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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, by Otto
-Rank
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Myth of the Birth of the Hero
-       A psychological interpretation of mythology
-
-Author: Otto Rank
-
-Translator: F. Robbins
-            Smith Ely Jelliffe
-
-Release Date: August 31, 2021 [eBook #66192]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Turgut Dincer, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-             produced from images generously made available by The Internet
-             Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE
-HERO ***
-                          Transcriber’s Notes
-
-Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
-in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
-spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
-
-Footnote 20 is referenced twice several pages apart in the text.
-
-Italics are represented thus _italic_.
-
-The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public
-domain.
-
-
-
-
-                 NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH
-                            SERIES, NO. 18
-
-
-                   The Myth of the Birth of the Hero
-
-              A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology
-
-
-                                  BY
-                             DR. OTTO RANK
-                               of Vienna
-
-
-                       Authorized Translation by
-                DRS. F. ROBBINS and SMITH ELY JELLIFFE
-
-
-                               NEW YORK
-
-               THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
-                          PUBLISHING COMPANY
-
-                                 1914
-
-
-
-
-              NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH SERIES
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-  By Dr. William A. White.
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-  By Dr. C. G Jung.
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-  (2d Edition.) $2.50. By Prof. Sigmund Freud.
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-  By Dr. Felix Plaut.
-
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-  By Prof. Sigmund Freud.
-
-8. Mental Mechanisms. $2.00.      By Dr. Wm. A. White.
-
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-  New York Psychiatrical Society.
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-10. Handbook of Mental Examination Methods. $2.00.
-  By Shepherd Ivory Franz.
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-  By Dr. André-Thomas.
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-  By Drs. P. Nitsche and K. Wilmanns.
-
-14. General Paresis. $3.00.      By Prof. E. Kraepelin.
-
-15. Dreams and Myths. $1.00.       By Dr. Karl Abraham.
-
-16. Poliomyelitis. $3.00.              Dr. I. Wickmann.
-
-17. Freud’s Theories of the Neuroses. $2.00.
-  Dr. E. Hitschmann.
-
-18. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. $1.00.
-  Dr. Otto Rank.
-
-
-                          Copyright, 1914, by
-               THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
-                     PUBLISHING COMPANY, NEW YORK
-
-                               PRESS OF
-                     THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
-                            LANCASTER, PA.
-
-
-
-
-                          TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-
-
-  Introduction                                                         1
-
-  Sargon                                                              12
-
-  Moses                                                               13
-
-  Karna                                                               15
-
-  Œdipus                                                              18
-
-  Paris                                                               20
-
-  Telephos                                                            21
-
-  Perseus                                                             22
-
-  Gilgamos                                                            23
-
-  Kyros                                                               24
-
-  Tristan                                                             38
-
-  Romulus                                                             40
-
-  Hercules                                                            44
-
-  Jesus                                                               47
-
-  Siegfried                                                           53
-
-  Lohengrin                                                           55
-
-  Index                                                               95
-
-
-
-
-                   THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO
-
-             [A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF MYTHOLOGY]
-
-
-                             INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The prominent civilized nations, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians,
-Hebrews, and Hindoos, the inhabitants of Iran and of Persia, the
-Greeks and the Romans as well as the Teutons and others, all began at
-an early stage to glorify their heroes, mythical princes and kings,
-founders of religions, dynasties, empires or cities, in brief their
-national heroes, in a number of poetic tales and legends. The history
-of the birth and of the early life of these personalities came to
-be especially invested with fantastic features, which in different
-nations even though widely separated by space and entirely independent
-of each other present a baffling similarity, or in part a literal
-correspondence. Many investigators have long been impressed with this
-fact, and one of the chief problems of mythical research still consists
-in the elucidation of the reason for the extensive analogies in the
-fundamental outlines of mythical tales, which are rendered still more
-enigmatical by the unanimity in certain details, and their reappearance
-in most of the mythical groupings.[1]
-
-The mythological theories, aiming at the explanation of these
-remarkable phenomena, are, in a general way, as follows:
-
-(1) The “Idea of the People,” propounded by Adolf Bastian[2] [1868].
-This theory assumes the existence of _elementary thoughts_, so that
-the unanimity of the myths is a necessary sequence of the uniform
-disposition of the human mind, and the manner of its manifestation,
-which within certain limits is identical at all times and in all
-places. This interpretation was urgently advocated by Adolf Bauer[3]
-[1882], as accounting for the wide distribution of the hero myths.
-
-(2) The explanation by original community, first applied by Th. Benfey
-[Pantschatantra, 1859] to the widely distributed parallel forms of
-folklore and fairy tales. Originating in a favorable locality [India]
-these tales were first accepted by the primarily related [namely the
-Indo-Germanic] peoples, then continued to grow while retaining the
-common primary traits, and ultimately radiated over the entire earth.
-This mode of explanation was first adapted to the wide distribution of
-the hero myths by Rudolf Schubert[4] [1890].
-
-(3) The modern theory of migration, or borrowing, according to which
-the individual myths originate from definite peoples [especially the
-Babylonians], and are accepted by other peoples through oral tradition
-[commerce and traffic], or through literary influences.[5]
-
-The modern theory of migration and borrowing can be readily shown to
-be merely a modification of Benfey’s theory, necessitated by newly
-discovered and irreconcilable material. The profound and extensive
-research of modern investigations has shown that not India, but rather
-Babylonia, may be regarded as the first home of the myths. Moreover
-the mythic tales presumably did not radiate from a single point, but
-travelled over and across the entire inhabited globe. This brings into
-prominence the idea of the interdependence of mythical structures, an
-idea which was generalized by Braun[6] [1864], as the basic law of
-the nature of the human mind: Nothing new is ever discovered as long
-as it is possible to copy. The theory of the elementary thoughts, so
-strenuously advocated by Bauer over a quarter of a century ago, is
-unconditionally declined by the most recent investigators [Winckler,[7]
-Stucken], who maintain the migration and purloining theory.
-
-There is really no such sharp contrast between the various theories,
-and their advocates, for the theory of the elementary thoughts does
-not interfere with the claims of the primary common possessions and
-the migration. Furthermore, the ultimate problem is not whence and
-how the material reached a certain people; but the question is,
-_where did it come from to begin with?_ All these theories would only
-explain the variability and distribution, but not the origin of the
-myths. Even Schubert, the most inveterate opponent of Bauer’s view,
-acknowledges this truth, by stating that all these manifold sagas date
-back to a single very ancient prototype. But he is unable to tell us
-anything of the origin of this prototype. Bauer likewise inclines to
-this mediating[8] view and points out repeatedly that in spite of
-the multiple origin of independent tales, it is necessary to concede
-a most extensive and ramified purloining, as well as an original
-community of the concepts, in related peoples. The same conciliatory
-attitude is maintained by Lessmann, in a recent publication[9] [1908],
-in which he rejects the assumption of the elementary thoughts, but
-admits that primary relationship and purloining do not exclude one
-another. As pointed out by Wundt, it must be kept in mind, however,
-that the appropriation of mythical contents always represents at the
-same time an independent mythical construction; because only that can
-be permanently retained which corresponds to the purloiner’s stage of
-mythological ideation. The faint recollections of preceding narratives
-would hardly suffice for the re-figuration of the same material,
-without the persistent presence of the underlying motives; but
-precisely for this reason, such motives may produce new contents, which
-agree in their fundamental motives, also in the absence of similar
-associations. (Völker-Psychologie, II Vol., 3 Part, 1909).
-
-Leaving aside for the present the enquiry as to the mode of
-distribution of these myths, the origin of the hero myth in general
-is now to be investigated, fully anticipating that migration,
-or borrowing, will prove to be directly and fairly positively
-demonstrable, in a number of the cases. When this is not feasible,
-other view points will have to be conceded, at least for the present,
-rather than barricade the way to further progress by the somewhat
-unscientific attitude of Winckler,[10] who says: When human beings and
-products, exactly corresponding to each other, are found at remote
-parts of the earth, we must conclude that they have wandered thither;
-whether we have knowledge of the how or when makes no difference in
-the assumption of the fact itself. Even granting the migration of
-all myths, the provenance of the first myth would still have to be
-explained.[11]
-
-Investigations along these lines will necessarily help to provide a
-deeper insight into the contents of the myths. Nearly all authors who
-have hitherto been engaged upon the interpretation of the myths of
-the birth of heroes find therein a personification of the processes
-of nature, following the dominant mode of natural mythological
-interpretation. The new born hero is the young sun rising from the
-waters, first confronted by lowering clouds, but finally triumphing
-over all obstacles [Brodbeck, Zoroaster, Leipzig, 1893, p. 138].
-The taking of all natural, chiefly the atmospheric phenomena into
-consideration, as was done by the first representatives of this method
-of myth interpretation;[12] or the regarding of the myths in a more
-restricted sense, as astral myths [Stucken, Winckler and others]—is
-not so essentially distinct, as the followers of each individual
-direction believe to be the case. Nor does it seem to be an essential
-progress when the purely solar interpretation as advocated especially
-by Frobenius[13] was no longer accepted and the view was held that
-all myths were originally lunar myths, as done by G. Hüsing, in his
-“Contributions to the Kyros Myth” [Berlin, 1906], following out the
-suggestion of Siecke, who [1908][14] claims this view as the only
-legitimate obvious interpretation also for the birth myths of the
-heroes, and it is beginning to gain popularity.[15]
-
-The interpretation of the myths themselves will be taken up in
-detail later on, and all detailed critical comments on the above
-mode of explanation are here refrained from. Although significant,
-and undoubtedly in part correct, the astral theory is not altogether
-satisfactory and fails to afford an insight into the motives of myth
-formation. The objection may be raised that the tracing to astronomical
-processes does not fully represent the content of these myths, and that
-much clearer and simpler relations might be established through another
-mode of interpretation. The much abused theory of elementary thoughts
-indicates a practically neglected aspect of mythological research. At
-the beginning as well as at the end of his contribution, Bauer points
-out how much more natural and probable it would be to seek the reason
-for the general unanimity of these myths in very general traits of
-the human psyche, than in a primary community or in migration. This
-assumption appears to be more justifiable as such general movements of
-the human mind are also expressed in still other forms, and in other
-domains, where they can be demonstrated as unanimous.
-
-Concerning the character of these general movements of the human mind,
-the psychological study of the essential contents of these myths might
-help to reveal the source from which has uniformly flowed at all times,
-and in all places, an identical content of the myths. Such a derivation
-of an essential constituent, from a common human source, has already
-been successfully attempted with one of these legendary motives. Freud,
-in his “Dream Interpretation,”[16] reveals the connection of the Œdipus
-fable [where Œdipus is told by the oracle that he will kill his father
-and marry his mother, as he unwittingly does later on] with the two
-typical dreams of the father’s death, and of sexual intercourse with
-the mother, dreams which are dreamed by many now living. Of King Œdipus
-he says that “his fate stirs us only because it might have been our
-own fate; because the oracle has cursed us prior to our birth, as it
-did him. All of us, perhaps, were doomed to direct the first sexual
-emotion towards the mother, the first hatred and aggressive desire
-against the father; our dreams convince us of this truth. King Œdipus,
-who has murdered his father Laios, and married his mother Iokaste, is
-merely the wish fulfilment of our childhood.”[17] The manifestation
-of the intimate relation between dream and myth,—not only in regard
-to the contents, but also as to the form and motor forces of this and
-many other, more particularly pathological psyche structures,—entirely
-justifies the interpretation of the myth as a dream of the masses of
-the people, which I have recently shown elsewhere (“Der Künstler,”
-1907). At the same time, the transference of the method, and in part
-also of the results, of Freud’s technique of dream interpretation
-to the myths would seem to be justifiable, as was defended and
-illustrated in an example, by Abraham, in his paper on “Dreams and
-Myths” [1909].[18] The intimate relations between dream and myth find
-further confirmation in the following circle of myths, with frequent
-opportunity for reasoning from analogy.
-
-The hostile attitude of the most modern mythological tendency [chiefly
-represented by the Society for Comparative Mythological Research]
-against all attempts at establishing a relation between dream and
-myth[19] is for the most part the outcome of the restriction of the
-parallelization to the so-called nightmares [Alpträume], as attempted
-in Laistner’s notable book, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” 1889, and
-also of ignorance of the relevant teachings of Freud. The latter
-help us not only to understand the dreams themselves, but also show
-their symbolism and close relationship with all psychic phenomena in
-general, especially with the day dreams or phantasies, with artistic
-creativeness, and with certain disturbances of the normal psychic
-function. A common share in all these productions belongs to a single
-psychic function, the human imagination. It is to this imaginative
-faculty—of humanity at large rather than individual—that the modern
-myth theory is obliged to concede a high rank, perhaps the first, for
-the ultimate origin of all myths. The interpretation of the myths in
-the astral sense, or more accurately speaking as “almanac tales,”
-gives rise to the query, according to Lessmann,—in view of a creative
-imagination of humanity,—if the first germ for the origin of such
-tales is to be sought precisely in the processes in the heavens;[20]
-or if, on the contrary, readymade tales of an entirely different
-[but presumably psychic] origin were only subsequently transferred
-to the heavenly bodies. Ehrenreich (General Mythology, 1910, p. 104)
-makes a more positive admission: The mythologic evolution certainly
-begins on a terrestrian soil, in so far as experiences must first be
-gathered in the immediate surroundings before they can be projected
-into the heavenly universe. And Wundt tells us (loc. cit., p. 282)
-that the theory of the evolution of mythology according to which it
-first originates in the heavens whence at a later period it descends
-to earth, is not only contradictory to the history of the myth,
-which is unaware of such a migration, but is likewise contradictory
-to the psychology of myth-formation which must repudiate this
-translocation as internally impossible. We are also convinced that the
-myths,[21] originally at least, are structures of the human faculty
-of imagination, which at some time were projected for certain reasons
-upon the heavens,[22] and may be secondarily transferred to the
-heavenly bodies, with their enigmatical phenomena. The significance of
-the unmistakeable traces which this transference has imprinted upon
-the myths, as the fixed figures, and so forth, must by no means be
-underrated, although the origin of these figures was possibly psychic
-in character, and they were subsequently made the basis of the almanac
-and firmament calculations, precisely on account of this significance.
-
-In a general way it would seem as if those investigators who make use
-of an exclusively natural mythological mode of interpretation, in any
-sense, were unable, in their endeavor to discover the original sense
-of the mythical tales, to get entirely away from a psychological
-process, such as must be assumed likewise for the creators of the
-myths.[23] The motive is identical, and led to the same course in the
-myth creators as well as in the myth interpretorsIt is most naïvely
-uttered by one of the founders and champions of comparative myth
-investigation, and of the natural mythological mode of interpretation,
-for Max Müller points out in his “Essays” [1869][20] that this
-procedure not only invests meaningless legends with a significance and
-beauty of their own, but it helps to remove some of the most revolting
-features of classical mythology, and to elucidate their true meaning.
-This revolt, the reason for which is readily understood, naturally
-prevents the mythologist from assuming that such motives as incest
-with the mother, sister or daughter; murder of father, grandfather
-or brother could be based upon universal phantasies, which according
-to Freud’s teachings have their source in the infantile psyche, with
-its peculiar interpretation of the external world and its denizens.
-This revolt is therefore only the reaction of the dimly sensed painful
-recognition of the actuality of these relations; and this reaction
-impels the interpreters of the myths, for their own subconscious
-rehabilitation, and that of all mankind, to credit these motives
-with an entirely different meaning from their original significance.
-The same internal repudiation prevents the myth-creating people from
-believing in the possibility of such revolting thoughts, and this
-defence probably was the first reason for the projecting of these
-relations to the firmament. The psychological pacifying through such
-a rehabilitation, by projection upon external and remote objects, can
-still be realized, up to a certain degree, by a glance at one of these
-interpretations, for instance that of the objectionable Œdipus fable,
-as given by a representative of the natural mythological mode of
-interpretation. Œdipus, who kills his father, marries his mother, and
-dies old and blind, is the solar hero who murders his procreator, the
-darkness; shares his couch with the mother, the gloaming, from whose
-lap, the dawn, he has been born, and dies blinded, as the setting sun
-[Goldziher, 1876].[24]
-
-It is intelligible that a similar interpretation is more soothing
-to the mind than the revelation of the fact that incest and murder
-impulses against the nearest relatives are found in the phantasies of
-most people, as remnants of the infantile ideation. But this is not
-a scientific argument, and revolt of this kind, although it may not
-always be equally conscious, is altogether out of place, in view of
-existing facts. One must either become reconciled to these indecencies,
-provided they are felt to be such, or one must abandon the study of
-psychological phenomena. It is evident that human beings, even in the
-earliest times, and with a most naïve imagination, never saw incest and
-parricide in the firmament on high,[25] but it is far more probable
-that these ideas are derived from another source, presumably human.
-In what way they came to reach the sky, and what modifications or
-additions they received in the process, are questions of a secondary
-character, which cannot be settled until the psychic origin of the
-myths in general has been established.
-
-At any rate, besides the astral conception, the claims of the part
-played by the psychic life must be credited with the same rights for
-myth formation, and this plea will be amply vindicated by the results
-of our method of interpretation. With this object we shall first take
-up the legendary material on which such a psychological interpretation
-is to be attempted for the first time on a large scale; selecting from
-the mass[26] of these chiefly biographical hero myths those which are
-the best known, and some which are especially characteristic. These
-myths will be given in abbreviated form as far as relevant for this
-investigation, with statements concerning the provenance. Attention
-will be called to the most important, constantly recurrent motives by a
-difference in print.
-
-
-
-
-                                SARGON
-
-
-Probably the oldest transmitted hero myth in our possession is derived
-from the period of the foundation of Babylon (about 2800 B.C.),
-and concerns the birth history of its founder, Sargon the First.
-The literal translation of the report—which according to the mode
-of rendering appears to be an original inscription by King Sargon
-himself—is as follows:[27]
-
-“Sargon, the mighty king, King of Agade, am I. _My mother was a
-vestal, my father I knew not_, while my father’s brother dwelt in the
-mountains. In my city Azupirani, which is situated on the bank of the
-Euphrates, my mother, the vestal, bore me. _In a hidden place she
-brought me forth. She laid me in a vessel made of reeds_, closed my
-door with pitch, and _dropped me down into the river_, which did not
-drown me. The river carried me to Akki, the water carrier. Akki the
-water carrier lifted me up in the kindness of his heart, Akki the water
-carrier raised me as his own son, Akki the water carrier made of me his
-gardener. In my work as a gardener I was beloved by Istar, I became the
-king, and for 45 years I held kingly sway.”
-
-
-
-
-                                 MOSES
-
-
-The biblical birth history of Moses, which is told in Exodus, chapter
-2, presents the greatest similarity to the Sargon legend, even an
-almost literal correspondence of individual traits.[28] Already the
-first chapter (22) relates that Pharaoh commanded his people to throw
-into the water all sons which were born to Hebrews, while the daughters
-were permitted to live; the reason for this order being referred to
-the overfertility of the Israelites. The second chapter continues as
-follows:
-
-“And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter
-of Levi[29]. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw
-him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she
-could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and
-daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she
-laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar
-off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came
-down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the
-river’s side and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her
-maid to fetch it. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold
-the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, this is one
-of the Hebrews’ children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter,
-Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may
-nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And
-the maid went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter
-said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will
-give thee wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the
-child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became
-her son. And she called his name Moses:[30] and she said, Because I
-drew him out of the water.”
-
-This account is ornamented by Rabbi mythology through an account of
-the events preceding Moses’ birth. In the sixtieth year after Joseph’s
-death, the reigning Pharaoh saw in his dream an old man, who held a
-pair of scales, all the inhabitants of Egypt lay on one side, with
-only a sucking lamb on the other, but nevertheless this outweighed all
-the Egyptians. The startled king at once consulted the wise men and
-astrologers, who declared the dream to mean that a son would be born to
-the Israelites, who would destroy all Egypt. The king was frightened,
-and at once ordered the death of all newborn children of the Israelites
-in the entire country. On account of this tyrannical order, the Levite
-Amram, who lived in Goshen, meant to separate from his wife Jocabed, so
-as not to foredoom to certain death the children conceived from him.
-But this resolution was opposed later on by his daughter Miriam, who
-foretold with prophetic assurance that precisely the child suggested
-in the king’s dream would come forth from her mother’s womb, and would
-become the liberator of his people.[31]
-
-Amram therefore rejoined his wife, from whom he had been separated for
-three years. At the end of three months, she conceived, and later
-on bore a boy at whose birth the entire house was illuminated by an
-extraordinary luminous radiance, suggesting the truth of the prophecy.
-(After Bergel, “Mythology of the Hebrews,” Leipzig, 1882.)
-
-Similar accounts are given of the birth of the ancestor of the Hebrew
-nation, Abraham. He was a son of Therach—Nimrod’s captain—and Amtelai.
-Prior to his birth, it was revealed to King Nimrod, from the stars,
-that the coming child would overthrow the thrones of powerful princes,
-and take possession of their lands. King Nimrod means to have the child
-killed immediately after its birth. But when the boy is requested from
-Therach, he says: Truly a son was born to me, but he has died. He then
-delivers a strange child, concealing his own son in a cave underneath
-the ground, where God permits him to suck milk from a finger of the
-right hand. In this cave, Abraham is said to have remained until the
-third (according to others the tenth) year of his life. (Compare Beer,
-“The Life of Abraham,” according to the interpretation of Jewish
-traditions, Leipzig, 1859, and Aug. Wünsche, “From Israel’s Temples of
-Learning,” Leipzig, 1907.) Also in the next generation, in the story
-of _Isaac_, appear the same mythical motives. Prior to his birth King
-Abimelech is warned by a _dream_ not to touch Sarah, as this would
-cause woe to betide him. After a long period of barrenness, she finally
-bears her son, who (in later life, in this report) after having been
-destined to be _sacrificed by his own father_ (foster-father) Abraham,
-is ultimately _rescued_ by God. But Abraham casts out his own son
-Ishmael, with Hagar, the boy’s mother (Genesis 20, 6. See also Bergel,
-loc. cit.).
