor, the
+Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But in the stratum of
+savage thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the most part
+based, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors of the rude
+Veddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres, "fathers"),
+and the Roman manes have become elemental deities which send rain or
+sunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, and to which their
+living offspring appeal for guidance amid the vicissitudes of life.
+[179] The theory of embodiment, already alluded to, shows how thoroughly
+the demons which cause disease are identified with human and object
+souls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps up into
+the liver of the impious wretch who has ventured to pronounce his
+name; while conversely in the well-known European theory of demoniacal
+possession, it is a fairy from elf-land, or an imp from hell, which
+has entered the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship, moreover,
+between disease-possession and oracle-possession, where the body of the
+Pythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under the direct control of
+some great deity, [180] we may see how by insensible transitions
+the conception of the human ghost passes into the conception of the
+spiritual numen, or divinity.
+
+To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and dryads
+and nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the Olympian divinities
+of classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history of religious
+belief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which has
+merely been to show by what mental process the myth-maker can speak
+of natural objects in language which implies that they are animated
+persons. Brief as our account of this process has been, I believe
+that enough has been said, not only to reveal the inadequacy of purely
+philological solutions (like those contained in Max Muller's famous
+Essay) to explain the growth of myths, but also to exhibit the vast
+importance for this purpose of the kind of psychological inquiry into
+the mental habits of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted.
+Indeed, however lacking we may still be in points of detail, I think we
+have already reached a very satisfactory explanation of the genesis of
+mythology. Since the essential characteristic of a myth is that it is
+an attempt to explain some natural phenomenon by endowing with human
+feelings and capacities the senseless factors in the phenomenon, and
+since it has here been shown how uncultured man, by the best use he can
+make of his rude common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariably
+come, to regard all objects as endowed with souls, and all nature as
+peopled with supra-human entities shaped after the general pattern of
+the human soul, I am inclined to suspect that we have got very near to
+the root of the whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty in
+seeing why a water-spout should be described in the "Arabian Nights" as
+a living demon: "The sea became troubled before them, and there arose
+from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the
+meadow,.... and behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We can see
+why the Moslem camel-driver should find it most natural to regard the
+whirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may understand how it is that
+the Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as "a blushing maid
+with locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red"; and we need not consider
+it strange that the primeval Aryan should have regarded the sun as a
+voyager, a climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows driven by the
+wind-god Hermes to their milking. The identification of William Tell
+with the sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor can we be longer
+surprised at the conception of the howling night-wind as a ravenous
+wolf. When pots and kettles are thought to have souls that live
+hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how the blue sky can
+have been regarded as the sire of gods and men. And thus, as the elves
+and bogarts of popular lore are in many cases descended from ancient
+divinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowledge
+their ancestors in the shadowy denizens of the primeval ghost-world.
+
+August, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+THE following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use to
+the reader who is interested in the legend of William Tell.
+
+HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historiea inauguralis de Oulielmo Tellio, etc.
+Groningae, 1824.
+
+IDELER, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Berlin, 1836.
+
+HAUSSER, L. Die Sage von Tell aufs Neue kritisch untersucht. Heidelberg,
+1840.
+
+HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur l'histoire de Guillaume Tell.
+Lausanne, 1843.
+
+LIEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisoh nach neuesten
+Quellen. Aarau, 1864.
+
+VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreinng der Waldstatte, etc. Nebst einer
+Beilage: das alteste Tellensehauspiel. Leipzig, 1867.
+
+BORDIER, H. L. Le Grutli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense de la tradition
+vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale,
+1869.
+
+The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant l'origine de la
+confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.
+
+RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confederation suisse: histoire et
+legende. 2eS ed., revue et corrigee. Geneve et Bale, 1869.
+
+The same. Lettre a M. Henri Bordier a propos de sa defense de la
+tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve
+et Bale, 1869.
+
+HUNGERBUHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions relatives aux
+origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.
+
+MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien, I.