-
-
-
-
-                                 KARNA
-
-
-A close relationship with the Sargon legend is also shown in certain
-features of the ancient Hindu epic[32] Mahâbháràta, of the birth of the
-hero Karna. The contents of the legend are briefly rendered by Lassen
-(“Indische Altertumskunde,” I, p. 63).[33]
-
-The princess Pritha, also known as Kunti, bore as a virgin the boy
-Karna, whose father was the sun god Surya. The young Karna was born
-with the golden ear ornaments of his father and with an unbreakable
-coat of mail. The mother in her distress concealed and exposed the
-boy. In the adaptation of the myth by A. Holtzmann,[34] verse 1458
-reads: “Then my nurse and I made a large basket of rushes, placed a lid
-thereon, and lined it with wax; into this basket I laid the boy and
-carried him down to the river Acva.” Floating on the waves, the basket
-reaches the river Ganga and travels as far as the city of Campa. “There
-was passing along the bank of the river, the charioteer, the noble
-friend of Dhrtarastra, and with him was Radha, his beautiful and pious
-spouse. She was wrapt in deep sorrow, because no son had been given to
-her. On the river she saw the basket, which the waves carried close to
-her on the shore; she showed it to Azirath, who went and drew it forth
-from the waves.” The two take care of the boy and raise him as their
-own child.
-
-Kunti later on marries King Pandu, who is forced to refrain from
-conjugal intercourse by the curse that he is to die in the arms of his
-spouse. But Kunti bears three sons, again through divine conception,
-one of the children being born in the cave of a wolf. One day Pandu
-dies in the embrace of his second wife. The sons grow up, and at a
-tournament which they arrange, Karna appears to measure his strength
-against the best fighter, Arjuna, the son of Kunti. Arjuna scoffingly
-refuses to fight the charioteer’s son. In order to make him a worthy
-opponent, one of those present anoints him as king. Meanwhile Kunti
-has recognized Karna as her son, by the divine mark, and prays him to
-desist from the contest with his brother, revealing to him the secret
-of his birth. But he considers her revelation as a fantastic tale, and
-insists implacably upon satisfaction. He falls in the combat, struck by
-Arjuna’s arrow. (Compare the detailed account in Lefmann’s “History of
-Ancient India,” Berlin, 1890, p. 181, et seq.)
-
-A striking resemblance of the entire structure with the Karna legend is
-presented by the birth history of Ion, the ancestor of the Ionians, of
-whom a relatively late tradition states the following:[35]
-
-Apollo, in the grotto of the rock of the Athenian Acropolis, procreated
-a son with Kreusa, the daughter of Erechtheus. In this grotto the
-boy was also born, and exposed; the mother leaves the child behind
-in a woven basket, in the hope that Apollo will not leave his son to
-perish. On Apollo’s request, Hermes carries the child the same night to
-Delphi, where the priestess finds him on the threshold of the temple
-in the morning. She brings the boy up, and when he has grown into a
-youth makes him a servant of the temple. Erechtheus later on gave his
-daughter Kreusa in marriage to the immigrated Xuthos. As the marriage
-long remained childless, they addressed the Delphian oracle, praying to
-be blessed with progeny. The god reveals to Xuthos that the first to
-meet him on leaving the sanctuary is his son. He hastens outside and
-meets the youth, whom he joyfully greets as his own son, giving him
-the name Ion, which means “Walker.” Kreusa refuses to accept the youth
-as her son; her attempt to poison him fails, and the infuriated people
-turn against her. Ion is about to attack her, but Apollo, who did
-not wish the son to kill his own mother, enlightened the mind of the
-priestess so that she understood the connection. By means of the basket
-in which the newborn child had lain, Kreusa recognizes him as her son,
-and reveals to him the secret of his birth.
-
-
-
-
-                                ŒDIPUS
-
-The parents of Œdipus, King Laios and his queen, Jocaste, lived for a
-long time in childless wedlock. Laios, who is longing for an heir, asks
-the Delphic Apollo for advice. The oracle answers that he may have a
-son if he so desires; but fate has ordained that his own son will kill
-him. Fearing the fulfilment of the oracle, Laios refrains from conjugal
-relations, but being intoxicated one day, he nevertheless procreates a
-son, whom he causes to be exposed in the river Kithairon, barely three
-days after his birth. In order to be quite sure that the child will
-perish, Laios orders his ankles to be pierced. According to the account
-of Sophocles, which is not the oldest, however, the shepherd who has
-been intrusted with the exposure, surrenders the boy to a shepherd of
-King Polybos, of Corinth, at whose court he is brought up, according
-to the universal statement. Others say that the boy was exposed in a
-box on the sea, and was taken from the water by Periböa, the wife of
-King Polybos, as she was rinsing her clothes by the shore.[36] Polybos
-brought him up as his own son.
-
-Œdipus, on hearing accidentally that he is a foundling, asks the
-Delphian oracle for his own parents, but receives the prophecy that
-he will kill his father and marry his mother. In the belief that this
-prophecy refers to his foster parents, he flees from Corinth to Thebes,
-but on the way unwittingly kills his father Laios. By solving a riddle,
-he frees the City from the plague of the Sphinx, a man-devouring
-monster, and in reward is given the hand of Jocaste, his mother, as
-well as the throne of his father. The revelation of these horrors,
-and the subsequent misfortune of Œdipus, were a favorite subject for
-spectacular display among the Greek tragedians.
-
-An entire series of Christian legends have been elaborated on the
-pattern of the Œdipus myth,[37] and the summarized contents of the
-Judas legend may serve as a paradigm of this group. Before his birth,
-his mother Cyboread, is warned by a dream that she will bear a wicked
-son, to the ruin of all his people. The parents expose the boy in a box
-on the sea. The waves cast the child ashore on the Isle of Scariot,
-where the childless queen finds him, and brings him up as her son.
-Later on, the royal couple have a son of their own, and the foundling,
-who feels himself slighted, kills his foster brother. As a fugitive
-from the country, he takes service at the court of Pilate, who made
-a confidant of him and placed him above his entire household. In a
-fight, Judas kills a neighbor, without knowing that he is his father.
-The widow of the murdered man, namely his own mother, then becomes his
-wife. After the revelation of these horrors, he repents and seeks the
-Saviour, who receives him among his apostles. His betrayal of Jesus is
-known from the Gospel.
-
-The legend of St. Gregory on the Stone—the subject of the narrative of
-Hartmann von Aue—represents a more complicated type of this mythical
-cycle. Gregory, the child of the incestuous union of royal lovers,
-is exposed by his mother in a box on the sea, saved and raised by
-fishermen, and is then educated in a convent for the church. But he
-prefers the life of a knight, is victorious in combats, and in reward
-is given the hand of the princess, his mother. After the discovery of
-the incest, Gregory does penance for seventeen years, on a rock in the
-midst of the sea, and he is finally made the Pope, at the command of
-God. (Compare Cholevicas, “History of German Poetry, According to the
-Antique Elements.”)
-
-A very similar legend is the Iranese legend of King Dârâb, told by
-King Firdusi in the Book of Kings, and rendered by Spiegel (Eranische
-Altertumskunde, II, 584). The last Kirânian Behmen nominated as his
-successor his daughter and simultaneous wife Humâi; so that his son
-Sâsân was grieved and withdrew into solitude. A short time after the
-death of her husband, Humâi gave birth to a son, whom she resolved to
-expose. He was placed in a box, which was put into the Euphrates, and
-drifted down stream, until it was held up by a stone, which had been
-placed in the water by a tanner. The box with the child was found by
-him, and he carried the boy to his wife, who had recently lost her own
-child. The couple agreed to raise the foundling, and as the boy grew
-up, he soon became so strong that the other children were unable to
-resist him. He did not care for the work of his father, but learned to
-be a warrior. His foster mother was forced by him to reveal the secret
-of his origin, and he joined the army which Humâi was then sending out
-to fight the king of Rûm. Her attention being called to him by his
-bravery, Humâi readily recognized him as her son, and named him her
-successor.
-
-
-
-
-                                 PARIS
-
-Apollodorus relates of the birth of Paris: King Priamos had with
-his wife Hekabe a son, named Hektor. When Hekabe was about to bear
-another child, _she dreamed_ that she brought forth a burning log of
-wood, which set fire to the entire city. Priamos asked the advice of
-Aisakos, who was his son with his first wife Arisbe, and an expert in
-the interpretation of dreams. Aisakos declared that the child would
-bring trouble upon the city, and advised that it be exposed. Priamos
-gave the little boy to a slave, who carried him to the top of Mount
-Ida; this man’s name was Agelaos. _The child was nursed during five
-days by a she-bear._ When Agelaos found that he was still alive, he
-picked him up, and carried him home to raise him. He named the boy
-Paris; but after the child had grown into a strong and handsome youth,
-he was called Alexandros, because he fought the robbers and protected
-the flocks. Before long he discovered his parents. How this came about
-is told by Hyginus, according to whose report the infant is _found by
-shepherds_. One day messengers, sent by Priamos, come to these herders
-to fetch a bull which is to serve as the prize for the victor in the
-combats arranged in commemoration of Paris. They selected a bull which
-Paris valued so highly that he followed the men who led the beast away,
-assisted in the combats, and won the prize. This aroused the anger
-of his brother Deiphobos, who threatened him with his sword, but his
-sister Kassandra recognized him as her brother, and Priamos joyfully
-received him as his son. The misfortune which Paris later on brought
-to his family and his native city, through the abduction of Helena,
-is well known from Homer’s poems, as well as their predecessors and
-successors, their _prologue_ and _epilogue_.
-
-A certain resemblance with the story of the birth of Paris is presented
-by the poem of Zal, in Firdusi’s Persian hero-myths (translated by
-Schack). The first son is born to Sam, king of Sistan, by one of
-his consorts. Because he had white hair, _his mother concealed the
-birth_. But the nurse reveals the birth of his son to the king. Sam
-is disappointed, and commands that the child be exposed. The servants
-carry it on the top of Mount Alburs, where it is raised by the Somurgh,
-a powerful bird. The full grown youth is seen by a travelling caravan,
-whose members speak of him “as whose nurse a bird is sufficient.” King
-Sam once _sees his son in a dream_, and sallies forth to seek the
-exposed child. He is unable to reach the summit of the elevated rock
-where he finally espies the youth. But the Somurgh bears his son down
-to him, he receives him joyfully and nominates him as his successor.
-
-
-
-
-                               TELEPHOS
-
-Aleos, King of Tegea, was informed by the _oracle_ that his sons would
-perish through a descendant of his daughter. He therefore made his
-daughter Auge a priestess of the goddess Athene, and threatened her
-with death should she mate with a man. But when Herakles dwelt as a
-guest in the sanctuary of Athene, on his expedition against Augias, he
-saw the maiden, and when intoxicated he raped her. When Aleos became
-aware of her pregnancy, he delivered her to Nauplios, a rough sailor,
-with the command to throw her into the sea. But on the way she gave
-birth to Telephos, on Mount Parthenios, and Nauplios, unmindful of the
-orders he had received, carried both her and the child to Mysia, where
-he delivered them to King Teuthras.
-
-According to another version, Auge secretly brought forth as a
-priestess, but kept the child hidden in the temple. When Aleos
-discovered the sacrilege, he caused the child to be exposed in the
-Parthenian mountains,[38] Nauplios was instructed to sell the mother in
-foreign lands, or to kill her. She was delivered by him into the hands
-of Teuthras.
-
-According to the current tradition, _Auge exposes the newborn child_
-and escapes to Mysia, where the childless King Teuthras adopts her as
-his daughter. The boy, however, is nursed by a doe, and is found by
-shepherds who take him to King Korythos. The king brings him up as his
-son. When Telephos has grown into a youth he betakes himself to Mysia,
-on the advice of the oracle, to seek his mother. He frees Teuthras,
-who is in danger from his enemies, and in reward receives the hand of
-the supposed daughter of the king, namely his own mother Auge. But
-she refuses to submit to Telephos, and when he in his ire is about
-to pierce the disobedient one with his sword, she calls on her lover
-Herakles in her distress, and Telephos thus recognizes his mother.
-After the death of Teuthras he becomes king of Mysia.
-
-
-
-
-                                PERSEUS
-
-Akrisios, the king of Argos, had already reached an advanced age
-without having male progeny. As he desired a son, he consulted the
-Delphian oracle, but this warned him against male descendants, and
-informed him that his daughter Danae would bear a son through whose
-hand he would perish. In order to prevent this, his daughter was locked
-up by him in an iron chamber, which he caused to be carefully guarded.
-But Zeus penetrated through the roof, in the guise of a golden rain,
-and Danae became the mother of a boy.[39] One day Akrisios heard the
-voice of young Perseus in his daughter’s room, and in this way learned
-that she had given birth to a child. _He killed the nurse_, but carried
-his daughter with her son to the domestic altar of Zeus, to have an
-oath taken on the true father’s name. But he refuses to believe his
-daughter’s statement that Zeus is the father, and _he encloses her with
-the child in a box,[40] which is cast into the sea_. The box is carried
-by the waves to the coast of Seriphos, where _Diktys, a fisherman_,
-usually called a brother of King Polydektes, _saves mother and child
-by drawing them out of the sea with his nets_. Diktys leads the two
-into his house and keeps them as his relations. Polydektes, however,
-becomes enamoured of the beautiful mother, and _as Perseus was in his
-way, he tried to remove him_ by sending him forth to fetch the head
-of the Gorgon Medusa. But against the king’s anticipations Perseus
-accomplishes this difficult task, and a number of heroic deeds besides.
-In throwing the discos, at play, he accidentally kills his grandfather,
-as foretold by the oracle. He becomes the king of Argos, then of
-Tiryath, and the builder of Mykene.[41]
-
-
-
-
-                               GILGAMOS
-
-Aelian, who lived about 200 A.D, relates in his “Animal Stories” the
-history of _a boy who was saved by an eagle_.[42]
-
-“Animals have a characteristic fondness for man. An eagle is known to
-have nourished a child. I shall tell the entire story, in proof of my
-assertion. When Senechoros reigned over the Babylonians, the Chaldean
-fortune-tellers foretold that the son of the king’s daughter would
-take the kingdom from his grandfather; this verdict was a prophecy of
-the Chaldeans. The king was afraid of this prophecy, and humorously
-speaking, he became a second Akrisius for his daughter, over whom
-he watched with the greatest severity. But his daughter, fate being
-wiser than the Babylonian, conceived secretly from an inconspicuous
-man. For fear of the king, the guardians threw the child down from the
-Akropolis, where the royal daughter was imprisoned. The eagle, with his
-keen eyes, saw the boy’s fall, and before the child struck the earth,
-he caught it on his back, bore it into a garden, and set it down with
-great care. When the overseer of the place saw the beautiful boy he was
-pleased with him and raised him. The boy received the name Gilgamos,
-and became the king of Babylonia. If anyone regards this as a fable,
-I have nothing to say, although I have investigated the matter to the
-best of my ability. Also from Achaemenes, the Persian, from whom the
-nobility of the Persians is derived, I learn that he was the pupil of
-an eagle.”[43]
-
-
-
-
-                                 KYROS
-
-The myth of Kyros, which the majority of investigators place in the
-center of this entire mythical circle, without entirely sufficient
-grounds, it would appear—has been transmitted to us in several
-versions. According to the report of Herodotus (about 450 B.C.), who
-states (I, 95) that among four renderings known to him, he selected the
-least “glorifying” version, the story of the birth and youth of Kyros
-is as follows, I, 107 et seq.[44].
-
-Royal sway over the Medes was held, after Kyaxares, by his son
-Astyages, who had a daughter named Mandane. Once he saw, in a dream,
-so much water passing from her as to fill an entire city, and inundate
-all Asia. He related his dream to the dream interpreters among the
-magicians, and was in great fear after they had explained it all to
-him. When Mandane had grown up, he gave her in marriage, not to a
-Mede, his equal in birth, but to a Persian, by name of Kambyses. This
-man came of a good family and led a quiet life. The King considered
-him of lower rank than a middle class Mede. After Mandane had become
-the wife of Kambyses, Astyages saw another dream vision in the first
-year. He dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter’s lap, and this
-vine overshadowed all Asia. After he had again related this vision to
-the dream interpreters, he sent for his daughter, who was with child,
-and after her arrival from Persia, he watched her, because he meant
-to kill her offspring. For the dream interpreters among the magicians
-had prophesied to him that his daughter’s son would become king in his
-place. In order to avert this fate, he waited until Kyros was born, and
-then sent for Harpagos, who was his relative and his greatest confidant
-among the Medes, and whom he had placed over all his affairs. Him he
-addressed as follows: “My dear Harpagos, I shall charge thee with an
-errand which thou must conscientiously perform. But do not deceive me,
-and let no other man attend to it, for all might not go well with thee.
-Take this boy, whom Mandane has brought forth, carry him home, and
-kill him. Afterwards thou canst bury him, how and in whatsoever manner
-thou desirest.” But Harpagos made answer: “Great King, never hast thou
-found thy servant disobedient, and also in future I shall beware not to
-sin before thee. If such is thy will, it behooves me to carry it out
-faithfully.” When Harpagos had thus spoken, and the little boy with all
-his ornaments had been delivered into his hands, for death, he went
-home weeping. On his arrival he told his wife all that Astyages had
-said to him. But she inquired, “What art thou about to do?” He made
-reply: “I shall not obey Astyages, even if he raved and stormed ten
-times worse than he is doing. I shall not do as he wills, and consent
-to such a murder. I have a number of reasons: in the first place, the
-boy is my blood relative; then, Astyages is old, and he has no male
-heir. Should he die, and the kingdom go to his daughter, whose son he
-bids me kill at present, would I not run the greatest danger? But the
-boy must die, for the sake of my safety. However, one of Astyages’ men
-is to be his murderer, not one of mine.”
-
-Having thus spoken, he at once despatched a messenger to one of the
-king’s cattle herders, by name Mithradates, who, as he happened to
-know, was keeping his herd in a very suitable mountain pasturage, full
-of wild animals. The herder’s wife was also a slave of Astyages’, by
-name Kyno in Greek, or Spako (a bitch) in the Medean language. When the
-herder hurriedly arrived, on the command of Harpagos, the latter said
-to him: “Astyages bids thee take this boy and expose him in the wildest
-mountains, that he may perish as promptly as may be, and the King has
-ordered me to say to thee: If thou doest not kill the boy, but let him
-live, in whatever way, thou art to die a most disgraceful death. And
-I am charged to see to it that the boy is really exposed.” When the
-herder had listened to this, he took the boy, went home, and arrived
-in his cottage. His wife was with child, and was in labor the entire
-day, and it happened that she was just bringing forth, when the herder
-had gone to the city. They were greatly worried about each other. But
-when he had returned and the woman saw him again so unexpectedly, she
-asked in the first place why Harpagos had sent for him so hurriedly.
-But he said: “My dear wife, would that I had never seen what I have
-seen and heard in the city, and what has happened to our masters. The
-house of Harpagos was full of cries and laments. This startled me, but
-I entered, and soon after I had entered, I saw a small boy lying before
-me, who struggled and cried and was dressed in fine garments and gold.
-When Harpagos saw me, he bid me quickly take the boy, and expose him in
-the wildest spot of the mountains. He said Astyages had ordered this,
-and added awful threats if I failed to do so. I took the child and went
-away with it, thinking that it belonged to one of the servants, for it
-did not occur to me whence it had come. But on the way, I learned the
-entire story from the servant who led me from the city, and placed the
-boy in my hands. He is the son of Mandane, daughter of Astyages, and
-Kambyses the son of Kyros; and Astyages has ordered his death. Behold,
-here is the boy.”
-
-Having thus spoken, the herder uncovered the child and showed it to
-her, and when the woman saw that he was a fine strong child, she wept,
-and fell at her husband’s feet, and implored him not to expose it. But
-he said he could not do otherwise, for Harpagos would send servants to
-see if this had been done; he would have to die a disgraceful death
-unless he did so. Then she said again: “If I have failed to move thee,
-do as follows, so that they may see an exposed child: I have brought
-forth a dead child; take it and expose it, but the son of the daughter
-of Astyages we will raise as our own child. In this way, thou wilt not
-be found a disobedient servant, nor will we fare ill ourselves. Our
-stillborn child will be given a kingly burial, and the living child’s
-life will be preserved.” The herder did as his wife had begged and
-advised him to do. He placed his own dead boy in a basket, dressed him
-in all the finery of the other, and exposed him on the most desert
-mountain. Three days later he announced to Harpagos that he was now
-enabled to show the boy’s cadaver. Harpagos sent his most faithful body
-guardians, and ordered the burial of the cattle herder’s son. The other
-boy, however, who was known later on as Kyros, was brought up by the
-herder’s wife. They did not call him Kyros, but gave him another name.
-
-When the boy was twelve years old the truth was revealed, through the
-following accident. He was playing on the road, with other boys of his
-own age, in the village where the cattle were kept. The boys played
-“King,” and elected the supposed son of the cattle herder.[45] But
-he commanded some to build houses, others to carry lances; one he
-made the king’s watchman, the other was charged with the bearing of
-messages; briefly, each received his appointed task. One of the boy’s
-playmates, however, was the son of Artembares, a respected man among
-the Medes, and when he did not do as Kyros ordained, the latter made
-the other boys seize him. The boys obeyed, and Kyros chastised him with
-severe blows. After they let him go, he became furiously angry, as if
-he had been treated improperly. He ran into the city and complained to
-his father of what Kyros had done to him. He did not mention the name
-of Kyros for he was not yet called so, but said the cattle herder’s
-son. Artembares went wrathfully with his son to Astyages, complained of
-the disgraceful treatment, and spoke thus: “Great king, we suffer such
-outrageous treatment from thy servant, the herder’s son,” and he showed
-him his own son’s shoulders. When Astyages heard and saw this, he
-wished to vindicate the boy for the sake of Artembares, and he sent for
-the cattle herder with his son. When both were present, Astyages looked
-at Kyros and said: “Thou, a lowly man’s son, hast had the effrontery
-to treat so disgracefully the son of a man whom I greatly honor!” But
-he made answer: “Lord, he has only received his due. For the boys in
-the village, he being among them, were at play, and made me their king,
-believing me to be the best adapted thereto. And the other boys did as
-they were told, but he was disobedient, and did not mind me at all. For
-this he has received his reward. If I have deserved punishment, here I
-am at your service.”