+159-170. Wien, 1872.]
+
+See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18 Feb., 1868; by M.
+Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire, 1868; by M. de Wiss, in the
+Journal de Geneve, 7 July, 1868; also Revue critique, 17 July, 1869;
+Journal de Geneve, 24 Oct., 1868; Gazette de Lausanne, feuilleton
+litteraire, 2-5 Nov., 1868, "Les origines de la confederation suisse,"
+par M. Secretan; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869, "The Legend of Tell and
+Rutli."
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[Footnote 1: See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.]
+
+[Footnote 3: According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived
+from "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom the church
+of Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places, p. 339.)]
+
+[Footnote 4: Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in
+Mr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Many
+parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I.
+pp. 126-136. See also the story of Folliculus,--Swan, Gesta Romanorum,
+ad. Wright, Vol. I. p. lxxxii]
+
+[Footnote 5: See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp.
+145-149.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of
+Seyf-el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is enclosed
+in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, and
+this enclosed in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes,
+which are put into seven chests, contained in a coffer of marble, which
+is sunk in the ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raises
+the coffer by the aid of Suleyman's seal-ring, and having extricated the
+sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is converted into
+a heap of black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with the maiden
+Dolet-Khatoon. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 316.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of
+El-Basrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p. 452.]
+
+[Footnote 8: "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le
+supprimer."--Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.]
+
+[Footnote 9: "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made
+in the languages of the Eskimos, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the
+Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it, so
+far as is known, and with them it is partial." According to the Fijians,
+"vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes,
+have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on
+at last to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits."--M'Lennan, The Worship
+of Animals and Plants, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XII. p, 416.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Marcus Aurelius, V. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy in
+his Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I am
+still disposed to follow Max Muller in adopting them, with the possible
+exception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52) that many
+of the Homeric legends may have clustered around some historical basis,
+I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my paper on "Juventus
+Mundi."]
+
+[Footnote 12: Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memes
+que celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raison
+que l'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus riche
+mythologie a cote de la plus profonde metaphysique. "La conception de
+la multiplicite dans l'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuples
+enfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a l'age mur."--Renan,
+Hist. des Langues Semitiques, Tom. I. p. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, in
+my paper on "Myths of the Barbaric World."]
+
+[Footnote 14: A collection of these interesting legends may be found in
+Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," of which work this
+paper was originally a review.]
+
+[Footnote 15: See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20; Villemarque,
+Barzas Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instructed by an old nurse that
+Vas Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. p. 197.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to pay the
+piper."]
+
+[Footnote 18: And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic
+musician, who
+
+     "Could harp a fish out o' the water,
+     Or bluid out of a stane,
+     Or milk out of a maiden's breast,
+     That bairns had never nane."]
+
+[Footnote 19: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 159.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic
+terror which Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.]
+
+[Footnote 21: In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person
+who is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. The
+same custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The Devil, who is proverbially "active in a gale of wind,"
+is none other than Hermes.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneiennes
+choses, et la plenitude de l'histoire ne se devoile qu'a celui qui
+descend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeure
+moderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foi
+scientifique."--LITTRS.]
+
+[Footnote 24: For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis
+tracing one of these illusions to its psychological sources, see
+the account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. pp.
+121-125.]
+
+[Footnote 25: See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths,
+Vol. I. pp. 57-77. The learned author attributes the discomfiture to
+the uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning much
+like that of my village sorcerer, I fear.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177.]
+
+[Footnote 27: The story of the luck-flower is well told in verse by Mr.
+Baring Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.]
+
+[Footnote 28: 1 Kings vi. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the
+temple, in Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets,
+pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, Gesta
+Romanorum, ed. Wright, Vol I. p. lxiv. See also the pretty story of the
+knight unjustly imprisoned, id. p. cii.]
+
+[Footnote 30: "We have the receipt of fern-seed. We walk invisible."
+--Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98]
+
+[Footnote 31: Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England,
+p. 202]
+
+[Footnote 32: Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks.
+Berlin, 1859.]
+
+[Footnote 33: "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic the
+secge, forthon heo locath on helle.--Tell me, why is the sun red at
+even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta
+Anglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63.
+Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.]
+
+[Footnote 34: "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder,
+that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they
+are shaking up the feather beds in heaven."--Baring-Gould, Book of
+Werewolves, p. 172.]
+
+[Footnote 35: "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the
+horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or
+'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside."--Max
+Muller, Chips, II. 268.]
+
+[Footnote 36: "--And said the gods, let there be a hammered plate in the
+midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters."
+Genesis i. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Genesis vii. 11.]
+
+[Footnote 38: See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p 120; who states also
+that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed on
+top of the funeral-pile. In their character of cows, also, the clouds
+were regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popular
+superstition that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death
+in the family.]
+
+[Footnote 39: The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir,
+which is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda: "She is so great, that
+all the AEsir, with their weapons and war-gear, may find room on board
+her"; but "when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is
+made.... with so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like a
+cloth, and keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by the
+fairy pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed; the cloud which is no
+bigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole heaven, and shade
+the Sultan's army from the solar rays.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representing
+it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinct
+dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true
+character when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures
+the sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns." See Nouveau Journal
+Asiatique, Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "Blue
+Belt" belongs to the same species.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare
+Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.]
+
+[Footnote 42: "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar
+hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide."
+Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40.
+This objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be
+constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no
+validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing
+of the incongruity.]
+
+[Footnote 43: The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in
+a way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (the
+sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, but
+also cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf,
+Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better,
+explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through which
+the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may henceforth pass
+forever. See the details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I.
+315.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means
+both "cloud" and "mountain." "In the Edda, too, the rocks, said to have
+been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended for
+clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock; nay, the English
+word CLOUD itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock.
+See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Muller, Rig-Veda,
+Vol. 1. p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 46: In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures,"
+it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must be
+good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous
+glands; while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific
+in leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a
+sovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in
+the fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder."
+Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also
+Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl,
+itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod.]
+
+[Footnote 48: The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorial
+used for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word oesc meant,
+in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree," or "spear"; and the same is,
+or has been, true of the French fresne and the Greek melia. The root of
+oesc appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance," whence asa, "a
+bow," and asana, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, I.
+222.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faery
+Queen," where, however, the knight fares better than this poor priest.
+Usually these lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, into
+which none might look and live. This conception is the foundation of
+part of the story of Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the third
+one-eyed Calender]
+
+[Footnote 50: Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. p. 161.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; Primitive
+Culture, Vol. II. p. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.]
+
+[Footnote 55: The production of fire by the drill is often called
+churning, e. g. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it,
+and kindled a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata
+Purana, VIII. 6, 32.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.]
+
+[Footnote 58: It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the
+"holy water" of the Roman Catholic.]
+
+[Footnote 59: In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally the
+personification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to
+men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85.
+Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 277.]
+
+[Footnote 60: We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek
+fire-god Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.]
+
+[Footnote 61: "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves
+plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for the
+purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover.
+The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar
+virtues."--Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 62: In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil,
+the thunder-god,.... "he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from his
+sling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villages
+as fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love."--Tylor, op.
+cit. Vol. II. p. 239]
+
+[Footnote 63: In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new
+complication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as
+a wind-god."--Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a
+Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautological
+expression.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol.
+I. p. 151.]
+
+[Footnote 67: Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon
+which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh
+chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of
+God"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root
+balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation,--that
+Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson,
+in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan, Histoire des
+Langues Semitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note;
+Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 268.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr.
+prath (to spread out), Eng. flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek,
+Latin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 71: M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnightly
+Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol. VII. pp 194-216;
+Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. pp. 535-550,
+reprinted in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc., pp. 31-56.]