-
-When the boy spoke in this way, Astyages knew him at once. For the
-features of the face appeared to him as his own, and the answer was
-that of a highborn youth; furthermore, it seemed to him that the time
-of the exposure agreed with the boy’s age. This smote his heart, and he
-remained speechless for a while. Hardly had he regained control over
-himself, when he spoke to get rid of Artembares, so as to be able to
-question the cattle herder without witnesses. “My dear Artembares,”
-he said, “I shall take care that neither thou nor thy son shall have
-cause for complaint.” Thus he dismissed Artembares. Kyros, however, was
-led into the palace by the servants, on the command of Astyages, and
-the cattle herder had to stay behind. When he was all alone with him
-Astyages questioned him whence he had obtained the boy, and who had
-given the child into his hands. But the herder said that he was his own
-son, and that the woman who had borne him was living with him. Astyages
-remarked that he was very unwise, to look out for most cruel tortures,
-and he beckoned the sword bearers to take hold of him. As he was being
-led to torture, the herder confessed the whole story, from beginning to
-end, the entire truth, finally beginning to beg and implore forgiveness
-and pardon. Meanwhile Astyages was not so incensed against the herder,
-who had revealed to him the truth, as against Harpagos; he ordered
-the sword bearers to summon him, and when Harpagos stood before him,
-Astyages asked him as follows: “My dear Harpagos, in what fashion hast
-thou taken the life of my daughter’s son, whom I once delivered over to
-thee?” Seeing the cattle herder standing near, Harpagos did not resort
-to untruthfulness, for fear that he would be refuted at once, and so he
-proceeded to tell the truth. Astyages concealed the anger which he had
-aroused in him, and first told him what he had learned from the herder;
-then he mentioned that the boy was still living, and that everything
-had turned out all right. He said that he had greatly regretted what he
-had done to the child, and that his daughter’s reproaches had pierced
-his soul. “But as everything has ended so well, send thy son to greet
-the newcomer, and then come to eat with me, for I am ready to prepare a
-feast in honor of the Gods who have brought all this about.”
-
-When Harpagos heard this, he prostrated himself on the ground before
-the king, and praised himself for his error having turned out well,
-and for being invited to the king’s table, in commemoration of a happy
-event. So he went home, and when he arrived there, he at once sent
-off his only son, a boy of about thirteen years, telling him to go to
-Astyages, and to do as he was bid. Then Harpagos joyfully told his wife
-what had befallen him. But Astyages butchered the son of Harpagos when
-he came, cut him to pieces, and roasted the flesh in part; another
-portion of the flesh was cooked, and when everything was prepared he
-kept it in readiness. When the hour of the meal had come, Harpagos
-and the other guests arrived. A table with sheep’s meat was arranged
-in front of Astyages and the others, but Harpagos was served with his
-own son’s flesh, without the head, and without the choppings of hands
-and feet, but with everything else. These parts were kept hidden in a
-basket. When Harpagos seemed to have taken his fill, Astyages asked him
-if the meat had tasted good to him, and when Harpagos answered that he
-had enjoyed it, the servants, who had been ordered to do so, brought
-in his own son’s covered head, with the hands and feet, stepped up to
-Harpagos, and told him to uncover and take what he desired. Harpagos
-did so, uncovered the basket, and saw the remnants of his son. When he
-saw this, he did not give way to his horror, but controlled himself.
-Astyages then asked him if he knew of what game he had eaten; and he
-replied that he knew it very well, and that whatever the king did was
-well done. Thus he spoke, took the flesh that remained, and went home
-with it, where he probably meant to bury it together.
-
-This was the revenge of Astyages upon Harpagos. Concerning Kyros, he
-took counsel, and summoned the same magicians who had explained his
-dream, then he asked them how they had at one time interpreted his
-vision in a dream. But they said that the boy must become a king, if he
-remained alive, and did not die prematurely. Astyages made reply: “The
-boy is alive, and is here, and as he was staying in the country, the
-boys of the village elected him for their king. But he did everything
-like the real kings, for he ordained to himself as the master, sword
-bearers, gate keepers, messengers, and everything. How do you mean to
-interpret this?” The magicians made reply: “If the boy is alive, and
-has been made king without the help of anyone, thou canst be at ease
-so far as he is concerned, and be of good cheer, for he will not again
-be made a king. Already several prophecies of ours have applied to
-insignificant trifles, and what rests upon dreams is apt to be vain.”
-Astyages made reply: “Ye sorcerers, I am entirely of your opinion that
-the dream has been fulfilled when the boy was king in name, and that
-I have nothing more to fear from him. Yet counsel me carefully as to
-what is safest for my house and for yourselves.” Then the magicians
-said: “Send the boy away, that he may get out of thy sight, send him
-to the land of the Persians, to his parents.” When Astyages had heard
-this, he was greatly pleased. He sent for Kyros, and said to him: “My
-son, I have wronged thee greatly, misled by a deceitful dream, but
-thy good fortune has saved thee. Now go cheerfully to the land of
-the Persians; I shall give thee safe conduct. There wilt thou find a
-very different father, and a very different mother than the herders,
-Mithradates and his wife.” Thus spake Astyages, and Kyros was sent
-away. When he arrived in the house of Kambyses, his parents received
-him with great joy when they learned who he was, for they believed him
-to have perished at that time, and they desired to know how he had been
-preserved. He told them that he had believed himself to be the son
-of the cattle herder, but had learned everything on the way from the
-companions whom Astyages had sent with him. He related that the cattle
-herder’s wife had saved him, and praised her throughout. The bitch
-(Spako) played the principal part in his conversation. The parents took
-hold of this name, so that the preservation of the child might appear
-still more wonderful, and thus was laid the foundation of the myth that
-the exposed Kyros was nursed by a bitch.
-
-Later on, Kyros, on the instigation of Harpagos, stirred up the
-Persians against the Medes. War was declared, and Kyros, at the head
-of the Persians, conquered the Medes in battle. Astyages was taken a
-prisoner alive, but Kyros did not harm him, but kept him with him until
-his end. Herodotus’s report concludes with the words: “But from that
-time on the Persians and Kyros reigned over Asia. Thus was Kyros born
-and raised, and made a king.”
-
-The report of Pompeius Trogus is preserved only in the extract by
-Justinus.[46] Astyages had a daughter but no male heir. In his dream he
-saw a vine grow forth from her lap, the sprouts of which overshadowed
-all Asia. The dream interpreters declared that the vision signified the
-magnitude of his grandson, whom his daughter was to bear; but also his
-own loss of his dominions. In order to banish this dread, Astyages gave
-his daughter in marriage neither to a prominent man, nor to a Mede, so
-that his grandson’s mind might not be uplifted by the paternal estate
-besides the maternal; but he married her to Kambyses, a middle-class
-man from the then unknown people of the Persians. But this was not
-enough to banish the fears of Astyages, and he summoned his pregnant
-daughter, in order to have her infant destroyed before his eyes. When a
-boy had been born, he gave him to Harpagos, his friend and confidant,
-to kill him. For fear that the daughter of Astyages would take revenge
-upon him for the death of her boy, when she came to reign after her
-father’s death, he delivered the boy to the king’s herder for exposure.
-At the same time when Kyros was born, a son happened to be born also
-to the herder. When his wife learned that the king’s child had been
-exposed, she urgently prayed for it to be brought to her, that she
-might look at it. Moved by her entreaties, the herder returned to the
-woods. There he found a bitch standing beside the child, giving it her
-teats, and keeping the beasts and birds away from it. At this aspect he
-was filled with the same compassion as the bitch; so that he picked
-up the boy and carried him home, the bitch following him in great
-distress. When his wife took the boy in her arms, he smiled at her as
-if he already knew her; and as he was very strong, and ingratiated
-himself with her by his pleasant smile, she voluntarily begged the
-herder to (expose her own child instead and)[47] permit her to raise
-the boy; be it that she was interested in his welfare, or that she
-placed her hopes on him. Thus the two boys had to exchange fates; one
-was raised in place of the herder’s child, while the other was exposed
-instead of the grandson of the king.
-
-The sequel of this apparently more primitive report agrees essentially
-with the relation of Herodotus.
-
-An altogether different version of the Kyros myth is extant in the
-report of a contemporary of Herodotus, Ktesias, the original of
-which has been lost, but is replaced by a fragment of Nikolaos of
-Damaskos.[48] This fragment from Nikolaos summarizes the narrative
-of Ktesias, which comprised more than an entire book in his Persian
-history. Astyages is said to have been the worthiest king of the
-Medes, after Abakes. Under his rule occurred the great transmutation
-through which the rulership passed from the Medes to the Persians,
-through the following cause: The Medes had a law that a poor man who
-went to a rich man for his support, and surrendered himself to him,
-had to be fed and clothed and kept like a slave by the rich man, or in
-case the latter refused to do so, the poor man was at liberty to go
-elsewhere. In this way a boy by name of Kyros, a Mard by birth, came to
-the king’s servant who was at the head of the palace sweepers. Kyros
-was the son of Atradates, whose poverty made him live as a robber,
-and whose wife, Argoste, Kyros’ mother, made her living by tending
-the goats. Kyros surrendered himself for the sake of his daily bread,
-and helped to clean the palace. As he was diligent, the foreman gave
-him better clothing, and advanced him from the outside sweepers to
-those who cleaned the interior of the king’s palace, placing him under
-their superintendent. This man was severe, however, and often whipped
-Kyros. He left him and went to the lamp-lighter, who liked Kyros,
-and approached him to the king, by placing him among the royal torch
-bearers. As Kyros distinguished himself also in his new position, he
-came to Artembares, who was at the head of the cup bearers, and himself
-presented the cup to the king. Artembares gladly accepted Kyros, and
-bade him pour the wine for the guests at the king’s table. Not long
-afterwards, Astyages noticed the dexterity and nimbleness of Kyros’
-service, and his graceful presentation of the wine cup, so that he
-asked of Artembares whence this youth had come who was so skillful a
-cup bearer. “O Lord,” spake he, “this boy is thy slave, of Persian
-parentage, from the tribe of the Mards, who has surrendered himself to
-me to make a living.” Artembares was old, and once on being attacked
-by a fever, he prayed the king to let him stay at home until he had
-recovered. “In my stead, the youth whom thou hast praised will pour the
-wine, and if he should please thee, the king, as a cup bearer, _I, who
-am an eunuch, will adopt him as my son_.” Astyages consented, but the
-other confided in many ways in Kyros _as in a son_. Kyros thus stood
-at the king’s side, and poured his wine by day and by night, showing
-great ability and cleverness. Astyages conferred upon him the income of
-Artembares, as if he had been his son, adding many presents, and Kyros
-became a great man whose name was heard everywhere.
-
-Astyages had a very noble and beautiful daughter,[49] whom he gave to
-the Mede Spitamas, adding all Media as her dowry. Then Kyros sent for
-his father and mother, in the land of the Medes, and they rejoiced
-in the good fortune of their son, and _his mother told him the dream
-which she had at the time that she was bearing him_, while asleep in
-the sanctuary as she was tending the goats. _So much water passed away
-from her that it became as a large stream, inundating all Asia, and
-flowing as far as the sea_. When the father heard this, he ordered the
-dream to be placed before the Chaldeans in Babylon. Kyros summoned
-the wisest among them, and communicated the dream to him. He declared
-that the dream foretold great good fortune to Kyros, and _the highest
-dignity in Asia_; but Astyages must not learn of it, “for else he
-would disgracefully kill thee, as well as myself the interpreter,”
-said the Babylonian. They swore to each other to tell no one of this
-great and incomparable vision. _Kyros later on rose to still higher
-dignities, created his father a Satrap of Persia, and raised his mother
-to the highest rank and possessions among the Persian women._ But when
-the Babylonian was killed soon afterwards by Oebares, the confidant
-of Kyros, his wife betrayed the fateful dream to the king, when she
-learned of Kyros’ expedition to Persia, which he had undertaken in
-preparation of the revolt. The king sent his horsemen after Kyros, with
-the command to deliver him dead or alive. But Kyros escaped them by a
-ruse. Finally a combat took place, terminating in the defeat of the
-Medes. Kyros also conquered Egbatana, and here the daughter of Astyages
-and her husband Spitamas, with their two sons, were taken prisoners.
-But Astyages himself could not be found, for Amytis and Spitamas had
-concealed him in the palace, under the rafters of the roof. Kyros then
-ordered that Amytis, her husband, and the children should be tortured
-until they revealed the hiding place of Astyages, but he came out
-voluntarily, that his relatives might not be tortured on his account.
-_Kyros commanded the execution of Spitamas_, because he had lied in
-affirming to be in ignorance of Astyages’ hiding place; _but Amytis
-became the wife of Kyros. He removed the fetters of Astyages_, with
-which Oebares had bound him, _honored him as a father_, and made him a
-Satrap of the Barkanians.
-
-A great similarity to Herodotus’ version of the Kyros myth is found in
-the early history of the Iranese royal hero, Kaikhosrav, as related by
-_Firdusi_, in the Sâh-nâme. This myth is most extensively rendered by
-Spiegel (Eranische Altertumskunde, I, 581 et seq.). During the warfare
-of King Kaikaus of Baktria and Iran, against King Afrâsiâb of Turan,
-_Kaikaus fell out with his son, Siâvaksh_, who applied to Afrâsiâb
-for protection and assistance. He was kindly received by Afrâsiâb,
-who gave him his daughter Feringis to wife, on the persuasion of his
-Wesir, Pirân, _although he had received the prophecy that the son to be
-born of this union would bring great misfortune upon him_. Garsevaz,
-the king’s brother, and a near relative of Siâvaksh, calumniates the
-son-in-law, and Afrâsiâb leads an army against him. _Before the birth
-of his son, Siâvaksh is warned by a dream, which foretold destruction
-and death to himself, but royalty to his offspring._ He therefore flies
-from Afrâsiâb, but is taken prisoner and killed, on the command of the
-Sâh. His wife, who is pregnant, is saved by Pirân from the hands of the
-murderers. On condition of announcing at once the delivery of Feringis
-to the king, Pirân is granted permission to keep her in his house. The
-shade of the murdered Siâvaksh once comes to him in a dream, and tells
-him that an avenger has been born, and Pirân actually finds in the
-room of Feringis a newborn boy, whom he names Kaikhosrav. Afrâsiâb no
-longer insisted upon the killing of the boy, but he ordered Pirân _to
-surrender the child with a nurse to the herders, who were to raise him
-in ignorance of his origin_. But his royal descent is promptly revealed
-in his courage and his demeanor; and as Pirân takes the boy back into
-his home, Afrâsiâb becomes distrustful, and orders the boy to be led
-before him. Instructed by Pirân, Kaikhosvrav plays the fool,[50] and
-reassured as to his harmlessness, the Sâh dismisses him to his mother,
-Feringis. Finally, Kaikhosvrav is crowned as king by his grandfather,
-Kaikaus. After prolonged, complicated, and tedious combats, Afrâsiâb is
-at last taken prisoner, with divine assistance. Kaikhosvrav strikes his
-head off, and also causes Garsivaz to be decapitated.
-
-A certain resemblance, although more remote, to the preceding saga,
-is presented by the Iranese myth of Feridun, as told by Firdusi in
-his “Persian Hero-Myths” (translated by Schack). _Zohâk,[51] the king
-of Iran, once sees in a dream three men of royal tribe._ Two of them
-are bent with age, but between them is a _younger man_ who holds a
-club, with a bull’s head, in his right hand; this man steps up to him,
-and _fells him with his club to the ground_. The dream interpreters
-declared to the king that the young hero who will dethrone him is
-Feridun, a scion of the tribe of Dschemschid. Zohâk at once sets out
-to look for the tracks of his dreaded enemy. Feridun is the son of
-Abtin, a grandson of Dschemschid. His father hides from the pursuit
-of the tyrant, but he is seized and killed. Feridun himself, a boy of
-tender age, _is saved by his mother Firânek, who escapes with him and
-entrusts him to the care of the guardian of a distant forest. Here he
-is suckled by the cow Purmâje._ For three years he remains in this
-place, but then his mother no longer believes him safe, and she carries
-him to a hermit on the mountain Alburs. Soon afterwards Zohâk comes to
-the forest, and kills the guardian as well as the cow.
-
-When Feridun was sixteen years old, he came down from Mount Alburs,
-learned of his origin through his mother, and swore to avenge the death
-of his father and of his nurse. On the expedition against Zohâk he is
-accompanied by his two older brothers, Purmâje and Kayânuseh. He orders
-a club to be forged for his use, and ornaments it with the bull’s head,
-in memory of his foster mother the cow. With this club he smites Zohâk,
-as foretold by the dream.
-
-
-
-
-                                TRISTAN
-
-The argument of the Feridun story is pursued in the Tristan saga, as
-related in the epic poem by Gottfried of Strassburg. This is especially
-evident in the prologue of the Tristan-saga, which is repeated later
-on in the adventures of the hero himself (duplication). Riwalin, king
-in the land of the Parmenians, in an expedition to the court of Marke,
-king of Kurnewal and England, had become acquainted with the latter’s
-beautiful sister, Blancheflure, and his heart was aflame with love for
-her. While assisting Marke in a campaign, Riwalin was mortally wounded
-and was carried to Tintajole. Blancheflure, _disguised as a beggar
-maid_, hastened to his sick bed, and her devoted love saved the king’s
-life. She fled with her lover to his native land (obstacles) and was
-there proclaimed as his consort. But Morgan attacked Riwalin’s country,
-for the sake of Blancheflure, whom the king entrusted to his _faithful
-retainer_ Rual, because she was carrying a child. Rual placed the queen
-for safekeeping in the castle of Kaneel. Here _she gave birth to a
-son and died, while her husband fell in the battle against Morgan. In
-order to protect the king’s offspring from Morgan’s pursuits_, Rual
-spread the rumor that the infant had been born dead. The boy was
-named Tristan, because he had been conceived and born in sorrow. Under
-the care of his _foster-parents_, Tristan grew up, equally straight
-in body and mind, until his fourteenth year, when he was kidnapped
-by Norwegian merchants, who put him ashore in Kurnewal, because they
-feared the wrath of the gods. Here the boy was found by the _soldiers
-of King Marke_, who was so well pleased with the brave and handsome
-youth that he promptly made him his master of the chase (career), and
-held him in great affection. Meanwhile, faithful Rual had set forth
-to seek his abducted foster son, whom he found at last in Kurnewal,
-where Rual had come begging his way. Rual _revealed Tristan’s descent_
-to the king, who was delighted to see in him the son of his beloved
-sister, and raised him to the rank of a knight. In order to _avenge his
-father_, Tristan proceeded with Rual to Parmenia, vanquished Morgan,
-the usurper, and gave the country to Rual as a liege, while he himself
-returned to his uncle Marke. (After Chop: Erläuterungen zu Wagner’s
-Tristan, Reclam Bibl.)
-
-The actual Tristan saga goes on with a repetition of the principal
-themes. In the service of Marke, Tristan kills Morald, the bridegroom
-of Isolde, and being wounded unto death, he is saved by Isolde. He
-asks her hand in marriage, for his uncle Marke, fulfils the condition
-of killing a dragon, and she follows him reluctantly to Kurnewal,
-where they travel by ship. On the journey they partake unwittingly
-of the disastrous love potion, which binds them together in frenzied
-passion. They betray the king, Marke, and on the wedding night Isolde’s
-faithful serving maid, Brangäne, represents the queen, and sacrifices
-her virginity to the king. Next follows the banishment of Tristan,
-his several attempts to regain his beloved, although he had meanwhile
-married Isolde Whitehand, who resembled her. At last he is again
-wounded unto death, and Isolde arrives too late to save him.[52]
-
-A plainer version of the Tristan-saga, in the sense of the
-characteristic features of the myth of the birth of the hero, is found
-in the fairy tale, “The True Bride,” quoted by Riklin (“Wunscherfüllung
-und Symbolik im Märchen,” p. 56)[53] from Rittershaus’ collection of
-fairy tales (XXVII, p. 113). A royal pair have no children. The king
-having threatened to kill his wife, unless she bears a child by the
-time of his return from his sea-voyage, she is brought to him during
-his journey, by his zealous maid-servant, as the fairest of three
-promenading ladies, and he takes her into his tent without recognizing
-her.[54] She returns home without having been discovered, gives birth
-to a daughter, Isol, and dies. Isol later on finds a most beautiful
-little boy in a box by the seaside, whose name is Tristram, and she
-raises him to become engaged to him. The subsequent story, which
-contains the motive of the true bride, is noteworthy for present
-purposes only in as far as here again occur the draught of oblivion,
-and two Isoldes. The king’s second wife gives a potion to Tristram,
-which causes him to forget the fair Isol entirely, so that he wishes to
-marry the black Isota. Ultimately he discovers the deception, however,
-and becomes united with Isol.
-
-
-
-
-                               ROMULUS.
-
-The original version of the story of Romulus and Remus, as told by the
-most ancient Roman annalist, Fabius Pictor, is rendered as follows by
-Mommsen.[55] “_The twins_ borne by Ilia, daughter of the preceding
-king Numitor, _from the embrace of the war god Mars were condemned by
-King Amulius, the present ruler of Alba, to be cast into the river_.