+
+[Footnote 72: Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, who
+slays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power
+of injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had
+built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the
+kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the whole
+country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur. Toward the
+close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house a
+man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon one
+of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with the
+professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit,
+excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days might haunt,
+torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and those
+concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 73: Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to
+open the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be
+hindered in joining the mystic cavalcade.]
+
+[Footnote 74: The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the
+English version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who
+can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was
+swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe
+and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive
+Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissa
+the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by the
+cow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish
+and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184; and the story
+of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All these
+are different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alternate
+swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonly
+personified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's
+story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see Early
+History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 501.]
+
+[Footnote 75: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit
+Texts, II. 435.]
+
+[Footnote 76: In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have been
+thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.]
+
+[Footnote 77: See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by
+Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund Head,
+p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselves
+with drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselves
+into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.]
+
+[Footnote 80: Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 82: "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait
+change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceux
+qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de
+lui. Il dit en confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraiment
+un loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce
+qu'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans.--Pour s'assurer
+du fait, on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui
+emporta les bras et les jambes."--Taine, De l'Intelligence, Tom. II.
+p. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the
+Russian People, pp. 404-418.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history
+rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer
+the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous
+testimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the
+convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have
+not the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this
+point, but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions
+are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion,
+unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may,
+no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something
+more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a
+parallel case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26.
+"Certain witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellow
+under the usual form of cats, till one night he put them to flight with
+his broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest;
+taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and
+next morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one leg
+left."--Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 85: "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph;
+compare Anglo-Saxon wudurmaere (wood-mare) = echo."--Tylor, Primitive
+Culture, Vol. II. p. 173.]
+
+[Footnote 86: See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische
+Studien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281
+Muller, Chips, II. 114-128.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.]
+
+[Footnote 88: The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden," as is
+illustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph and the Latin nubes.]
+
+[Footnote 89: This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty
+and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 90: The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssn
+of El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See
+Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian
+People, p. 179.]
+
+[Footnote 91: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions of
+the Irish Celts, p. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133.]
+
+[Footnote 94: Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Muller, Rig-Veda
+Sanhita, Vol. I. pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen
+Grundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga.]
+
+[Footnote 95: In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354,
+I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond
+question that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of
+Odin, the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly
+parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus of
+the pagan Roman.]
+
+[Footnote 96: See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beitrage, I. 147.
+Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be found the element of
+diabolism invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the great
+god in heaven (dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these
+weather-beaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his
+thunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with
+their dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune
+falls on them; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it."
+Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 248.]
+
+[Footnote 97: See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.]
+
+[Footnote 98: The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation
+degraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancient
+devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of
+Buddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. This
+is like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the
+Devil.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Zeus--Dia--Zhna--di on............ Plato Kratylos, p. 396,
+A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm. ad Timaeum, II. p.
+226, Schneider; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15,
+who adopts the etymology. See also Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 100: Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. Petronius
+Arbiter, Sat. xliv.]
+
+[Footnote 101: "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte." Tasso,
+Gerusalemme, XV. 47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 102: The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than
+the tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the early
+missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki
+meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or
+a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were
+forced to use a circumlocution,--`the great chief of men,' or 'he who
+lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The
+Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless
+because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear
+by." Ibid, p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 105: It should be borne in mind, however, that one of
+the women who tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess of
+darkness; Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhauser.
+Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia,
+whom she resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene,
+the loftiest of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an
+enchantress. She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen
+Labe, whose sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king of
+Persia.]
+
+[Footnote 106: The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the
+story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as
+the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His
+grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being
+identical with that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the
+Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan
+Nations, II. 358.]
+
+[Footnote 107: In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed
+into the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the
+day of judgment.]
+
+[Footnote 108: Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.]
+
+[Footnote 109: In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of
+the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious
+and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of household
+legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundant
+and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very
+instructive.]
+
+[Footnote 110: There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and
+Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; the
+former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If
+Herakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S,
+and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta, sequor to epomai, etc.