-The king’s servants took the children and carried them from Alba as
-far as the Tiber on the Palatine Hill; but when they tried to descend
-the hill to the river, to carry out the command, they found that the
-river had risen, and they were unable to reach its bed. The tub with
-the children was therefore thrust by them into the shallow water at the
-shore. _It floated_ for a while; _but the water promptly receded_, and
-_knocking against a stone, the tub capsized_, and the screaming infants
-were upset into the river mud. _They were heard by a she-wolf who had
-just brought forth and had her udders full of milk; she came and gave
-her teats to the boys, to nurse them_, and as they were drinking she
-licked them clean with her tongue. Above them flew a woodpecker, which
-guarded the children, and also carried food to them. The father was
-providing for his sons: for the wolf and the woodpecker are animals
-consecrated to father Mars. This was seen by one of the royal herdsmen,
-who was driving his pigs back to the pasture from which the water had
-receded. Startled by the spectacle, he summoned his mates, who found
-the she-wolf attending like a mother to the children, and the children
-treated her as their mother. The men made a loud noise to scare the
-animal away; but the wolf was not afraid; she left the children, but
-not from fear; slowly, without heeding the herdsmen, she disappeared
-into the wilderness of the forest, at the holy site of Faunus, where
-the water gushes from a gully of the mountain. Meanwhile the men picked
-up the boys and carried them to the chief swineherd of the king,
-Faustulus, for they believed that the gods did not wish the children
-to perish. _But the wife of Faustulus had just given birth to a dead
-child, and was full of sorrow. Her husband gave her the twins, and she
-nursed them; the couple raised the children, and named them Romulus
-and Remus._ After Rome had been founded, later on, King Romulus built
-himself a house not far from the place where his tub had stood. The
-gully in which the she-wolf had disappeared has been known since
-that time as the Wolf’s Gully, the Lupercal. The image in ore of the
-she-wolf with the twins[56] was subsequently erected at this spot,
-and the she-wolf herself, the Lupa, was worshipped by the Romans as a
-divinity.
-
-The Romulus saga later on underwent manifold transmutations,
-mutilations, additions, and interpretations.[57] It is best known in
-the form transmitted by Livy (I, 3 et seq.), where we learn something
-about the antecedents and subsequent fate of the twins.
-
-King Proca bequeaths the royal dignity to his first born son Numitor.
-But his _younger brother, Amulius, pushes him from the throne_, and
-becomes king himself. So that no scion from Numitor’s family may arise,
-as the avenger, he kills the male descendants of his brother. _Rea
-Silvia, the daughter, he elects as a vestal, and thus deprives her of
-the hope of progeny, through perpetual virginity_ as enjoined upon her
-under the semblance of a most honorable distinction. But the vestal
-maiden was overcome by violence, and having _brought forth twins_, she
-named _Mars_ as the _father of her illegitimate offspring_, be it from
-conviction, or because a god appeared more creditable to her as the
-perpetrator of the crime.
-
-The narrative of the exposure in the Tiber goes on as follows: The saga
-relates that the floating tub, in which the boys had been exposed,
-was left on dry land by the receding waters, and that a thirsty wolf,
-attracted from the neighbouring mountains by the children’s cries,
-offered them her teats. The boys are said to have been found by the
-chief royal herder, supposedly named Faustulus, who took them to the
-homestead of his wife, Larentia, where they were raised. Some believe
-that Larentia was called Lupa, a she-wolf, by the herders, because she
-offered her body, and that this was the origin of the wonderful saga.
-
-Grown to manhood, the youths Romulus and Remus protect the herds
-against the attacks of wild animals and robbers. One day Remus is taken
-prisoner by the robbers, who accuse him of having stolen Numitor’s
-flocks. But Numitor, to whom he is surrendered for punishment, was
-touched by his tender age, and when he learned of the twin brothers,
-he suspected that they might be his exposed grandsons. While he was
-anxiously pondering the resemblance with the features of his daughter,
-and the boy’s age as corresponding to the time of the exposure,
-Faustulus arrived with Romulus, and a conspiracy was hatched, when
-the descent of the boys had been learned from the herders. The youths
-armed themselves for vengeance, while Numitor took up weapons to
-defend his claim to the throne he had usurped. After _Amulius had been
-assassinated_, Numitor was re-instituted as the ruler, and the youths
-resolved to found a city in the region where they had been exposed and
-brought up. A furious dispute arose upon the question which brother was
-to be the ruler of the newly erected city, for neither twin was favored
-by the right of primogeniture, and the outcome of the bird oracle was
-equally doubtful. The saga relates that Remus jumped over the new wall,
-to deride his twin, and _Romulus became so much enraged that he slew
-his brother_. Romulus then usurped the sole mastery, and the city was
-named Rome after him.
-
-The Roman tale of Romulus and Remus has a close counterpart in the
-Greek myth of a city foundation by the twin brothers Amphion and
-Zethos, who were the first to found the site of Thebes of the Seven
-Gates. The enormous rocks which Zethos brought from the mountains were
-joined by the music drawn from Amphion’s lute strings to form the walls
-which became so famous later on. Amphion and Zethos passed as _the
-children of Zeus and Antiope_, daughter of King Nykteus. She escaped
-by flight from the punishment of her father, who died of grief; on
-his death bed he implored _his brother and successor on the throne,
-Lykos_, to punish the wrongdoing of Antiope. Meantime she had married
-Epopeus, the king of Sikyon, who was killed by Lykos. Antiope was led
-away by him in fetters. She gave birth to twin sons in the Kithairon,
-where she left them. A shepherd raised the boys and called them Amphion
-and Zethos. Later on, Antiope succeeded in escaping from the torments
-of Lykos and his wife, Dirke. She accidentally sought shelter in the
-Kithairon, with the twin brothers, now grown up. The shepherd reveals
-to the youths the fact that Antiope is their mother. Thereupon they
-cruelly kill Dirke, and deprive Lykos of the rulership.
-
-The remaining twin sagas,[58] which are extremely numerous, cannot
-be discussed in detail in this connection. Possibly they represent
-a complication of the birth myth by another very ancient and widely
-distributed myth complex, that of the hostile brothers, the detailed
-discussion of which belongs elsewhere. The apparently late and
-secondary character of the twin type in the birth myths justifies
-the separation of this part of mythology from the present theme. As
-regards the Romulus saga, Mommsen[59] renders it highly probable that
-it originally told only of Romulus, while the figure of Remus was added
-subsequently, and somewhat disjointedly, when it became desirable to
-invest the consulate with a solemnity founded on the old tradition.
-
-
-
-
-                             HERCULES[60]
-
-After the loss of his numerous sons, Elektryon betroths his daughter,
-Alkmene, to Amphitryon, the son of his brother, Alkäos. However,
-Amphitryon, through an unfortunate accident, causes the death of
-Elektryon, and escapes to Thebes with his affianced bride. He has not
-enjoyed her love, for she has solemnly pledged him not to touch her
-until he has avenged her brothers on the Thebans. An expedition is
-therefore started by him, from Thebes, and he conquers the king of the
-hostile people, Pterelaos, with all the islands. As he is returning to
-Thebes, Zeus in the form of Amphitryon[61] betakes himself to Alkmene,
-to whom he presents a golden goblet as evidence of victory. He rests
-with the beauteous maiden during three nights, according to the later
-poets, holding back the sun one day. In the same night, Amphitryon
-arrives, exultant in his victory and aflame with love. In the fulness
-of time, the fruit of the divine and the human embrace[62] is brought
-forth and Zeus announces to the gods his son, as the most powerful
-ruler of the future. But his jealous spouse, Hera, knows how to obtain
-from him the pernicious oath, that the first-born grandson of Perseus
-is to be the ruler of all the other descendants of Perseus. Hera
-hurries to Mykene, to deliver the wife of the third Perside, Sthenelos,
-of the seven months child, Eurystheus. At the same time she hinders
-and endangers the confinement of Alkmene, through all sorts of wicked
-sorcery, precisely as at the birth of the god of light, Apollo. Alkmene
-finally gives birth to Herakles and Iphikles, the latter in no way
-the former’s equal in courage or in strength, but destined to become
-the father of his faithful friend, Iolaos.[63] In this way Eurystheus
-became the king in Mykene, in the land of the Argivians, in conformity
-with the oath of Zeus, and the after born Herakles was his subject.
-
-The old legend related the raising of Herakles on the strength giving
-waters of the Dirke, the nourishment of all Theban children. Later on,
-however, another version arose. Fearing the jealousy of Hera, Alkmene
-_exposed the child which she had borne_ in a place which for a long
-time after was known as the field of Herakles. About this time, Athene
-arrived, in company with Hera. She marvelled at the beautiful form
-of the child, and persuaded Hera to put him to her breast. But the
-boy took the breast with far greater strength than his age seemed to
-warrant; Hera felt pains and angrily flung the child to the ground.
-Athene, however, carried him to the neighboring city and _took him
-to Queen Alkmene, whose maternity was unknown to her, as a poor
-foundling, whom she begged her to raise for the sake of charity_.
-This peculiar accident is truly remarkable! The child’s own mother
-allows him to perish, disregarding the duty of maternal love, and the
-stepmother who is filled with natural hatred against the child, saves
-her enemy without knowing it (after Diodor, IV, 9; German translation
-by Wurm, Stuttgart, 1831). Herakles had drawn only a few drops from
-Hera’s breast, but the divine milk was sufficient to endow him with
-immortality. An attempt on Hera’s part to kill the boy, asleep in his
-cradle, by means of two serpents, proved a failure, for the child
-awakened and crushed the beasts with a single pressure of his hands.
-As a boy, Herakles one day killed his tutor, Linos, being incensed
-about an unjust chastisement. Amphitryon, fearing the wildness of
-the youth, sends him to tend his ox-herds in the mountains, with the
-herders, among whom he is said by some to have been raised entirely,
-like Amphion and Zethos, Kyros and Romulus. Here he lives from the
-hunt, in the freedom of nature (Preller, II, 123).
-
-The myth of Herakles suggests in certain features the Indian saga of
-the hero _Krishna_, who like many heroes escapes a general infanticide,
-and is then brought up by a herder’s wife, Iasodha. A wicked she-demon
-appears, who has been sent by King Kansa to kill the boy. She takes the
-post of wet nurse in the home, but is recognized by Krishna, who bites
-her so severely in suckling (like Hera, when nursing Herakles, whom
-she also means to destroy), that she dies. (The early history of the
-pastoral god Krishna is related in the so-called Kariwamsa.)
-
-
-
-
-                                 Jesus
-
-The Gospel according to Luke (1, 26 to 35) relates the prophecy of the
-birth of Jesus, as follows:
-
-“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city
-of Galilee named Nazareth, to _a virgin espoused to a man whose name
-was Joseph_, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
-And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail! thou that art highly
-favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women! And when
-she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what
-manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear
-not, Mary; for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, _thou shalt
-conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son and call his name Jesus.
-He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest_: and the
-Lord God shalt give unto him the throne of his father David. And he
-shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there
-shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
-_seeing I know not a man_? And the angel answered and said unto her,
-the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
-overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of
-thee _shall he called the Son of God_.”
-
-This report is supplemented by the Gospel according to Matthew[64] (1,
-18 to 25), in the narrative of the birth and childhood of Jesus: “Now
-the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as his mother Mary
-was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, _she was found with
-child of the Holy Ghost_. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man,
-and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her
-away privily. But, while he thought on these things, behold the _angel
-of the Lord appeared to him in a dream_, saying, Joseph, thou son of
-David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is
-conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son,
-and thou shall call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from
-their sins. (Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was
-spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be
-with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
-Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.) Then Joseph, being
-raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and
-took unto him his wife. _And knew her not, till she had brought forth
-her first born son_; and he called his name Jesus.”
-
-Here we interpolate the detailed account of the birth of Jesus, from
-the Gospel of Luke (2, 4 to 20): “And Joseph also went up from Galilee,
-out of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called
-Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be
-taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so
-it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that
-she should be delivered. And _she brought forth her first born son,
-and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger_;[65]
-because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the
-same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their
-flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the
-glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
-And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold I bring you good
-tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born
-this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
-And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the babe wrapped in
-swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the
-angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory
-to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And
-it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven,
-the shepherds said one to another, let us now go even unto Bethlehem
-and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord has made
-known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and
-the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it they made known
-abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all
-they that heard wondered at those things which were told them by the
-shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her
-heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all
-the things which they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”
-
-We now continue the account after Matthew, in the second chapter:
-“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod
-the king, behold, there came _wise men from the East_ to Jerusalem,
-saying, _Where is he that was born King of the Jews_, for we have seen
-his star in the east, and have come to worship him. When _Herod the
-king_ had heard these things he was troubled and all Jerusalem with
-him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the
-people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And
-they said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by
-the prophet, And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda, art not the least
-among the princes of Juda, for out of thee shall come a governor which
-shall rule my people Israel.
-
-Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them
-diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem,
-and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye
-have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him
-also. When they had heard the king they departed; and lo the star,
-which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood
-over where the young child was.
-
-When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And
-when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary
-his mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and when they had opened
-their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense,
-and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream, that they should not
-return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
-And when they were departed, behold, _the angel of the Lord appeared
-to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his
-mother and flee into Egypt_, and be thou there until I bring thee
-word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he
-arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed
-into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be
-fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of
-Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked
-of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and _slew all the
-children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from
-two years old and under_, according to the time which he had diligently
-enquired of the wise men. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of
-the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying arise and take
-the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: _for
-they are dead which sought the young child’s life_. And he arose and
-took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
-But when he heard Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his
-father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding being warned
-of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee. And he
-came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled
-which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”[66]
-
-Similar birth legends to those of Jesus have also been transmitted of
-other “founders of religions”; such as Zoroaster, who is said to have
-lived about the year 1000 before Christ. His mother Dughda dreams,
-_in the sixth month of her pregnancy_, that the wicked and the good
-spirits are fighting for the embryonic Zoroaster; a monster tears the
-future Zoroaster from the mother’s womb, but a light god fights the
-monster with his horn of light, re-encloses the embryo in the mother’s
-womb, blows upon Dughda, and she became pregnant. On awakening, she
-hurries in her fear to a wise dream interpreter, who is unable to
-explain the wonderful dream before the end of three days: The child,
-which she is carrying, is destined to become a man of great importance;
-the dark cloud and the mountain of light signify, that she and her
-son will at first have to undergo numerous trials, through tyrants
-and other enemies, but at last they will overcome all perils. Dughda
-at once returns to her home, and informs Pourushacpa, her husband, of
-everything that has happened. Immediately after his birth, the boy
-was seen to laugh: this was the first miracle through which he drew
-attention to himself. _The magicians announce the birth of the child
-as a portent of disaster to the prince of the realm_, Durânsarûn, who
-betakes himself without delay to the dwelling of Pourushacpa, in order
-to stab the child. But his hand falls paralyzed, and he must leave with
-his errand undone. This was the second miracle. Soon after, the wicked
-demons steal the child from his mother and carry him into the desert,
-in order to kill him; but Dughda finds the unharmed child, calmly
-sleeping. This is the third miracle. Later on, Zoroaster was to be
-trampled upon, in a narrow passage way, by a herd of oxen, by command
-of the king.[67] But the largest of the cattle took the child between
-his feet, and preserved it from harm. This was the fourth miracle. The
-fifth is merely a repetition of the preceding. What the cattle had
-refused to do, was to be accomplished by horses. But again the child
-was protected by a horse from the hoofs of the other horses. Durânsurûn
-thereupon had the cubs in a wolf’s den killed during the absence of
-the old wolves, and Zoroaster was laid down in their place. But a god
-closed the jaws of the furious wolves, so that they could not harm
-the child. Two divine cows arrived instead and presented their udders
-to the child, giving it to drink. This was the sixth miracle, through
-which Zoroaster’s life was preserved. (Compare Spiegel’s Eranische
-Altertumskunde, I, pp. 688 et seq., also Brodbeck, Zoroaster, Leipzig,
-1893.)
-
-Related traits are also encountered in the history of Buddha, whose
-life is referred to the sixth century before Christ; such as the
-long sterility of the parents, the dream, the birth of the boy under
-the open sky, the death of the mother and her substitution by a
-foster-mother, the announcing of the birth to the ruler of the realm;
-later on the losing of the boy in the temple (as in the history of
-Jesus; compare Luke 2, 40-52).
-
-
-
-
-                               SIEGFRIED
-
-The old Norse _Thidreksaga_, as registered about the year 1250 by an
-Icelander, according to oral traditions and ancient songs, relates
-the history of the birth and youth of Siegfried, as follows:[68] King
-Sigmund of Tarlungaland, on his return from an expedition, banishes his
-wife Sisibe, the daughter of King Nidung of Hispania, who is _accused_
-by Count Hartvin, whose advances she has spurned, of having had
-_illicit relations with a menial_. The king’s counsellors advise him
-to mutilate instead of kill the innocent queen, and Hartvin is ordered
-to cut out her tongue in the forest, so as to bring it to the king as
-a pledge. His companion, Count Hermann, opposes the execution of the
-cruel command, and proposes to present the tongue of a dog to the king.
-While the two men are engaged in a violent quarrel, _Sisibe gives birth
-to a remarkably beautiful boy; she then took a glass vessel, and after
-having wrapped the boy in linens, she placed him in the glass vessel,
-which she_ carefully closed again and placed beside her (Rassmann).
-Count Hartvin was conquered in the fight, and in falling kicked the
-glass vessel, _so that it fell into the river_. When the queen saw this
-she swooned, and died soon afterwards. Hermann went home, told the
-king everything, and was banished from the country. The _glass vessel
-meantime drifted down stream to the sea_, and it was not long before
-the tide turned. _Then the vessel floated on to a rocky cliff_, and the
-water ran off so that the place where the vessel was perfectly dry. The
-boy inside had grown somewhat, and when the vessel struck the rock, it
-broke, and the child began to cry. [Rassmann] The boy’s wailing was
-heard _by a doe_, which seized him with her lips, and carried him to
-her litter, _where she nursed him together with her young_. After the
-child had lived twelve months in the den of the doe, he had grown to
-the height and strength of other boys four years of age. One day he ran
-into the forest, where dwelt the wise and skilfull _smith, Mimir who
-had lived for nine years in childless wedlock_. He saw the boy, who
-was followed by the faithful doe, took him to his home, _and resolved
-to bring him up as his own son_. He gave him the name of Siegfried. In
-Mimir’s home, Siegfried soon attained an enormous stature and strength,
-but his wilfulness caused Mimir _to get rid of him_. He sent the youth
-into the forest, where it had been arranged that the dragon Regin,
-Mimir’s brother, was to kill him. But Siegfried conquers the dragon,
-and kills Mimir. He then proceeds to Brynhild, who names his parents to
-him.
-
-Similarly to the early history of Siegfried, an Austrasiatic saga
-tells of the birth and youth of _Wolfdietrich_.[69] His mother is
-likewise accused of _unfaithfulness_, and intercourse with the devil,
-by a vassal whom she has repulsed, and who speaks evil of her to the
-returning king, Hugdietrich of Constantinople.[70]
-
-_The king surrenders the child to the faithful Berchtung, who is to
-kill it, but exposes it instead, in the forest, near the water_, in
-the hope that it will fall in of its own accord and thus find its
-death. But the frolicking child remains unhurt, and even _the wild
-animals_, lions, bears, wolves, which come at night to the water, _do
-not harm it_. The astonished Berchtung resolves to save the boy, and he
-_surrenders him to a game keeper_ who, together with his wife, raises
-him and names him Wolfdietrich.[71]
-
-The following later hero epics may still be quoted in this connection.
-In the thirteenth century, the saga of _Horn_, the son of Aluf, who
-after having been exposed on the sea, finally reaches the court of
-King Hunlaf, and after numerous adventures wins the king’s daughter,
-Rimhilt, for his wife. Furthermore, a detail suggestive of Siegfried,
-from the saga of the skilfull smith _Wieland_, who, after avenging his
-foully murdered father, floats down the river Weser, artfully enclosed
-in the trunk of a tree, and loaded with the tools and treasures of
-his teachers. Finally the _Arthur_ legend contains the commingling of
-divine and human paternity, the exposure and the early life with a
-lowly man.
-
-
-
-
-                               LOHENGRIN
-
-The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven around the
-mythic knight with the swan (the old French Chevalier au cigne) can be
-traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions. The following is the
-version which has been made familiar by Wagner’s dramatisation of this
-theme. The story of Lohengrin, the knight with the swan, as transmitted
-by the medieval German epic [modernized by Junghaus, Reclam] and
-briefly rendered by the Grimm brothers, in their “German Sagas” (Part
-II, Berlin, 1818, p. 306) under the title: Lohengrin in Brabant.
-
-The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than
-a young daughter, Els, or Elsam by name; her he recommended on his
-death bed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich,
-the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’
-hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry
-him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor
-Heinrich, surnamed the Vogler, and the verdict was that she must defend
-herself against him, through some hero, in a so called divine judgment,
-in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the
-guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed
-ardently to God, to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch,
-in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing
-that there was some one in urgent need of help. The Grail therefore
-resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin the son of Parsifal. Just
-as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup _a swan came floating
-down the water drawing a skiff behind him_. As soon as Lohengrin set
-eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: “Take the steed back to the manger, I
-shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me.” Having faith in God’s
-omnipotence he took no food with him in the skiff. After they had been
-afloat on the sea five days, the swan dipped his bill in the water,
-caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the other half to the
-prince to eat. _Thus the knight was fed by the swan._
-
-Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting
-in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted
-swimming up stream (river Schelde) and drawing behind him a skiff, in
-which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to
-land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had
-his helmet, shield and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan
-at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been
-done to the duchess, and willingly consented to become her champion.
-Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. The place was
-prepared in Mayence, where Lohengrin and Friedrich were to fight in
-the emperor’s presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who
-confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe.
-Elsa was alloted to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he
-secretly _insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry,
-or whence he had come_, saying that otherwise he would have to leave
-her instantaneously and she would never see him again.
-
-For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was
-a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor
-well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came
-to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke
-of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was
-angry, and spoke out amongst the women, saying: “Lohengrin may be
-brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that
-his nobility is not of much account _for no one knows whence he has
-come floating to this land_.” These words pierced the heart of the
-Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when
-her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said “What
-is the matter, Elsa, my own?” She made answer, “the Duchess of Cleve
-has caused me sore pain.” Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The
-second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa
-could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: “Lord, do not chide
-me! _I wish to know, for our children’s sake, whence you were born_;
-for my heart tells me that you are of high rank.” When the day broke,
-Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his
-father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his
-two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them
-to take good care of his horn and sword which he would leave behind,
-and said: “Now, I must be gone.” To the duchess he left a little
-ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, came
-swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and
-crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in
-a faint. The empress resolved _to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for
-his father’s sake, and to bring him up as her own child_. But the widow
-wept and mourned[72] the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who
-never came back to her.