+It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of
+his History, abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische
+Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch
+und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint
+zunachst als Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen
+Vermogensvermehrung." Romische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladly
+learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible
+opinion.]
+
+[Footnote 111: For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see
+Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, III. p. lxxxvi; Breal, op.
+cit. p. 98.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Max Muller, Science of Language, II 484.]
+
+[Footnote 114: As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythological
+considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek."
+Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter,
+as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to
+Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers
+to the Panis.]
+
+[Footnote 115: "I create evil," Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil in
+the city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Iliad, xxiv.
+527, and contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Chronicles xxi. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in
+the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the
+work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the
+habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about
+the Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of
+writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic
+authenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to
+examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden of
+Eden.]
+
+[Footnote 117: For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan
+Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of the
+details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661,
+seq.]
+
+[Footnote 118: Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited
+in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief
+is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's
+Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.]
+
+[Footnote 119: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse
+story of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old woman is in doubt
+as to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in
+a tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks
+at her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the
+Frenschutz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.]
+
+[Footnote 121: See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.]
+
+[Footnote 122: Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No.
+XLII.]
+
+[Footnote 123: See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of
+the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry,
+p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 124: "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one
+occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had
+never seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he
+said, 'Good day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff
+voice, and striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram;
+who are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and
+then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek,
+Hottentot Fables, p. 24.]
+
+[Footnote 125: I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks,
+Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69.]
+
+[Footnote 126: Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about
+the countries within the arctic circle where during part of the year the
+sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that must
+be another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man;
+and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted
+this opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of
+Mankind, p. 301.]
+
+[Footnote 127: Max Muller, Chips, II. 96.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.]
+
+[Footnote 129: A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of the
+house."]
+
+[Footnote 130: For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis
+of Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.]
+
+[Footnote 131: Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.]
+
+[Footnote 132: For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould,
+Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.]
+
+[Footnote 133: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 134: Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.]
+
+[Footnote 135: Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.]
+
+[Footnote 136: Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the
+Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.]
+
+[Footnote 137: See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A
+fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been absent
+from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a
+well-known passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal
+in Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west.]
+
+[Footnote 138: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the
+Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor,
+Primitive Culture, I. 321.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.]
+
+[Footnote 140: Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.]
+
+[Footnote 141: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.]
+
+[Footnote 142: Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace
+says: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the
+power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake
+of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such
+transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 144: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-152; cf. a similar story in
+which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the
+sequel of the tale.]
+
+[Footnote 146: Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.]
+
+[Footnote 147: Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.]
+
+[Footnote 148: Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Tylor, op. cit. p. 336. November, 1870]
+
+[Footnote 150: Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age.
+By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
+1869.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.]
+
+[Footnote 153: For the precise extent to which I would indorse the
+theory that the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of light over
+darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not
+suppose that the struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subject
+in the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet."
+Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's
+subject was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story
+of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is unmistakably the
+story of the quarrel between summer and winter; and the moody prince
+is as much a solar hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des
+Shakespeare, I. 127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this,
+as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories,
+therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their present form.
+They are the offspring of other stories which were sun-myths; they
+are stories which conform to the sun-myth type after the manner above
+illustrated in the paper on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothing
+unintelligible in the inconsistency--which seems to puzzle Max Muller
+(Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20)--of investing
+Paris with many of the characteristics of the children of light.
+Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the Iliad-myth had as
+entirely disappeared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of the
+Hamlet-myth had disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit ground
+for wonder is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The
+physical theory of myths will be properly presented and comprehended,
+only when it is understood that we accept the physical derivation of
+such stories as the Iliad-myth in much the same way that we are bound to
+accept the physical etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth,
+convince, deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College,
+in his "Philological Studies,"--a little book which I used to read with
+delight when a boy,--describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors."
+In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or the
+tragedy of Hamlet--any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant by
+Sue, or La Maison Forestiere by Erckmann-Chatrian--as nature-myths, I
+would at the same time consider these poems well described as embodying
+"faded nature-myths."]