-
-On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is placed
-first,—on the basis of the rearrangement, or even transmutation of
-motives, not uncommonly found in myths,—we find the type of saga
-with which we have now become familiar: The infant Lohengrin, who is
-identical with his father of the same name, _floats in a vessel upon
-the sea and is carried ashore by a swan. The empress adopts him as her
-son, and he becomes a valorous hero._ Having married a noble maiden of
-the land, he forbids her to enquire as to his origin. When the command
-is broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine
-mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the
-Grail.
-
-Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have retained
-this original arrangement of the motives, although they appear
-commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the Knight with
-the Swan, as related in the Flemish People’s Book (Deutsche Sagen,
-I, 29), contains in the beginning the history of the birth of seven
-children,[73] borne by Beatrix, the wife of King Oriant of Flanders.
-The wicked mother of the absent king, Matabruna, orders that the
-children be killed, and the queen be given seven puppy dogs in their
-stead. But the servant contents himself with the exposure of the
-children, who are found by a hermit, named Helias, and are nourished by
-a goat until they are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later
-on Matabruna learns that the children have been saved and her repeated
-command to kill them causes the hunter, who has been charged with the
-murder, to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience to her behest, the
-silver neck chains which the children wore already at the time of their
-birth. One of the boys, named Helias, after his foster father, alone
-keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from the fate of his brothers,
-who are transformed into swans, as soon as their chains are removed.
-Matabruna volunteers to prove the relations of the queen with the dog,
-and upon her instigation, Beatrix is to be killed, unless a champion
-arises to defend her. In her need, she prays to God, who sends her
-son Helias as a rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the
-other chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down.
-King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who causes
-the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees his brother,
-the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the castle. This
-he regards as a heavenly sign, he arms himself and mounts the skiff.
-The swan takes him through rivers and lakes to the place where God
-has ordained him to go. Next follows the liberation of an innocently
-accused duchess, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage
-to her daughter Clarissa, who is forbidden to ask for her husband’s
-ancestry. In the seventh year of their marriage she disobeys and puts
-the question, after which Helias returns home in the swan’s skiff.
-Finally, his lost brother swan is likewise released.
-
-The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga,—that the divine
-hero disappears again in the same mysterious fashion in which he has
-arrived; also the transference of mythical motives from the life
-of the older hero, bearing the same name, to a younger one, a very
-universal process in myth-formation, are likewise embodied in the
-Anglian-Longobard saga of Scëaf, which is mentioned in the introduction
-to the Beowulf-Song, the oldest German epic, preserved in the
-Anglo-Saxon tongue (translated by H. v. Wolzogen, Reclam). The father
-of old Beowulf received his name, Scild Scéfing (meaning the son of
-Scëaf), because as a very young boy, he was cast ashore as a stranger,
-asleep in a boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-saxon, scéaf). The waves of
-the sea carried him to the coast of the country which he was destined
-to defend. The inhabitants welcomed him as a miracle, raised him, and
-later on made him their king, as an emissary of God. (Compare Grimm,
-German Mythology, I, p. 306; III, p. 391, and H. Leo: Beowulf, Halle,
-1839.) What is told of the ancestor of the royal house, Scaf,[74] or
-Scëaf, appears in the Beowulf song transferred to his son, Scëafing
-Scild, according to the unanimous statement of Grimm (see above), and
-Leo (p. 24): His dead body is exposed at his behest, surrounded by
-kingly splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into
-the sea. Thus he vanishes in the same mysterious manner in which his
-father arrived ashore; this trait being accounted for, in analogy with
-the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.
-
-A cursory review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings out
-a series of uniformly common features, with a typical ground work,
-from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed. This
-schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human skeleton which is
-constantly seen, with minor deviations, on transillumination of figures
-which outwardly differ from one another. The individual traits of the
-several myths, and especially apparently crude variations from the
-prototype, can only be entirely elucidated by the myth-interpretation.
-The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following
-scheme:
-
-The hero is the child of most distinguished parents; usually the son
-of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence,
-or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents, due to
-external prohibition or obstacles. During the pregnancy, or antedating
-the same, there is a prophecy, in form of a dream or oracle, cautioning
-against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father, or his
-representative. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He
-is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds) and is suckled
-by a female animal, or by a humble woman. After he has grown up, he
-finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion; takes
-his revenge on his father, on the one hand, is acknowledged on the
-other, and finally achieves rank and honors.[75]
-
-The normal relations of the hero towards his father and his mother
-regularly appearing impaired in all these myths, as shown by the
-schedule, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of
-the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this
-kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood—and
-may be noted in the modern epigones of the heroic age—that for the
-hero who is exposed to envy, jealousy and calumny to a much higher
-degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes
-the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. The old saying
-that “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in
-his father’s house,” has no other meaning but this, that he whose
-parents, brothers and sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not
-so readily conceded to be a prophet (Gospel of St. Mark, VI, 4). There
-seems to be a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents;
-also, the well-known opera of Meyerbeer is based upon the avowal that
-the prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon and
-repudiate even his tenderly beloved mother.
-
-A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper
-enquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever his
-family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the
-understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their
-ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination.[76] The
-fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found
-in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore,
-the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order
-to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more
-handicapped mythical and artistic imagination in general.
-
-Meanwhile the investigation of the juvenile faculty of imagination
-has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently advanced to
-permit the utilization of the findings for the explanation of the
-more complicated psychic activities. The reason for this imperfect
-understanding of the psychic life of the child is referable to the lack
-of a suitable instrument, as well as of a reliable avenue, leading
-into the intricacies of this very delicate and rather inaccessible
-domain. These juvenile emotions can by no means be studied in the
-normal human adult, and it may actually be charged, in view of certain
-psychic disturbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal
-subjects consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten
-their childish vagaries and imaginations: so that the way has become
-blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation (which
-as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the investigation
-of psychic processes, because we are not as yet enabled to trace all
-manifestations correctly to their motive forces: so that we are lacking
-the instrument. There is a certain class of persons, the so-called
-psychoneurotics, shown by the teachings of Freud to have remained
-children, in a sense, although otherwise appearing grown up. These
-psychoneurotics may be said not to have given up their juvenile psychic
-life, which on the contrary, in the course of maturity, has become
-strengthened and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the
-emotions of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming
-capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions appear
-broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of neurotics are,
-as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions of the childish
-imaginings. This would point the way to a solution of the problem.
-Unfortunately, however, the access is still much more difficult
-to establish in these cases than to the child mind. There is only
-one known instrument which makes this road practicable, namely the
-psychoanalytic method, which has been developed through the work of
-Freud. Constant handling of this instrument will clear the observer’s
-vision to such a degree that he will be enabled to discover the
-identical motive forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also
-in the psychic life of those who do not become neurotics later on.
-
-Professor Freud had the amiability to place at the author’s disposal
-his highly appreciated experience with the psychology of the neuroses;
-and on this material are based the following comments, on the
-imaginative faculty of the child as well as the neurotic.
-
-The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of
-the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most
-painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for
-this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal
-grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social
-progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two
-generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics
-whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very
-problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place
-the sole authority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them,
-_i.e._, the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father or
-mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child’s
-early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it
-about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category
-to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child,
-who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in
-doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested
-them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a
-mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents, and
-the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain
-ways, is utilized for this attitude of the child towards the parents.
-From the psychology of the neuroses, we have learned that very intense
-emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection.
-The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected.
-Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected,
-or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love
-of the parents, or at least regrets having to share the same with the
-other children of the family. The feeling that one’s own inclinations
-are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea,—often
-consciously remembered from very early years,—of being a step-child,
-or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics, very
-frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior
-of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this
-fashion, usually under the influence of story books. The influence
-of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater
-tendency to harbor hostile feelings against his father than his mother,
-with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father
-than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly
-much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic
-emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the
-interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously remembered,
-but can almost invariably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is
-the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from
-the parents, which may be designated by the term _Family Romance
-of Neurotics_. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental
-qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which
-is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about
-the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family
-relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty
-is represented by the familiar _day dreams_,[77] which are continued
-until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these day dreams
-shows that they serve for the fulfilment of wishes, for the righting
-of life, and that they have two essential objects, one erotic, the
-other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic factor concealed
-therein). About the time in question the child’s imagination is engaged
-upon the task of getting rid of the parents, who are now despised and
-are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The
-child utilizes an accidental coincidence of actual happenings (meetings
-with the lord of the manor, or the proprietor of the estate, in the
-country; with the reigning prince, in the city. In the United States
-with some great statesman, millionaire). Accidental occurrences of
-this kind arouse the child’s envy, and this finds its expression in
-fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank.
-The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by
-this time have become conscious, depends upon the child’s adroitness,
-and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise enters into
-consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim
-to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is
-still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. With
-the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and
-mother; with the child’s realization of the fact that the father is
-always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain—the family romance
-undergoes a peculiar restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the
-father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned,
-but accepted as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage
-of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which
-did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of sexual
-matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and
-relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother,
-or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of
-secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. In this way the
-primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved
-later understanding.
-
-The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally to the
-front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly those who
-were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and
-they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The
-younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive
-their predecessors of their advantage by fables of this kind (exactly
-as in the intrigues of history). Frequently they do not hesitate in
-crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. An
-interesting variation of this family romance restores the legitimacy
-of the plotting hero himself, while the other children are disposed
-of in this way as illegitimate. The family romance may be governed
-besides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by
-its adaptability and variegated character. The little romancer gets rid
-in this fashion for example of the kinship of a sister, who may have
-attracted him sexually.
-
-Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of the child
-mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such matters,
-should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such
-a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection
-of the child for his parents is still preserved under their thin
-disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child
-are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of
-these romantic fancies, namely the substitution of both parents, or
-of the father alone, by more exalted personages—the discovery will
-be made that these new and highborn parents are invested throughout
-with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true
-lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father
-but exalts him. _The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a
-more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing
-for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the
-strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most
-beautiful woman._ The child turns away from the father, as he now
-knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his
-imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy
-time having passed away. _Thus the overvaluation of the earliest years
-of childhood again claims its own in these fancies._[78] An interesting
-contribution to this subject is furnished by the study of the dreams.
-Dream-interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams
-of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the
-father and the mother.[79] Thus the infantile overvaluation of the
-parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult.
-
-As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we feel
-justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero of the
-myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family romances and hero
-myths; keeping in mind that the myth throughout reveals an endeavor to
-get rid of the parents, and that the same wish arises in the phantasies
-of the individual child at the time when it is trying to establish its
-personal independence. The ego of the child behaves in this respect
-like the hero of the myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should
-always be interpreted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped
-with all the excellences. In a similar manner, the hero in personal
-poetic fiction, usually represents the poet himself, or at least one
-side of his character.
-
-Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the descent from
-noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box, and the raising
-by lowly parents; followed in the further evolution of the story by
-the hero’s return to his first parents, with or without punishment
-meted out to them. It is very evident that the two parent couples of
-the myth correspond to the real and the imaginary parent couple of the
-romantic phantasy. Closer inspection reveals the psychological identity
-of the humble and the noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and
-neurotic phantasies.
-
-In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood,
-the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic
-phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the
-actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family romance is simply
-realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to the actual conditions.
-The hostility of the father, and the resulting exposure, accentuate the
-motive which has caused the ego to indulge in the entire fiction. The
-fictitious romance is the excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings
-which the child harbors against his father, and which in this fiction
-are projected against the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore,
-is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic
-phantasy. The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic
-romance, while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child.
-Rescue and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the
-essence of the phantasy.
-
-In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as just
-sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret
-certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to require
-a special explanation. This demand would seem to acquire special
-importance in view of the fact that no satisfactory explanation
-of these details is forthcoming in the writings of even the most
-enthusiastic astral mythologists, or natural philosophers. Such details
-are represented by the regular occurrence of dreams (or oracles), and
-by the mode of exposure in a box and in the water. These motives do not
-at first glance seem to permit a psychologic derivation. Fortunately
-the study of dream-symbolisms permits the elucidation of these elements
-of the hero-myth. The utilization of the same material in the dreams
-of healthy persons and neurotics[80] indicates that the exposure in
-the water signifies no more and no less than the _symbolic expression
-of birth_. The children come out of the “water.”[81] The basket,
-box or receptacle[82] simply means the container, the womb; so that
-the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although it is
-represented by its opposite.
-
-Those who object to this representation by opposites should
-remember how often the dream works with the same mechanism (compare
-“Traumdeutung,” II edition, p. 238). A confirmation of this
-interpretation of the exposure, as taken from the common human
-symbolism, is furnished by the material itself, in the dream dreamt by
-the grandfather (or still more convincingly by the mother herself)[83]
-in the Ktesian version of Kyros before his birth; in this dream, so
-much water flows from the lap of the expectant mother as to inundate
-all Asia, like an enormous ocean.[84] It is remarkable that in
-both cases the Chaldeans correctly interpreted these water dreams
-as birth-dreams. In all probability, these dreams themselves are
-constructed out of the knowledge of a very ancient and universally
-understood symbolism, with a dim foresight of the relations and
-connections which are appreciated and presented in Freud’s teachings.
-There he says (“Traumdeutung,” 2d edition, p. 199) in referring to a
-dream in which the dreamer hurls herself in the dark water of a lake:
-Dreams of this sort are birth-dreams, and their interpretation is
-accomplished by reversing the fact as communicated in the manifest
-dream; namely, instead of hurling oneself into the water, it means
-emerging from the water, _i.e._, to be born.[85] The justice of this
-interpretation, which renders the water-dream equivalent to the
-exposure, is again confirmed by the fact that precisely in the Kyros
-saga, which contains the water-dream, the motive of the exposure in the
-water is lacking, while only the basket, which does not occur in the
-dream, plays a part in the exposure.
-
-In this interpretation of the exposure as the birth, we must not let
-ourselves be disturbed by the discrepancy in the succession of the
-individual elements of the symbolized materialization, with the real
-birth process. This chronological rearrangement or even reversal
-has been explained by Freud as due to the general manner in which
-recollections are elaborated into phantasies; the same material
-reappears in the phantasies, but in an entirely novel arrangement, and
-no attention whatsoever is paid to the natural sequence of the acts.[86]
-
-Besides this chronological reversal, the reversal of the contents
-requires special explanation. The first reason for the representation
-of the birth by its opposite,—the life threatening exposure in the
-water, is the accentuation of the parental hostility towards the future
-hero.[87] The creative influence of this tendency to represent the
-parents as the first and most powerful opponents of the hero will be
-appreciated, when it is kept in mind that the entire family-romance
-in general owes its origin to the feeling of being neglected, namely
-the assumed hostility of the parents. In the myth, this hostility
-goes so far that the parents refuse to let the child be born, which
-is precisely the reason of the hero’s lament, moreover, the myth
-plainly reveals the desire to enforce his materialization even against
-the will of the parents. The vital peril which is thus concealed in
-the representation of birth through exposure, actually exists in the
-process of birth itself. The overcoming of all these obstacles also
-expresses the idea that the future hero has actually overcome the
-greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth, for he has victoriously
-thwarted all attempts to prevent it.[88] Or another interpretation
-may be admitted, according to which the youthful hero, foreseeing
-his destiny to taste more than his share of the bitterness of life,
-deplores in pessimistic mood the inimical act which has called him
-to earth. He accuses the parents, as it were, for having exposed him
-to the struggle of life, for having allowed him to be born.[89] The
-refusal to let the son be born, which belongs especially to the father,
-is frequently concealed by the contrast motive, the wish for a child
-(as in Œdipus, Perseus and others), while the hostile attitude towards
-the future successor on the throne and in the kingdom is projected to
-the outside, namely it is attributed to an oracular verdict, which is
-thereby revealed as the substitute of the ominous dream, or better, as
-the equivalent of its interpretation.
-
-From another point of view, however, the family romance shows that the
-phantasies of the child, although apparently estranging the parents,
-have nought else to say concerning them besides their confirmation as
-the real parents. The exposure myth, translated with the assistance of
-symbolism, likewise contains nothing but the assurance: this is my
-mother, who has borne me at the command of the father. But on account
-of the tendency of the myth, and the resulting transference of the
-hostile attitude, from the child to the parents, this assurance of
-the real parentage can only be expressed as the repudiation of such
-parentage.
-
-On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the
-hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns especially
-the father. Usually, as in the myth of Œdipus, Paris, and others, the
-royal father receives a prophecy of some disaster, threatening him
-through the expected son; then it is the father who causes the exposure
-of the boy and who pursues and menaces him in all sorts of ways after
-his unlooked-for rescue, but finally succumbs to his son, according to
-the prophecy. In order to understand this trait, which at first may
-appear somewhat startling, it is not necessary to explore the heavens
-for some process into which this trait might be laboriously fitted.
-Looking with open eyes and unprejudiced minds at the relations between
-parents and children, or between brothers such as these exist in
-reality[90]—a certain tension is frequently, if not regularly revealed
-between father and son, or still more distinctly a competition between
-brothers; although this tension may not be obvious and permanent, it is
-lurking in the sphere of the unconscious, as it were, with periodical
-eruptions. Erotic factors are especially apt to be involved, and as a
-rule the deepest, generally unconscious root of the dislike of the son
-for the father, or of two brothers for each other, is referable to the
-competition for the tender devotion and love of the mother. The Œdipus
-myth shows plainly, only in grosser dimensions, the accuracy of this
-interpretation, for the parricide is here followed by the incest with
-the mother. This erotic relation with the mother, which predominates in
-other mythic cycles, is relegated to the background in the myths of the
-birth of the hero,[91] while the opposition against the father is more
-strongly accentuated.
-
-The fact that this infantile rebellion against the father is
-apparently provoked in the birth myths by the hostile behavior of the
-father is due to a reversal of the relation, known as projection,
-which is brought about by very peculiar characteristics of the myth
-forming psychic activity. The projection mechanism, which also bore
-its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well as
-certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed
-presently,—necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth
-as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar
-processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately
-connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating
-or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. This process, as
-illustrated by the two parents couples, provides the foundation for the
-myth formation, and together with the projection mechanism supplies the
-key to the understanding of an entire series of otherwise inexplicable
-configurations of the myth. As the motor power for this projection
-of the hero’s hostile attitude on to the father stands revealed the
-wish for its justification, arising from the troublesome realization
-of these feelings against the father. The displacement process which
-begins with the projection of the troublesome sensation is still
-further continued, however, and with the assistance of the mechanism
-of separation or dissociation, it has found a different expression of
-its gradual progress in very characteristic forms of the hero myth. In
-the original psychologic setting, the father is still identical with
-the king, the tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this
-relation is manifested in those myths in which the separation of the
-tyrannical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but
-not yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the
-hero, usually as his grandfather, for example in the Kyros-myth with
-all its versions, and in the majority of all hero myths in general.
-In the separation of the father’s part from that of the king, this
-type signifies the first return step of the descent fantasy toward
-the actual conditions, and accordingly the hero’s father appears in
-this type mostly as a lowly man: See Kyros, Gilgamos and others.
-The hero thus arrives again at an approach toward his parents, the
-establishment of a certain kinship, which finds its expression in the
-fact that not only the hero himself, but also his father and his mother
-represent objects of the tyrant’s persecution. The hero in this way
-acquires a more intimate connection with the mother (they are often
-exposed together: Perseus, Telephos, Feridun), who is nearer to him on
-account of the erotic relation; while the renouncement of his hatred
-against the father here attains the expression of its most forcible
-reaction,[92] for the hero henceforth appears, as in the Hamlet saga,
-not as the persecutor of his father (or grandfather, respectively)
-but as the avenger of the persecuted father. This involves a deeper
-relation of the Hamlet saga with the Iranese story of Kaikhosrav,
-where the hero likewise appears as the avenger of his murdered father
-(compare Feridun and others).
-
-The person of the grandfather himself, who in certain sagas appears
-replaced by other relatives (the uncle, in the Hamlet saga), also
-possesses a deeper meaning.[93] The myth complex of the incest with
-the mother—and the related revolt against the father—is here combined
-with the second great complex, which has for its contents the erotic
-relations between father and daughter. Under this heading belongs
-besides other widely ramified groups of sagas (quoted in the author’s
-“Incest Book,” Chapter XI), the story which is told in countless
-versions of a _newborn boy_, of whom it is _prophesied_ that he is to
-become the _son-in-law_ and _heir_ of a certain ruler or potentate,
-and who finally does so in spite of all persecutions (exposure and
-so forth) on the part of the latter. Detailed literary references
-concerning the wide distribution of this story are found in R. Köhler,
-“Kleine Schriften,” II, 357. The father who refuses to give his
-daughter to any of her suitors, or who attaches certain conditions
-difficult of fulfillment to the winning of the daughter, does this
-because he really begrudges her to all others, for when all is told he
-wishes to possess her himself. He locks her up in some inaccessible
-spot, so as to safeguard her virginity (Perseus, Gilgamos, Telephos,
-Romulus), and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the daughter
-and her offspring with insatiable hatred. However, the unconscious
-sexual motives of his hostile attitude, which is later on avenged by
-his grandson, render it evident that again the hero kills in him simply
-the man who is trying to rob him of the love of his mother: namely the
-father.
-
-Another attempt at a reversal to a more original type consists in
-the following trait: The return to the lowly father, which has been
-brought about through the separation of the father’s rôle from that
-of the king, is again nullified through the lowly father’s secondary
-elevation to the rank of a god, as in Perseus and the other sons of
-virgin mothers; Karna, Ion, Romulus, Jesus. The secondary character of
-this godly paternity is especially evident in those myths where the
-virgin who has been impregnated by divine conception, later on marries
-a mortal (Jesus, Karna, Ion) who then appears as the real father, while
-the god as the father represents merely the most exalted childish idea
-of the magnitude, power and perfection of the father.[94] At the same
-time, these myths strictly insist upon the motive of the virginity of
-the mother, which elsewhere is merely hinted at. The first impetus is
-perhaps supplied by the transcendental tendency, necessitated through
-the introduction of the god. At the same time, the birth from the
-virgin is the most abrupt repudiation of the father, the consummation
-of the entire myth, as illustrated by the Sargon legend, which does not
-admit any father, besides the vestal mother.
-
-The last stage of this progressive attenuation of the hostile relation
-to the father is represented by that form of the myth in which the
-person of the royal persecutor not only appears entirely detached from
-that of the father, but has even lost the remotest kinship with the
-hero’s family, which he opposes in the most hostile manner, as its
-enemy (in Feridun, Abraham, King Herod against Jesus, and others).
-Although of his original threefold character as the father, the king,
-and the persecutor, he retains only the part of the royal persecutor
-or the tyrant, the entire plan of the myth conveys the impression as
-if nothing had been changed, but as if the designation as “father”
-had been simply replaced by the term of “tyrant.” This interpretation
-of the father as a “tyrant” which is typical of the infantile
-ideation,[95] will be found later on to possess the greatest importance
-for the interpretation of certain abnormal constellations of this
-complex.
-
-The prototype of this identification of the king with the father,
-which regularly recurs also in the dreams of adults, presumably is
-the origin of royalty from the patriarchate in the family, which is
-still attested by the use of identical words for king and father, in
-the Hindoo-Germanic languages[96] (compare the German “Landesvater,”
-father of his country, = king). The reversal of the family romance to
-actual conditions is almost entirety accomplished in this type of myth.
-The lowly parents are acknowledged with a frankness which seems to be
-directly contradictory to the tendency of the entire myth.
-
-Precisely this revelation of the real conditions, which hitherto had
-to be left to the interpretation, enables us to prove the accuracy of
-the latter from the material itself. The biblical Moses-legend has been
-selected, as especially well adapted to this purpose.
-
-Briefly summarizing the outcome of the previous
-interpretation-mechanism, to make matters plainer, we find the two
-parent-couples to be identical, after their splitting into the
-personalities of the father and the tyrannical persecutor has been
-connected; the high born parents being the echo, as it were, of the
-exaggerated notions which the child originally harbored concerning
-its parents. The Moses-legend actually shows the parents of the hero
-divested of all prominent attributes; they are simple people, devotedly
-attached to the child, and incapable of harming it. Meanwhile, the
-assertion of tender feelings for the child is a confirmation, here
-as well as everywhere, of the bodily parentage (compare Akki, the
-gardener, in the Gilgamos-legend; the teamster, in the story of Karna;
-the fisher, in the Perseus myth, etc.). The amicable utilization of
-the exposure motive, which occurs in this type of myth, is referable
-to such a relationship. The child is surrendered in a basket to the
-water, but not with the object of killing it (as for example the
-hostile exposure of Œdipus and many other heroes), but for the purpose
-of saving it (compare also Abraham’s early history, p. 15). The danger
-fraught warning to the exalted father becomes a hopeful prophecy for
-the lowly father (compare, in the birth story of Jesus, the oracle for
-Herod and Joseph’s dream), entirely corresponding to the expectations
-placed by most parents in the career of their offspring.
-
-Retaining from the original tendency of the romance, the fact that
-Bitiah, Pharaoh’s daughter, drew the child from the water, _i.e._, gave
-it birth, the outcome is the familiar theme (grandfather type) of the
-king, whose daughter is to bear a son, but who on being warned by the
-ill-omened interpretation of a dream, resolves to kill his forthcoming
-grandson. The handmaiden of his daughter (who in the biblical story
-draws the box from the water, at the behest of the princess), is
-charged by the king with the exposure of the newborn child in a box,
-in the waters of the river Nile, that it may perish (the exposure
-motive, from the viewpoint of the highborn parents, here appearing in
-its original disastrous significance). The box with the child is then
-found by lowly people, and the poor woman raises the child (as his
-wet nurse), and when he is grown up he is recognized by the princess
-as her son (just as in the prototype the phantasy concludes with the
-recognition by the highborn parents).
-
-If the Moses-legend were placed before us in this more original form,
-as we have reconstructed it from the existing material,[97] the sum of
-this interpretation-mechanism would be approximately what is told in
-the myth as it is actually transmitted; namely that his true mother was
-not a princess, but the poor woman who was introduced as his nurse, her
-husband being his father.
-
-This interpretation is offered as the tradition, in the re-converted
-myth; and the fact that this tracing of the progressive mutation
-furnishes the familiar type of hero myth, is the proof for the
-correctness of our interpretation.
-
-It has thus been our good fortune to show the full accuracy of our
-interpretative technique upon the material itself, and it is now
-time to demonstrate the tenability of the general viewpoint upon
-which this entire technique is founded. Hitherto, the results of our
-interpretation have created the appearance of the entire myth formation
-as starting from the hero himself, namely from the youthful hero. At
-the start we took this attitude in analogizing the hero of the myth
-with the ego of the child. Now we find ourselves confronted with the
-obligation to harmonize these assumptions and conclusions with the
-other conceptions of myth formation, which they seem to directly
-contradict.
-
-The myths are certainly not constructed by the hero, least of all by
-the child hero, but they have long been known to be the product of a
-people of adults. The impetus is evidently supplied by the popular
-amazement at the apparition of the hero, whose extraordinary life
-history the people can only imagine as ushered in by a wonderful
-infancy. This extraordinary childhood of the hero, however, is
-constructed by the individual myth-makers—to whom the indefinite idea
-of the folk-mind must be ultimately traced—from the consciousness of
-their own infancy. In investing the hero with their own infantile
-history, they identify themselves with him, as it were, claiming to
-have been similar heroes in their own personality. The true hero of
-the romance is, therefore, the ego, which finds itself in the hero,
-by reverting to the time when the ego was itself a hero, through its
-first heroic act, _i.e._, the revolt against the father. The ego can
-only find its own heroism in the days of infancy, and it is therefore
-obliged to invest the hero with its own revolt, crediting him with
-the features which made the ego a hero. This object is achieved with
-infantile motives and materials, in reverting to the infantile romance
-and transferring it to the hero. Myths are, therefore, created by
-adults, by means of retrograde childhood fantasies,[98] the hero being
-credited with the myth-maker’s personal infantile history. Meanwhile
-the tendency of this entire process is the excuse of the individual
-units of the people for their own infantile revolt against the father.
-
-Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellious revolt, the myth
-therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his revolt
-against the father. This revolt had burdened him since his childhood,
-as he had failed to become a hero. He is now enabled to excuse himself
-by emphasizing that the father has given him grounds for his hostility.
-The affectionate feeling for the father is also manifested in the
-same fiction, as has been shown above. These myths have therefore
-sprung from two opposite motives, both of which are subordinate to
-the motive of vindication of the individual through the hero: on the
-one hand the motive of affection and gratitude towards the parents;
-and on the other hand, the motive of the revolt against the father.
-It is not stated outright in these myths, however, that the conflict
-with the father arises from the sexual rivalry for the mother, but is
-apparently suggested that this conflict dates back primarily to the
-concealment of the sexual processes (at childbirth), which in this way
-became an enigma for the child. This enigma finds its temporary and
-symbolical solution in the infantile sexual theory of the basket and
-the water.[99]
-
-The profound participation of the incest motive in myth formation
-is discussed in the author’s special investigation of the Lohengrin
-saga, which belongs to the myth of the birth of the hero. The cyclic
-character of the Lohengrin saga is referred by him to the _fantasy
-of being one’s own son_, as revealed by Freud (p. 131; compare also
-pp. 96 and 990). This accounts for the identity of father and son,
-in certain myths, the repetition of their careers; the fact that the
-hero is sometimes not exposed until he has reached maturity, also the
-intimate connection between birth and death, in the exposure-motive.
-(Concerning the water as the water of death, compare especially chapter
-IV of the Lohengrin saga.) Jung, who regards the typical fate of the
-hero as the portrayal of the human libido and its typical vicissitudes,
-has made this theme the pivot of his interpretation, as the fantasy
-of being born again, to which the incest motive is subordinated. Not
-only the birth of the hero, which takes place under peculiar symbolic
-circumstances, but also the motive of the two mothers of the hero, are
-explained by Jung through the birth of the hero taking place under the
-mysterious ceremonials of a re-birth from the mother consort (_l. c._,
-p. 356).
-
-Having thus outlined the contents of the birth myth of the hero it
-still remains for us to point out certain complications within the
-birth myth itself, which have been explained on the basis of its
-paranoid character, as “splits” of the personality of the royal
-father and persecutor. In some myths, however, and especially in the
-fairy tales which belong to this group,[100] the multiplication of
-mythical personages, and with them, of course, the multiplication of
-motives, or even of entire stories, are carried so far that sometimes
-the original features are altogether overgrown by these addenda. The
-multiplication is so variegated and so exuberantly developed, that
-the mechanism of the analysis no longer does it justice. Moreover,
-the new personalities here do not show the same independence, as it
-were, as the new personalities created by splitting, but they rather
-present the characteristics of a copy, a duplicate, or a “double,”
-which is the proper mythological term. An apparently very complicated
-example, namely, Herodotus’ version of the Kyros saga, illustrates that
-these doubles are not inserted purely for ornamentation, or to give a
-semblance of historical veracity, but that they are insolubly connected
-with the myth-formation and its tendency. Also, in the Kyros-myth, as
-in the other myths, the royal grandfather, Astyages, and his daughter,
-with her husband, are confronted by the cattle-herder and his wife.
-A checkered gathering of other personalities which move around them,
-are readily grouped at sight: Between the high born parent couple
-and their child stand the administrator Harpagos with his wife and
-his son, and the noble Artembares with his legitimate offspring. Our
-trained sense for the peculiarities of myth-structure recognizes at
-once the doubles of the parents in the intermediate parent-couples and
-all the participants are seen to be identical personalities of the
-parents and their child; this interpretation being suggested by certain
-features of the myth itself. Harpagos receives the child from the
-king, to expose it; he therefore acts precisely like the royal father
-and remains true to his fictitious paternal part in his reluctance to
-kill the child himself—because it is related to him—but he delivers it
-instead to the herder Mithradates, who is thus again identified with
-Harpagos. The noble Artembares, whose son Kyros causes to be whipped,
-is also identified with Harpagos; for when Artembares with his whipped
-boy stands before the king, to demand retribution, Harpagos at once
-is likewise seen standing before the king, to defend himself, and
-he also is obliged to present his son to the king. Thus Artembares
-himself plays an episodal part as the hero’s father, and this is fully
-confirmed by the Ktesian version, which tells us that the nobleman who
-adopted the herder’s son, Kyros, as his own son, was named Artembares.
-
-Even more distinct than the identity of the different fathers is that
-of their children, which of course serves to confirm the identity of
-the fathers. In the first place, and this would seem to be conclusive,
-the _children are all of the same age_. Not only the son of the
-princess, and the child of the herder, who are born at the same time;
-but Herodotus specially emphasizes that Kyros played the game at
-kings, in which he caused the son of Artembares to be whipped, with
-boys of the same age. He also points out, perhaps intentionally, that
-the _son of Harpagos_, destined to become the playmate of Kyros,
-whom the king had recognized, was likewise apparently of the same
-age as Kyros. Furthermore, the remains of this boy are placed before
-his father, Harpagos, in a basket, it was also a basket in which the
-newborn Kyros was to have been exposed, and this actually happened to
-his substitute, the herder’s son, whose identity with Kyros is obvious
-and tangible in the report of Iustin, p. 34. In this report, Kyros is
-actually exchanged with the _living_ child of the herders;, but this
-paradoxical parental feeling is reconciled by the consciousness that in
-reality nothing at all has been altered by this exchange. It appears
-more intelligible, of course, that the herder’s wife should wish to
-raise the living child of the king, instead of her own _stillborn_
-boy, as in the Herodotus version; but here the identity of the boys
-is again evident, for just as the herder’s son suffered death instead
-of Kyros in the past, twelve years later the son of Harpagos (also in
-the basket) is killed directly for Kyros, whom Harpagos had allowed to
-live.[101]
-
-The impression is thereby conveyed that all the multiplications of
-Kyros, after having been created for a certain purpose, are again
-removed, as disturbing elements, once this purpose has been fulfilled.
-This purpose is undoubtedly the exalting tendency which is inherent to
-the family romance. The hero in the various duplications of himself
-and his parents, ascends the social scale from the herder Mithradates,
-by way of the noble Artembares, who is high in the king’s favor, and
-of the first administrator, Harpagos, who is personally related to the
-king—until he has himself become a prince; so his career is exposed in
-the Ktesian version, where Kyros advances from the herder’s son to the
-king’s administrator.[102] In this way, he constantly removes, as it
-were, the last traces of his ascent, the lower Kyros being discarded
-after absolving the different stages of his career.[103]
-
-This complicated myth with its promiscuous array of personages is
-thus simplified and reduced to three actors, namely the hero and his
-parents. Entirely similar conditions prevail in regard to the “cast”
-of many other myths. For example, the duplication may concern the
-daughter, as in the Moses myth, in which the princess mother (in order
-to establish the identity of the two families)[104] appears among
-the poor people as the daughter Miriam, who is merely a split of the
-mother, the latter appearing divided into the princess and the poor
-woman. In case the duplication concerns the father, his doubles appear
-as a rule in the part of relatives, more particularly as his brothers,
-as for example in the Hamlet saga, in distinction from the foreign
-personages created by the analysis. In a similar way, the grandfather,
-who is taking the place of the father, may also appear complemented by
-a brother, who is the hero’s grand uncle, and as such his opponent,
-as in the myths of Romulus, Perseus and others. Other duplications,
-in apparently complicated mythical structures, as for example in
-Kaikhosrav, Feridun, and others, are easily recognized when envisaged
-from this angle.
-
-The duplication of the fathers, or the grandfathers, respectively, by
-a brother may be continued in the next generation, and concern the
-hero himself, thus leading to the _brother myths_, which can only be
-hinted at in connection with the present theme. The prototypes of the
-boy, who in the Kyros saga vanish into thin air after they have served
-their purpose, namely the exaltation of the hero’s descent, if they
-were to assume a vitality of their own, would come to confront the hero
-as competitors with equal rights, namely as his brothers. The original
-sequence is probably better preserved through the interpretation of the
-hero’s strange doubles as shadowy brothers, who like the twin brother,
-must die for the hero’s sake. Not only the father, who is in the way of
-the maturing son, but also the interfering competitor, or the brother,
-are removed, in a naïve realization of the childish fantasies, for the
-simple reason that the hero does not want a family.
-
-The complications of the hero myth with other myth cycles include,
-besides the myth of the hostile brothers, which has already been
-disposed of, also the actual incest myth, such as forms the nucleus
-of the Œdipus myth. The mother, and her relation to the hero, appear
-relegated to the background in the myth of the birth of the hero. But
-there is another conspicuous motive, meaning that the lowly mother
-is so often represented by an animal. This motive of the helpful
-animals[105] belongs in part to a series of foreign elements, the
-explanation of which would far exceed the scope of this essay.[106]
-
-The animal motive may be fitted into the sequence of our
-interpretation, on the basis of the following reflections. In a similar
-way as the projection on to the father justifies the hostile attitude
-on the part of the son, so the lowering of the mother into an animal
-is likewise meant to vindicate the ingratitude of the son, who denies
-her. In a similar way as the detachment of the persecuting king from
-the father, the exclusive rôle of a wet nurse, alloted to the mother,
-in this substitution by an animal, goes back to the separation of
-the mother into the parts of the child bearer and the suckler. This
-cleavage is again subservient to the exalting tendency, in so far as
-the child bearing part is reserved for the high born mother, whereas
-the lowly woman, who cannot be eradicated from the early history, must
-content herself with the function of a nurse. Animals are especially
-appropriate substitutes, because the sexual processes are here plainly
-evident also to the child, while the concealment of these processes is
-presumably the root of the childish revolt against the parents. The
-exposure in the box and in the water asexualizes the birth process, as
-it were, in a childlike fashion; the children are fished out of the
-water by the stork,[107] who takes them to the parents in a basket. The
-animal fable improves upon this idea, by emphasizing the similarity
-between human birth and animal birth.
-
-This introduction of the motive may possibly be interpreted from the
-parodistic point of view, if we assume that the child accepts the
-story of the stork from the parents, feigning ignorance, but adding
-superciliously: If an animal has brought me, it may also have nursed
-me.[108]
-
-When all is said and done, however, and when the cleavage is followed
-back, this separation of the child bearer from the suckler—which
-really endeavors to remove the bodily mother entirely, by means of her
-substitution through an animal or a strange nurse—does not express
-anything beyond the fact: The woman who has suckled me is my mother.
-This statement is found directly symbolized in the Moses legend,
-the retrogressive character of which we have already studied; for
-precisely the woman who is his own mother is chosen to be his nurse
-[similarly also in the myth of Herakles, and in the Egyptian-Phenician
-Osiris-Adonis myth, where Osiris, encased in a chest, floats down the
-river to Phenicia, and is finally found under the name Adonis, by Isis,
-who is installed by Queen Astarte as the nurse of her own son].[109]
-
-Only a brief reference can here be made to other motives which seem
-to be more loosely related to the entire myth. Such motives include
-that of playing the fool, which is suggested in animal fables as the
-universal childish attitude towards the grown ups; furthermore, the
-physical defects of certain heroes [Zal, Œdipus, Hephaistos], which are
-perhaps meant to serve for the vindication of individual imperfections,
-in such a way that the reproaches of the father for possible defects
-or shortcomings are incorporated in the myth, with the appropriate
-accentuation, the hero being endowed with the same weakness which
-burdens the self-respect of the individual.
-
-This explanation of the psychological significance of the myth of
-the birth of the hero would not be complete without emphasizing its
-relations to certain mental diseases. Also readers without psychiatric
-training—or these perhaps more than any others, must have been
-struck with these relations. As a matter of fact, the hero myths are
-equivalent in many essential features to the delusional ideas of
-certain psychotic individuals, who suffer from delusions of persecution
-and grandeur,—the so called paranoiacs. Their system of delusions is
-constructed very much like the hero myth, and therefore indicates
-the same psychogenic motives as the neurotic family romance, which
-is analysable, whereas the system of delusions is inaccessible even
-for psychoanalytical approaches. For example, the paranoiac is apt to
-claim that the people whose name he bears are not his real parents,
-but that he is actually the son of a princely personage; he was to be
-removed for some mysterious reason, and was therefore surrendered to
-his “parents” as a foster child. His enemies, however, wish to maintain
-the fiction that he is of lowly descent, in order to suppress his
-legitimate pretensions to the crown or to enormous riches.[110] Cases
-of this kind often occupy alienists or tribunals.[111]
-
-This intimate relationship between the hero myth and the delusional
-structure of paranoiacs has already been definitely established through
-the characterization of the myth as a paranoid structure, which is
-here confirmed by its contents. The remarkable fact that paranoiacs
-will frankly reveal their entire romance has ceased to be puzzling,
-since the profound investigations of Freud have shown that the contents
-of hysterical fantasies, which can often be made conscious through
-analysis, are identical up to the minutest details with the complaints
-of persecuted paranoiacs; moreover, the identical contents are also
-encountered as a reality, in the arrangements of perverts for the
-gratification of their desires.[112]
-
-The egotistical character of the entire system is distinctly revealed
-by the paranoiac, for whom the exaltation of the parents, as brought
-about by him, is merely the means for his own exaltation. As a
-rule the pivot for his entire system is simply the culmination of
-the family romance, in the apoditic statement: I am the emperor
-(or god). Reasoning in the symbolism of dreams and myths, which is
-also the symbolism of all fancies, including the “morbid” power of
-imagination—all he accomplishes thereby is to put himself in the place
-of the father, just as the hero terminates his revolt against the
-father. This can be done in both instances, because the conflict with
-the father—which dates back to the concealment of the sexual processes,
-as suggested by the latest discoveries—is nullified at the instant when
-the grown boy himself becomes a father. The persistence with which the
-paranoiac puts himself in the father’s place, _i.e._, becomes a father
-himself, appears like an illustration to the common answer of little
-boys to a scolding or a putting off of their inquisitive curiosity: You
-just wait until I am a papa myself, and I’ll know all about it!
-
-Besides the paranoiac, his equally a-social counterpart must also
-be emphasized. In the expression of the identical fantasy contents,
-the hysterical individual who has suppressed them, is offset by the
-pervert, who realizes them, and even so the diseased and passive
-paranoiac—who needs his delusion for the correction of the actuality,
-which to him is intolerable—is offset by the active criminal, who
-endeavors to change the actuality according to his mind. In this
-special sense, this type is represented by the anarchist. The hero
-himself, as shown by his detachment from the parents, begins his
-career in opposition to the older generation; he is at once a rebel,
-a renovator, and a revolutionary. However, every revolutionary is
-originally a disobedient son, a rebel against the father.[113] (Compare
-the suggestion of Freud, in connection with the interpretation of a
-“revolutionary dream.” Traumdeutung, II edition, p. 153. See English
-translation by Brill. Macmillan. Annotation.)
-
-But whereas the paranoiac, in conformity with his passive character,
-has to suffer persecutions and wrongs which ultimately proceed from
-the father, and which he endeavors to escape by putting himself in
-the place of the father or the emperor—the anarchist complies more
-faithfully with the heroic character, by promptly himself becoming
-the persecutor of kings, and finally killing the king, precisely like
-the hero. The remarkable similarity between the career of certain
-anarchistic criminals and the family romance of hero and child has
-been illustrated by the author, through special instances (Belege zur
-Rettungsphantasie, _Zentralblatt f. Psychoanalyse_, I, 1911, p. 331,
-and Die Rolle des Familienromans in der Psychologie des Attentäters,
-Internationale Zeitschrift für aerztliche Psychoanalyse, I, 1913).
-The truly heroic element then consists only in the real justice or
-even necessity of the act, which is therefore generally endorsed and
-admired;[114] while the morbid trait, also in criminal cases, is the
-pathologic transference of the hatred from the father to the real king,
-or several kings, when more general and still more distorted.