+
+[Footnote 154: I have no opinion as to the nationality of the
+Earth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can
+hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown.
+It may well be doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come
+of comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of
+distinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See
+Brown's Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London,
+1872,--a book which is open to several of the criticisms here directed
+against Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing.]
+
+[Footnote 155: "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, finds
+out the criminal, was originally quite free from mythology; IT MEANT
+NO MORE THAN THAT CRIME WOULD BE BROUGHT TO LIGHT SOME DAY OR OTHER.
+It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaning
+of Erinys was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time,
+assumed the rank of a personal being."--Science of Language, 6th
+edition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine,
+contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at
+variance with the facts of history. The facts concerning primitive
+culture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the case
+is just the other way. Instead of the expression "Erinys finds the
+criminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literal
+statement of what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of
+time,"(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally regarded
+as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk in
+metaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their similes and
+personifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poetic
+metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone as
+essumenos or "yearning" (to keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurative
+expression; but to the savage it is the description of a fact.]
+
+[Footnote 156: Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of
+Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B. Tylor. 2
+vols. 8vo. London. 1871.]
+
+[Footnote 157: Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.]
+
+[Footnote 158: Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration,
+see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures," supra, p. 55.]
+
+[Footnote 159: Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36, "The
+Origin of Animal Worship."]
+
+[Footnote 160: See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The
+circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that the
+sitting up is intended to attract the master's attention. The dog has
+frequently been seen trying to soften the heart of the ball, while
+observed unawares by his master.]
+
+[Footnote 161: "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention
+Mr. Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a special
+providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life than
+is the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to
+whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a few
+fetichistic notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs
+in front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with
+which he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says
+the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play
+with him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had
+been drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very
+pleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to
+stand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way
+of getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may
+have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit
+and eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or
+expected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit,
+however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the
+dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1,
+1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in the
+dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add
+another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine
+that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living
+essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed:
+my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
+during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze
+occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly
+disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time
+that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.
+He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious
+manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence
+of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his
+territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting
+upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I
+think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed
+association between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of a
+multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with his
+greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.]
+
+[Footnote 162: Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these
+Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body by some spirit
+or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, ekstasis, a displacement or
+removal of the soul from the body, into which the demon enters and
+causes strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but
+the literal belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such
+words as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or
+transported."]
+
+[Footnote 163: Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation
+of pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been asked by my
+three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite him
+if he were to go near it; and I can remember that, in my own childhood,
+when reading a book about insects, which had the formidable likeness of
+a spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest
+my finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held the
+book.]
+
+[Footnote 164: Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a
+dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from
+it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and
+Folk-Lore, p. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 165: Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.]
+
+[Footnote 166: Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p.
+210.]
+
+[Footnote 167: Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]
+
+[Footnote 168: In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be
+embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his
+three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs,
+as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In
+Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their
+native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds,
+and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing
+parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.]
+
+[Footnote 169: Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.]
+
+[Footnote 171: Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.]
+
+[Footnote 172: Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival
+this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no
+reason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks
+why it is naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an
+evidence of bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the
+inroads of the practical sense.]
+
+[Footnote 173: Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.]
+
+[Footnote 174: Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes
+in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling
+Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this
+spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired
+at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table
+or a hat at a modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]
+
+[Footnote 176: Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.]
+
+[Footnote 177: Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.]
+
+[Footnote 178: According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOUL
+OF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 179: The following citation is interesting as an illustration
+of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian
+saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own
+adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the
+health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would
+carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple at
+the foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by
+the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew
+public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten
+or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent
+reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessing
+children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on
+Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Want of space prevents me from remarking at length
+upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular
+inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant
+explanation of the importance accorded by all religions to the rite of
+fasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental
+state which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-man
+qualifies himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, and
+where this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence
+the sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. The
+practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of survival.]
+
+
+
+
+
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