-
-As the hero is commended for the same deed, without asking for its
-psychic motivation, so the anarchist might claim indulgence from the
-severest penalties, for the reason that he has killed an entirely
-different person from the one he really intended to destroy, in spite
-of an apparently excellent perhaps political motivation of his act.[115]
-
-For the present let us stop at the narrow boundary line where the
-contents of innocent infantile imaginings, suppressed and unconscious
-neurotic fantasies, poetical myth structures, and certain forms of
-mental disease and crime lie close together, although far apart as to
-their causes and dynamic forces. We resist the temptation to follow one
-of these divergent paths which lead to altogether different realms, but
-which are as yet unblazed trails in the wilderness.
-
-
-
-
-                                 INDEX
-
-                                               PAGE
-
-  Abraham,                                       15
-
-  Aleos,                                         21
-
-  Alkmene,                                       45
-
-  Akrisios,                                      22
-
-  Ambivalence,                                   70
-
-  Amphion and Zetos,                             43
-
-  Anarchist,                                     93
-
-  Animal motives,                                88
-
-  Apollo,                                        17
-
-  Artembares,                                    29
-
-  Arthurian legends,                             55
-
-  Astyages,                                      29
-
-  Attenuation of myth,                           78
-
-  Auge,                                          22
-
-
-  Babylonian myths,                              12
-
-  Beating,                                       56
-
-  Beowulf,                                       60
-
-  Birth symbols,                                 69
-
-  Blancheflure,                                  38
-
-  Borrowing theories,                             2
-
-  Box,                                           69
-
-  Bride true,                                    40
-
-  Brother myths,                                 87
-
-  Brothers, hostility of,                        88
-
-  Buddha,                                        53
-
-
-  Child psyche and myth formation,               63
-
-  Childhood of hero,                             81
-
-  Conflict of younger and older generation,      64
-
-  Content reversals,                             72
-
-  Criminality and myths,                         93
-
-  Criticism of parents,                          64
-
-
-  Darab,                                         19
-
-  Daughter father,                               77
-
-  Delusion formation,                            91
-
-  Dirke,                                         46
-
-  Displacements in myths,                        76
-
-  Dream and myth,                                69
-
-  Dreams of water,                               71
-
-  Dughda,                                        51
-
-  Duplication,                                   87
-
-
-  Egotism motives,                               92
-
-  Elsa,                                          56
-
-  Erotic factors,                                74
-
-  Exposure myths,                            72, 73
-
-
-  Family relations,                              62
-
-  Family romance of neurotics,                   65
-
-  Father and hero,                               61
-
-  Father and tyrant,                             76
-
-  Father daughter,                               77
-
-  Father replacement,                            67
-
-  Feridun,                                       37
-
-  Flood myths,                               25, 34
-
-  Fool motive,                                   90
-
-
-  Gilgamos,                                  23, 79
-
-  Grandfather replacement,                       77
-
-
-  Hamlet,                                        76
-
-  Harpagos,                              26, 27, 28
-
-  Hekabe,                                        20
-
-  Hercules,                                      44
-
-  Hero and father,                               61
-
-  Hero and mother,                               61
-
-  Hero myth, summary of,                         67
-
-  Herod,                                         50
-
-  Horn,                                          55
-
-  Hostile brothers,                              88
-
-  Hostility motives,                             74
-
-  Hysteria and myth,                             92
-
-  Hysterical fantasies,                          92
-
-
-  Incest motive in myth,                         83
-
-  Infantile imagination,                         62
-
-  Infantile psyche and myth,                  9, 10
-
-  Infantile sexual theory,                       82
-
-  Interpretation summary,                        79
-
-  Ion,                                           17
-
-  Iranese legends,                       19, 36, 37
-
-  Isaac,                                         15
-
-  Isolde,                                    38, 39
-
-
-  Jesus,   47, 48,   49, et seq.
-
-  Judas myth,                                    19
-
-
-  Kaikaus,                                       36
-
-  Kaikhosrav,                                    35
-
-  Kamleyses,                                     25
-
-  Karna,                                         15
-
-  Krishna,                                       47
-
-  Kyros,                                     24, 89
-
-  Kyros myth, versions of,               24, 32, 33
-
-  Kunti,                                         16
-
-
-  Lohengrin,                                 55, 58
-
-  Lunar myths,                                    5
-
-
-  Mandane,                                       25
-
-  Migration theories,                             2
-
-  Moses,                                     13, 79
-
-  Mother and hero,                               61
-
-  Myth and hysterical fancy,                     92
-
-  Myth and infantile psyche,                  9, 10
-
-  Myths and paranoid mechanisms,                 75
-
-  Myth and race,                                 11
-
-  Myth and sex,                                  65
-
-  Myth, complications of,                        83
-
-  Myth contents,                               4, 6
-
-  Myth displacements,                            76
-
-  Myth distribution,                              4
-
-  Myth, evolution of,                             8
-
-  Myth formation and child psyche,               63
-
-  Myth ground plan,                              61
-
-  Myth interpretation,                            5
-
-  Myth of hero, summary of,                      67
-
-  Myth, psychological significance of,           90
-
-  Myth structure and psychoneuroses,             63
-
-  Myth, type of,                                 61
-
-  Mythological theories,                       1, 3
-
-
-  Neurotic family romance,                       65
-
-  Neurotics,                                     64
-
-  Nightmares,                                     7
-
-
-  Œdipus,                                        74
-
-  Œdipus myth,                                6, 18
-
-  Old age and youth,                             64
-
-  Opposites,                                     70
-
-  Oriant,                                        56
-
-
-  Paranoid delusions,                            91
-
-  Paranoid mechanism in myths,                   75
-
-  Parental authority,                            63
-
-  Parental criticism,                            64
-
-  Parents, fancied,                              73
-
-  Parents, real,                                 73
-
-  Paris,                                         20
-
-  Perseus,                                       22
-
-  Persian myths,                                 37
-
-  Persian war,                                   32
-
-  Pharaoh,                                       80
-
-  Priamos,                                       20
-
-  Pritha,                                        16
-
-  Proca,                                         42
-
-  Projection,                                    75
-
-  Psychological significance of myth,            90
-
-  Psychoneuroses and myth structure,             63
-
-  Psychoneurotics,                               63
-
-
-  Races and myths,                               81
-
-  Real parents,                                  73
-
-  Reformer,                                      93
-
-  Remus,                                         40
-
-  Replacement of father,                         67
-
-  Retaliation and revenge,                       66
-
-  Revenge and retaliation,                       66
-
-  Reversals,                                     72
-
-  Revolt of hero,                                82
-
-  Revolutionary,                                 93
-
-  River legends,                                 46
-
-  Romulus,                                       40
-
-  Romulus, modifications of,                     42
-
-
-  St. Gregory,                                   19
-
-  Sam,                                           21
-
-  Sargon myth,                                   12
-
-  Scëaf,                                         60
-
-  Scild Scefing,                                 60
-
-  Senechoros,                                    24
-
-  Sex and myth,                                  65
-
-  Siegfried,                                     93
-
-  Split personalities,                           84
-
-  Summary interpretation,                        79
-
-  Symbolic expression,                           69
-
-
-  Telephos,                                      21
-
-  Thebes,                                        43
-
-  Theories of myths,                           1, 3
-
-  Tristan,                                   38, 39
-
-  True bride,                                    40
-
-  Twin myths,                                    44
-
-  Types of reversal,                             77
-
-  Typical myth,                                  61
-
-  Tyrant and father,                             76
-
-
-  Water dreams,                                  71
-
-  Water in myth,                                 34
-
-  Wieland,                                       55
-
-  Wolfdietrich,                                  54
-
-
-  Youth and old age,                             64
-
-
-  Zal,                                           21
-
-  Zetos and Amphion,                             43
-
-  Zoroaster,                                     51
-
-
-
-
-                              FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] A short and fairly complete review of the general theories of
-mythology and its principal advocates is to be found in Wundt’s
-“Völkerpsychologie,” Vol. II, Myths and Religion. Part I [Leipzig,
-1905], p. 527.
-
-[2] “Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer
-Veränderlichkeit.” Berlin, 1868.
-
-[3] “Die Kyros Sage und Verwandtes,” _Sitzb. Wien. Akad._, 100, 1882,
-p. 495.
-
-[4] Schubert. Herodots Darstellung der Cyrussage, Breslau, 1890.
-
-[5] Compare E. Stucken, “Astral mythen,” Leipzig, 1896-1907, especially
-Part V, “Moses.” H. Lessmann, “Die Kyrossage in Europe,” _Wiss. beit.
-z. Jahresbericht d. städt. Realschule zu Charlottenburg_, 1906.
-
-[6] “Naturgeschichte d. Sage.” Tracing all religious ideals, legends,
-and systems back to their common family tree, and their primary root, 2
-volumes, Munich 1864-65.
-
-[7] Some of the important writings of Winckler will be mentioned in the
-course of this article.
-
-[8] _Zeitschrift f. d. Oesterr. Gym._, 1891, p. 161, etc. Schubert’s
-reply is also found here, p. 594, etc.
-
-[9] Lessmann, “Object and Aim of Mythological Research,” _Mythol.
-Bibliot._, 1, Heft 4, Leipzig.
-
-[10] Winckler, “Die babylonische Geisteskultur in ihren Beziehungen zur
-Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit,” _Wissenschaft u. Bildung_, Vol. 15,
-1907, p. 47.
-
-[11] Of course no time will be wasted on the futile question as to what
-this first legend may have been; for in all probability this never had
-existence, any more than a “first human couple.”
-
-[12] As an especially discouraging example of this mode of procedure
-may be mentioned a contribution by the well-known natural mythologist
-Schwartz, which touches upon this circle of myths, and is entitled:
-“Der Ursprung der Stamm und Gründungssage Roms unter dem Reflex
-indogermanischer Mythen” [Jena, 1898].
-
-[13] Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengotten, Berlin, 1904.
-
-[14] Siecke, “Hermes als Mondgott,” _Myth. Bibl._, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p.
-48.
-
-[15] Compare for example, Paul Koch, “Sagen der Bibel und ihre
-Ubereinstimmung mit der Mythologie der Indogermanen,” Berlin,
-1907. Compare also the partly lunar, partly solar, but at any rate
-entirely one sided conception of the hero myth, in Gustav Friedrich’s
-“Grundlage, Entstehung und genaue Einzeldeutung der bekanntesten
-germanischen Märchen, Mythen und Sagen” [Leipzig, 1909], p. 118.
-
-[16] Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill. Macmillan Co.
-
-[17] The fable of Shakespeare’s Hamlet also permits of a similar
-interpretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how
-mythological investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely
-different view points into the correlation of the mythical circle.
-
-[18] In JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE, 1912. Also collected in
-this Monograph Series, No. 15.
-
-[19] Compare Lessmann (Mythol. Bibl., I, 4). Ehrenreich alone (loc.
-cit., p. 149) admits the extraordinary significance of dream-life for
-the myth-fiction of all times. Wundt does so likewise, for individual
-mythical motives.
-
-[20] Stucken [Mose, p. 432] says in this sense. The myth transmitted
-by the ancestors was transferred to natural processes and interpreted
-in a naturalistic way, not vice versa. “Interpretation of nature is
-a motive in itself” [p. 633, annotation]. In a very similar way, we
-read in Meyer’s History of Antiquity, Vol. V, p. 48: In many cases,
-the natural symbolism, sought in the myths, is only apparently present
-or has been secondarily introduced, as often in the Vedda and in the
-Egyptian myths; it is a primary attempt at interpretation, like the
-myth-interpretations which arose among the Greeks since the fifth
-century.
-
-[21] For fairy tales, in this as well as in other essential features,
-Thimme advocates the same point of view as is here claimed for the
-myths. Compare Adolf Thimme, “Das Märchen,” 2d volume of the Handbücher
-zur Volkskunde, Leipzig, 1909.
-
-[22] Volume II of the German translation, Leipzig, 1869, p. 143.
-
-[23] Of this myth-interpretation, Wundt has well said that it really
-should have accompanied the original myth-formation. (Loc. cit., p.
-352.)
-
-[24] See Ignaz Goldziher, “Der Mythus bei den Hebräern und seine
-geschichtliche Entwickelung” [Leipzig, 1876], p. 125. According to the
-writings of Siecke [“Hermes als Mondgott,” Leipzig, 1908, p. 39], the
-incest myths lose all unusual features through being referred to the
-moon, and its relation to the sun. The explanation being quite simple:
-the daughter, the new moon, is the repetition of the mother [the old
-moon], with her the father [the sun] [also the brother, the son]
-becomes reunited.
-
-[25] Is it to be believed? In an article entitled “Urreligion der
-Indogermanen” [Berlin, 1897], where Siecke points out that the incest
-myths are descriptive narrations of the seen but inconceivable process
-of nature, he objects to a statement of Oldenburg [“Religion der Veda,”
-p. 5] who assumes a primeval tendency of myths to the incest motive,
-with the remark that in the days of yore the motive was thrust upon the
-narrator, without an inclination of his own, through the forcefulness
-of the witnessed facts.
-
-[26] The great variability and wide distribution of the birth myths of
-the hero results from the above quoted writings of Bauer, Schubert and
-others, while their comprehensive contents and fine ramifications were
-especially discussed by Husing, Lessmann, and the other representatives
-of the modern direction.
-
-Innumerable fairy tales, stories, and poems of all times, up to the
-most recent dramatic and novelistic literature, show very distinct
-individual main motives of this myth. The exposure-romance is known to
-appear in the following literary productions: The late Greek pastorals,
-as told in Heliodor’s “Aethiopika,” in Eustathius’ “Ismenias and
-Ismene,” and in the Story of the two exposed children, Daphnis and
-Chloe. The more recent Italian pastorals are likewise very frequently
-based upon the exposure of children, who are raised as shepherds by
-their foster-parents, but are later recognized by the true parents,
-through identifying marks which they received at the time of their
-exposure. To the same set belong the family history in Grimmelshausen’s
-“Limplizissimus” (1665), in Jean Paul’s “Titan” (1800), as well as
-certain forms of the Robinson stories and Cavalier romances (compare
-Würzbach’s Introduction to the Edition of “Don Quichote” in Hesse’s
-edition).
-
-[27] The various translations of the partly mutilated text differ only
-in unessential details. Compare Hommel’s “History of Babylonia and
-Assyria” (Berlin, 1885), p. 302, where the sources of the tradition are
-likewise found, and A. Jeremias, “The Old Testament in the Light of the
-Ancient Orient,” II edition, Leipzig, 1906, p. 410.
-
-[28] On account of these resemblances, a dependence of the Exodus tale
-from the Sargon legend has often been assumed, but apparently not
-enough attention has been paid to certain fundamental distinctions,
-which will be taken up in detail in the interpretation.
-
-[29] The parents of Moses were originally nameless, as were all persons
-in this, the oldest account. Their names were only conferred upon them
-by the priesthood. Chapter 6, 20, says: “And Amram took him Jocabed his
-father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses” [and their
-sister Miriam, IV, 26, 59]. Also compare Winckler, “History of Israel,”
-II, and Jeremias, l. c., p. 408.
-
-[30] The name, according to Winckler (“Babylonian Mental Culture,” p.
-119), means “The Water-Drawer” (see also Winckler, “Ancient Oriental
-Studies,” III, 468, etc.), which would still further approach the Moses
-legend to the Sargon legend, for the name Akki signifies I have drawn
-water.
-
-[31] Schemot Rabba, fol. 2, 4. Concerning 2, Moses 1, 22, says that
-Pharaoh was told by the astrologers of a woman who was pregnant with
-the Redeemer of Israel.
-
-[32] The Hindu birth legend of the mythical king Vikramâdita must also
-be mentioned in this connection. Here again occur the barren marriage
-of the parents, the miraculous conception, ill-omened warnings, the
-exposure of the boy in the forest, his nourishment with honey, finally
-the acknowledgment by the father. (See Jülg, “Mongolian Fairy Tales,”
-Innsbruck, 1868, p. 73, et seq.)
-
-[33] “Hindu Legends,” Karlsruhe, 1846, Part II, pp. 117 to 127.
-
-[34] “Hindu Legends,” l. c.
-
-[35] See Röscher, concerning the Ion of Euripides. Where no other
-source is stated, all Greek and Roman myths are taken from the
-Extensive Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology, edited by Röscher,
-which also contains a list of all sources.
-
-[36] According to Bethe, “Thebanische Heldenlieder,” the exposure on
-the waters was the original rendering. According to other versions, the
-boy is found and raised by horse herds; according to a later myth, by a
-countryman, Melibios.
-
-[37] The entire material has been discussed by Rank in Das Inzest-Motiv
-in Dichtung und Sage, 1912, Chapter X.
-
-[38] I. In the version of Euripides, whose tragedies “Auge” and
-“Telephos” are extant, _Aleos caused the mother and the child to be
-thrown into the sea in a box_, but through the protection of Athene
-this box was carried to the end of the Mysian River, Kaikos. There it
-was found by Teuthras. who made Auge his wife and took her child into
-his house as his foster son.
-
-[39] Later authors, including Pindar, state that Danae was impregnated,
-not by Zeus, but by the brother of her father.
-
-[40] Simonides of Keos (fr. 37, ed. Bergk), speaks of a casement
-strong as ore, in which Danae is said to have been exposed. (Geibel,
-Klassisches Liederbuch, page 52.)
-
-[41] According to Hüsing, the Perseus myth in several versions is
-also demonstrable in Japan. Compare also, Sydney Hartland, Legend of
-Perseus, 1894-96; 3 volumes. London.
-
-[42] Claudius Aelianus, “Historia animalium,” XII, 21, translated by
-Fr. Jacobs (Stuttgart, 1841).
-
-[43] It was also told of Ptolemaös, the son of Lagos and Arsinoë, that
-an eagle protected the exposed boy with his wings against the sunshine,
-the rain and birds of prey (_loc. cit._).
-
-[44] F. E. Lange, “Herodot’s Geschichten” (Reclam). Compare also
-Duncker’s “History of Antiquity” (Leipsig, 1880), N. 5, page 256 et
-sequitur.
-
-[45] The same “playing king” is found in the Hindoo myth of
-Candragupta, the founder of the Maurja dynasty, whom his mother exposed
-after his birth, in a vessel at the gate of a cowshed, where a herder
-found him and raised him. Later on he came to a hunter, where he as
-cow-herder played “king” with the other boys, and as king ordered
-that the hands and feet of the great criminals be chopped off. [The
-mutilation motive occurs also in the Kyros saga, and is generally
-widely distributed.] At his command, the separated limbs returned to
-their proper position. Kanakja, who once looked on as they were at
-play, admired the boy, and bought him from the hunter for one thousand
-Kârshâpana; at home he discovered that the boy was a Maurja. (After
-Lassen’s Indische Altertumskunde, II, 196, Annotation 1.)
-
-[46] Justinus, “Extract from Pompeius Trogus’ Philippian History,” I,
-4-7. As far as results from Justinus’ extract, Deinon’s Persian tales
-(written in the first half of the fourth century before Christ) are
-presumably the sources of Trogus’ narrative.
-
-[47] The words in parenthesis are said to be lacking in certain
-manuscripts.
-
-[48] Nicol. Damasc. Frag. 66, Ctes.; Frag. Pers., 2, 5.
-
-[49] This daughter’s name is Amytis (not Mandane) in the version of
-Ktesias.
-
-[50] On the basis of this _motive of simulated dementia_ and certain
-other corresponding features Jiriczek (“Hamlet in Iran,” in the
-_Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde_, Vol. X, 1900, p. 353) has
-represented the _Hamlet Saga_ as a variation of the Iranese myth of
-Kaikhosrav. This idea was followed up by H. Lessmann (“Die Kyrossage
-in Europa”), who shows that the Hamlet saga strikingly agrees in
-certain items, for example, in the simulated folly, with the sagas
-of Brutus and of Tell. (Compare also the protestations of Moses.) In
-another connection, the deeper roots of these relations have been more
-extensively discussed, especially with reference to the Tell saga.
-(See: Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, Chapter VIII.) Attention
-is also directed to the story of David, as it is told in the books
-of Samuel. Here again, the royal scion, David, is made a shepherd,
-who gradually rises in the social scale up to the royal throne. He
-likewise is given the king’s (Saul’s) daughter in marriage, and the
-king seeks his life, but David is always saved by miraculous means from
-the greatest perils. He also evades persecution by simulating dementia
-and playing the fool. The relationship between the Hamlet saga and the
-David saga has already been pointed out by Jiriczek and Lessmann. The
-biblical character of this entire mythical cycle is also emphasized by
-Jiriczek, who finds in the tale of Siâvaksh’s death certain features
-from the Passion of the Savior.
-
-[51] The name Zohâk is a mutilation of the original Zend expression
-Ashi-dahaka [Azis-dahaka], meaning pernicious serpent. (See “The Myth
-of Feridun in India and Iran,” by Dr. R. Roth, in the _Zeitschrift
-der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, II, p. 216.) To the
-_Iranese Feridum_ corresponds the _Hindoo Trita_, whose Avestian
-double is Thraetaona. The last named form is the most predominantly
-authenticated; from it was formed, by transition of the aspirated
-sounds, first Phreduna, then Frêdûn or Afrêdun; Feridun is a more
-recent corruption. Compare F. Spiegel’s “Eranische Altertumskunde,” I,
-p. 537 et seq.
-
-[52] Compare Immermann, “Tristan und Isolde, Ein Gedicht in Romanzen,”
-Düsseldorf, 1841. Like the epic of Gottfried of Strassburg, his poem
-begins with the preliminary history of the loves of Tristan’s parents,
-King Riwalin Kannlengres of Parmenia and Marke’s beautiful sister
-Blancheflur. The maiden never reveals her love, which is not sanctioned
-by her brother, but she visits the king, who is wounded unto death,
-in his chamber, and dying he procreates Tristan, “the son of the most
-daring and doleful love.” Grown up as a foundling in the care of Rual
-and his wife, Florete, the winsome youth Tristan introduces himself
-to Marke in a stag hunt, as an expert huntsman, is recognized as his
-nephew by a ring, the king’s gift to his beloved sister, and becomes
-his favorite.
-
-[53] See translation by W. A. White, M.D.., Psychoanalytic Review, Vol.
-I, No. 1, et seq.
-
-[54] Compare the substitution of the bride, through Brangäne.
-
-[55] Mommsen, Th., “Die echte und die falsche Acca Larentia”; in
-Festgaben für G. Homeyer (Berlin, 1891), p. 93, et seq.; and _Römische_
-_Forschungen_ (Berlin, 1879), II, p. 1, et seq. Mommsen reconstructs
-the lost narrative of Fabius from the preserved reports of Dionysius
-(I, 79-831, and of Plutarch (Romulus)).
-
-[56] The Capitoline She Wolf is considered as the work of very ancient
-Etruscan artists, which was erected at the Lupercal, in the year 296
-B.C., according to Livy (X, 231). Compare picture on title page.
-
-[57] All these renderings were compiled by Schwegler, in his Roman
-History, I, p. 384, et seq.
-
-[58] Some Greek twin sagas are quoted by Schubert (loc. cit., p. 13, et
-seq.) in their essential content. Concerning the extensive distribution
-of this legendary form, compare the somewhat confused book of J. H.
-Becker, “The Twin Saga as the Key to the Interpretation of Ancient
-Tradition. With a Table of the Twin Saga.” Leipsic, 1891. German text.
-
-[59] Mommsen, “Die Remus Legende,” Hermes, 1881.
-
-[60] After Preller, Greek Mythology (Leipzig, 1854, II, pp. 120 et
-seq.).
-
-[61] The same transformation of the divine procreator into the form
-of the human father is found in the birth history of the Egyptian
-queen, Hatshepset (about 1500 before Christ), who believes that the god
-Amen cohabited with her mother, Aahames, in the form of her father,
-Thothmes the First (see Budge: A History of Egypt, V; Books on Egypt
-and Chaldea, Vol. XII, p. 21, etc.). Later on she married her brother,
-Thothmes II, presumably the Pharaoh of Exodus, after whose dishonorable
-death she endeavored to eradicate his memory, and herself assumed
-the rulership, in masculine fashion (cp. the Deuteronium, edited by
-Schrader, II ed., 1902).
-
-[62] A similar mingling of the divine and human posterity is related
-in the myth of Theseus, whose mother Aithra, the beloved of Poseidon,
-was visited in one night by this god, and by the childless King Aigeus
-of Athens, who had been brought under the influence of wine. The boy
-was raised in secret, and in ignorance of his father (v. Roscher’s
-dictionary, article Aigeus).
-
-[63] Alkmene bore Herakles as the son of Zeus, and Iphikles as the
-offspring of Amphitryon. According to Apollodorus, 2, 4, 8, they were
-twin children, born at the same time; according to others Iphikles
-was conceived and born one night later than Herakles (see Roscher’s
-Lexicon, Amphitryon and Alkmene). The shadowy character of the twin
-brother, and his loose connection with the entire myth, is again
-evident. In a similar way, Telephos, the son of Auge, was exposed
-together with Parthenopaüs, the son of Atalantis, nursed by a doe, and
-taken by herders to King Korythos. The external subsequent insertion of
-the partner is here again quite obvious.
-
-[64] For the formal demonstration of the entire identity of the birth
-and early history of Jesus with the other hero-myths, the author has
-presumed to re-arrange the corresponding paragraphs from the different
-versions, in the Gospels, irrespective of the traditional sequence
-and the originality of the individual parts. The age, origin and
-genuineness of these parts are briefly summarized and discussed in W.
-Soltan’s Birth History of Jesus Christ (German text), Leipsic, 1902.
-The transmitted versions of the several Gospels,—which according to
-Usener (Birth and Childhood of Christ, 1903, in Lectures and Essays
-(German text), Leipsic, 1907), contradict and even exclude each
-other,—have been placed, or left, in juxtaposition, precisely for
-the reason that the apparently contradictory elements in these birth
-myths are to be elucidated in the present research, no matter if these
-contradictions be encountered within a single uniform saga, or in its
-different versions (as, for example, in the Kyros myth).
-
-[65] Concerning the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the furnishing
-of the birth place with the typical animals (ox and ass) compare
-Jeremias, Babylonisches im Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1905), p. 56, and
-Preuschen, Jesu Geburt in einer Höhle, Zeitschrift für die Neutest.
-Wissenschaften, 1902, P. 359.
-
-[66] According to recent investigations, the birth history of Christ
-is said to have the greatest resemblance with the royal Egyptian myth,
-over five thousand years old, which relates the birth of Amenophis III.
-Here again recurs the divine prophecy of the birth of a son, to the
-waiting queen; her fertilization by the breath of heavenly fire; the
-divine cows, which nurse the new born child; the homage of the kings,
-and so forth. In this connection, compare A. Malvert, Wissenschaft
-und Religion, Frankfort, 1904, pp. 49 et seq, also the suggestion of
-Professor Idleib in Bonn (Feuilleton of Frankfurter Zeitung, November
-8, 1908).
-
-[67] Very similar traits are found in the Keltic saga of Habis, as
-transmitted by Justin (44,4). Born as the illegitimate son of a king’s
-daughter, Habis is persecuted in all sorts of ways by his royal
-grandfather, Gargoris, but is always saved by divine providence, until
-he is finally recognized by his grandfather, and assumes royal sway. As
-in the Zarathustra legend, there occurs an entire series of the most
-varied methods of persecution. He is at first exposed, but nursed by
-wild animals; then he was to be trampled upon by a herd in a narrow
-path; then he was cast before hungry beasts, but they again nursed him,
-and finally he is thrown into the sea, but is gently lapped ashore and
-nursed by a doe, near which he grows up.
-
-[68] Compare August Rassmann: Die deutsche Heldensage und ihre Heimat,
-Hanover, 1857-8, Vol. II, pp. 7 et seq; for the sources, see Jiriczek,
-Die deutsche Heldensage (collection Göschen) and Piper’s introduction
-to the volume: Die Nibelungen, in Kürschner’s German National
-Literature.
-
-[69] Compare: Deutsches Heldenbuch, Part III, Vol. I (Berlin, 1871),
-edited by Amelung and Jaenicke, which also contains the second version
-(B) of the Wolfdietrich saga.
-
-[70] The motive of calumniation of the wife by a rejected suitor, in
-combination with the exposure and nursing by an animal (doe), forms
-the nucleus of the story of _Genovefa_ and her son Schmerzenreich, as
-told, for example, by the Grimm brothers, in their German Sagas, II,
-Berlin, 1818, pp. 280 et seq. Here, again, the faithless calumniator
-proposes _to drown the countess with her child in the water_. For
-literary and historical orientation, compare _L. Zacher_, Die Historic
-von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Koenigsberg, 1860, and _B. Seuffert_, Die
-Legende von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Würzburg, 1877. Similar sagas of
-wives suspected of infidelity and punished by exposure are discussed in
-the XI chapter of my investigation of “Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und
-Sage” (The Incest Motive in Fiction and Legends).
-
-[71] The same accentuation of the animal motive is found in the saga
-of Schalû, the Hindoo wolf child; compare Jülg, Mongolische Märchen
-(Mongolian fairy tales; Innsbruck, 1868).
-
-[72] The Grimm Brothers, in their German Sagas (part II, p. 206, etc.),
-quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan.
-Certain fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, such as “The Six Swans” (No.
-49), “The Twelve Brothers” (No. 9), and the “Seven Ravens” (No. 25),
-with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the 3d volume of the
-“Kinder-und Hausmärchen,” also belong to the same mythological cycle.
-Further material from this cycle may be found in Leo’s “Beowulf,” and
-in Görre’s “Introduction to Lohengrin” (Heidelberg, 1813).
-
-[73] The ancient Longobard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio,
-related by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public
-woman had thrown her seven newborn infants into a fish pond. King
-Agelmund passed by, and looked curiously at the children, turning them
-around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the
-spear, the king considered this as of good augury; he ordered this boy
-to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had
-taken him from the pond, which in his language is called “lama,” he
-named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after
-Agelmund’s death, became king of the Longobards.
-
-[74] Scaf is the high German “Schaffing” (barrel), which leads Leo to
-assume, in connection with Scild’s being called Scefing, that he had no
-father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by
-the waves, who was named the “son of the barrel” (Schaffing). The name
-Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-wolf (bee-wolf), seems to
-mean originally (according to Wolzogen) Bärwelf, namely Jungbär (bear
-cub or whelp), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the
-Guelphs (Ursprung der Welfen, Grimm, II, 233), where the boys are to be
-thrown into the water as “whelps.”
-
-[75] The possibility of further specification of separate items of this
-schedule will be seen from the compilation as given by H. Lessmann, at
-the conclusion of his work on “The Kyros Saga in Europe.”
-
-[76] See also Wundt, who psychologically interprets the hero as a
-projection of human desires and aspirations (loc. cit., p. 48).
-
-[77] Compare Freud, “Hysterical Fancies, and their Relation to
-Bisexuality,” with references to the literature on this subject. This
-contribution is contained in the second series of the “Collection of
-Short Articles on the Neurosis Doctrine,” Vienna and Leipsic, 1909.
-
-[78] For the idealizing of the parents by the children, compare
-Maeder’s comments (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Centralblatt f.
-Psychoanalyse, I, p. 51) on Varendonk’s essay, “Les idéals d’enfant,”
-Tome VII, 1908.
-
-[79] Dream Interpretation (Traumdeutung), II ed., p. 200. See Brill’s
-Translation, Macmillan & Co., 1913.
-
-[80] Compare the “birth dreams” in Freud’s “Traumdeutung” (see Brill’s
-translation, Macmillan & Co., p. 207 et seq.), also the examples quoted
-by the author in the “Lohengrin saga” (p. 27 et seq.).
-
-[81] In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and
-especially to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the
-December number of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently
-represented as a lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme,
-_l. c._, p. 157). The story of “Dame Holle’s Pond” (Grimm, Deutsche
-Sagen, I, 7) relates that the newborn children come from her well,
-whence she brings them forth. The same interpretation is apparently
-expressed in certain national rites; for example, when a Celt had
-reason to doubt his paternity, he placed the newborn child on a large
-shield and put it adrift in the nearest river. If the waves carried it
-ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but if the child was drowned,
-this was proof of the contrary and the mother was also put to death
-(see Franz Helbing, “History of Feminine Infidelity”). Additional
-ethnological material from folklore has been compiled by the author in
-his “Lohengrin saga” (p. 20 et seq.).
-
-[82] The “box” in certain myths is represented by the _cave_, which
-also distinctly symbolizes the womb; aside from statements in Abraham,
-Ion, and others, especially in case of Zeus, who is born in a cave
-of the Ida mountains, and nourished by the goat Amalthea, his mother
-concealing him for fear of her husband, Kronos. According to Homer’s
-Iliad (XVIII, 396, et seq.), Hephaistos is also cast into the water
-by his mother, on account of his lameness, and remains hidden, for
-nine years, in a cave surrounded by water. By exchanging the reversal,
-the birth (the fall into the water) is here plainly represented
-as the termination of the nine months of the intrauterine life.
-More common than the cave birth is the exposure in a box, which is
-likewise told in the Babylonian Marduk-Tammuz myth, as well as in
-the Egyptian-Phoenician Osiris-Adonis myth (compare Winckler, “Die
-Weltanschauung des alten Orients, Ex Oriente Lux” I, 1, p. 43, and
-Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 41). Bacchus, according to Paus, III, 24, is
-also removed from the persecution of the king, through exposure in a
-chest on the Nile, and is saved at the age of three months by a king’s
-daughter, which is remarkably suggestive of the Moses legend. A similar
-story is told of Tennes, the son of Kyknos, who has been mentioned in
-another connection (Siecke: Hermes, p. 48, annotation), and of many
-others.
-
-The occurrence of the same symbolic representation among the aborigines
-is illustrated by the following examples: Stucken relates the New
-Zealand tale of the Polynesian Fire (and Seed) Robber, Mani-tiki-tiki,
-who is exposed directly after his birth, his mother throwing him into
-the sea, wrapped in an apron (chest, box). A similar story is reported
-by Frobenius (_loc. cit._, p. 379) from Betsimisaraka, where the child
-is exposed on the water, and is found and raised by a rich childless
-woman, but finally resolves to discover his actual parents. According
-to a report of Bab (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1906, p. 281) the
-wife of the Raja Besurjay was presented with a child floating on a
-bubble of water-foam (from Singapore).
-
-[83] The before-mentioned work of Abraham, “Dreams and Myths,” pp.
-22, 23, English translation, Monograph Series, No. 15, contains the
-analysis of a very similar although more complicated birth dream,
-corresponding to the actual conditions; the dreamer, a young pregnant
-woman, who was awaiting her delivery, not without fear, dreamed of the
-birth of her son, and the water appeared directly as the amniotic fluid.
-
-[84] This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the
-large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to
-be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The
-hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is
-the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise
-follow one another in immediate succession. In this parallelization,
-it is of interest to note that the ark, or pitched house, in which
-Noah floats upon the water is designated in the Old Testament by the
-same word (_tebah_) as the receptacle in which the infant Moses is
-exposed (_Jeremias_, loc. cit., p. 250). For the motive of the great
-flood, compare Jeremias, p. 226, and Lessmann, at the close of his
-treatise on the Kyros saga in Europe, where the flood is described as a
-possible digression of the exposure in the water. A transition instance
-is illustrated by the flood saga told by Bader, in his Badensian folk
-legends. When the Sunken Valley was inundated once upon a time by a
-cloudburst, a little boy was seen floating upon the waters in a cradle,
-who was miraculously saved by a cat (Gustav Friedrichs, loc. cit., p.
-265).
-
-The author has endeavored to explain the psychological relations
-between the exposure-myth, the flood legend, and the devouring myth,
-in his article on the “Overlying Symbols in Dream Awakening, and
-Their Recurrence in Mythical Ideation” (“Die Symbolschichtung in
-Wecktraum und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen Denken” _Jahrbuch für
-Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912).
-
-[85] Compare the same reversal of the meanings in Winckler’s
-interpretation of the etymology of the name of Moses (p. 13).
-
-[86] The same conditions remain in the formation of dreams and in
-the transformation of hysterical phantasies into seizures (compare
-“Traumdeutung,” p. 238, and the annotation in the same place),
-also, Freud, “Allgemeines über den hysterischen Anfall” (“General
-Remarks on Hysterical Seizures”) in _Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur
-Neurosenlehre_, 2 Series, p. 146 et seq.
-
-[87] According to a pointed remark of Jung’s, this reversal in its
-further mythical sublimation permits the approximation of the hero’s
-life to the solar cycle (“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,” II Part,
-_Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse_, V, 1912, p. 253).
-
-[88] The second item of the schedule here enters into consideration:
-the voluntary continence or prolonged separation of the parents, which
-naturally induces the miraculous conception and virgin birth of the
-mother. The abortion phantasies, which are especially distinct in the
-Zoroaster legend, also belong under this heading.
-
-[89] The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet
-Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: “Behold
-the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the
-billows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means
-for existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother’s
-womb. With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and
-he is right, for many evils await him in life” (Lucretius, “De Nature
-Rerum,” V, 222-227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller’s
-“Robbers,” in speaking of Nature, says: “She endowed us with the spirit
-of invention, when she exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of
-the great Ocean, the World. Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy
-perish!”
-
-[90] Compare the representation of this relation and its psychic
-consequences, in Freud’s Significance of Dreams.
-
-[91] Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with
-the mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the
-consciousness of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression
-are still evident in a comparison of different myths or different
-versions of the same myth. For example, in the version of Herodotus,
-Kyros is a son of the daughter of Astyages, but according to the report
-of Ktesias, he makes the daughter of Astyages, whom he conquers, his
-wife, and kills her husband, who in the rendering of Herodotus is his
-father. Compare Hüsing, “Contributions to the Kyros Legend,” XI. Also
-a comparison of the saga of Darab, with the very similar legend of St.
-Gregory, serves to show that in the Darab story the incest with the
-mother is simply omitted, which otherwise precedes the recognition
-of the son; here, on the contrary, the recognition prevents the
-incest. This attenuation may be studied in the nascent state, as
-it were, in the myth of Telephos, where the hero is married to his
-mother, but recognizes her before the consummation of the incest. The
-fairy-tale-like setting of the Tristan legend, which makes Isolde draw
-the little Tristan from the water (_i.e._, give him birth), thereby
-suggests the fundamental incest theme, which is likewise manifested in
-the adultery with the wife of the uncle.
-
-The reader is referred to Rank’s paper, “Das Inzest Motiv in Dichtung
-und Sage” (“The incest motive in fiction and legend”), in which the
-incest theme, which is here merely mentioned, is discussed in detail,
-picking up the many threads which lead to this theme, but which have
-been dropped at the present time.
-
-[92] The mechanism of this defense is discussed in Freud’s “Hamlet
-Analysis” (“Traumdeutung,” p. 183, annotation); also by Jones, _Am. Jl.
-of Psychology_, 1911.
-
-[93] In regard to further meanings of the grandfather, compare
-Freud, “Analysis of the Phobia of a 5-year-old Boy” (_Jahrbuch f.
-Psychoanalyse_, I, 1909, p. 7378); also the contributions by Jones,
-Abraham and Ferenzi (_Internat. Zeitschrift f. ärzt. Psychoanalyse_,
-Vol. I, 1913, March number).
-
-[94] A similar identification of the father with God (heavenly
-father, etc.) occurs, according to Freud, with the same regularity
-in the fantasies of normal and pathological psychic activity as the
-identification of the emperor with the father. It is also noteworthy in
-this connection that almost all peoples derive their origin from their
-god (Abraham, “Dream and Myth,” Monograph Series, No. 15).
-
-[95] An amusing example of unconscious humor in children recently ran
-through the daily press: A politician had explained to his little
-son that a tyrant is a man who forces others to do what he commands,
-without heeding their wishes in the matter. “Well,” said the child,
-“then you and mamma are also tyrants!”
-
-[96] See Max Müller, “Essais,” Vol. II (Leipzig, 1869), p. 20 et seq.
-Concerning the various psychological contingencies of this setting,
-compare p. 83 _et al._ of the author’s “Incest Book.”
-
-[97] Compare E. Meyer (_Bericht d. Kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss._, XXXI,
-1905, p. 640). The Moses legends and the Levites: “Presumably Moses
-was originally the son of the tyrant’s daughter (who is now his foster
-mother), and probably of divine origin.” The subsequent elaboration
-into the present form is probably referable to national motives.
-
-[98] This idea which is derived from the knowledge of the neurotic
-fantasy and symptom construction, was applied by Professor Freud to the
-interpretation of the romantic and mythical work of poetic imagination,
-in a lecture entitled: “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (Poets and
-Imaginings) (Reprint, 2d series of Collected Short Articles), p. 1970.
-
-[99] For ethno-psychologic parallels and other infantile sexual
-theories which throw some light upon the supplementary myth of the
-hero’s procreation compare the author’s treatise in _Zentralblatt für
-Psychoanalyse_, II, 1911, pp. 392-425.
-
-[100] The fairy tales, which have been left out of consideration in
-the context, precisely on account of these complications, include
-especially: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” (Grimm, No. 29),
-and the very similar “Saga of Emperor Henry III” (Grimm, Deutsche
-Sagen, II, p. 177), “Water-Peter,” with numerous variations (Grimm,
-III, p. 103), “Fundevogel,” No. 51, “The Three Birdies” (No. 96),
-“The King of the Golden Mountain” (No. 92), with its parallels, as
-well as some foreign fairy tales, which are quoted by Bauer, at the
-end of his article. Compare also, in Hahn, “Greek and Albanese Fairy
-Tales” (Leipsic, 1864), the review of the exposure stories and myths,
-especially 20 and 69.
-
-[101] A connection is here supplied with the motive of the twins, in
-which we seem to recognize the two boys born at the same time, one of
-which dies for the sake of the other, be it directly after birth, or
-later, and whose parents appear divided in our myths into two or more
-parent couples. Concerning the probable significance of this shadowy
-twin-brother as the after-birth, compare the author’s discussion in his
-Incest Book (p. 457, etc.).
-
-[102] The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Völsunga
-Saga (compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version
-of the Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero’s wonderful
-career, together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see
-Bauer, p. 554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et
-seq.), with the exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy
-brethren, and the fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this
-type of myth.
-
-[103] In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to
-emphasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths.
-Kyros, as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered
-(compare Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an
-old hereditary royal house. It could not be the object of the myth
-to elevate the descent of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation
-be regarded as an attempt to establish a lowly descent of Kyros.
-Similar conditions prevail in the case of Sargon, whose royal father
-is also known (compare Jeremias, p. 410, annotation). Nevertheless,
-an historian writes about Sargon as follows (Ungnad, “Die Anfänge
-der Staatenbildung in Babylonien” (Beginnings of State Formation in
-Babylonia), _Deutsche Rundschau_, July, 1905): “He was evidently
-not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven about
-his birth and his youth.” It would be a gross error to consider our
-interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent
-contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under
-another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness,
-through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man
-who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The
-people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own
-infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or
-incompatibility with historical facts. This also serves to explain the
-transference of the typical motives, be it to several generations of
-the same hero family, or be it to historical personalities in general
-(concerning Cæsar, Augustus and others, compare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV,
-p. 271).
-
-[104] This identification of the families is carried through to the
-minutest detail in certain myths, as for example in the Œdipus myth,
-where one royal couple is offset by another, and where even the
-herdsman who receives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart
-in the herdsman to whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.
-
-[105] Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In German
-by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leipzig,
-1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see
-also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274)
-and Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore,
-Romulus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.
-
-[106] Compare Freud’s article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism
-(Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the
-Roman she-wolf, compare Jones’ Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The
-woodpecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (_loc. cit._, p.
-382 et seq.).
-
-[107] The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children.
-Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the
-player of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and
-further protection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare
-Gilgamos, Zal and Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and
-is nourished by a swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon
-the water. The interpretation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin
-saga also enters into present consideration. Its most important motives
-belong to this mythical cycle: Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the
-water, and is brought ashore by a swan. No one may ask whence he has
-come: the sexual mystery of the origin of man must not be revealed
-but it is replaced by the suggestion of the stork fable: the children
-are fished from the water by the swan and are taken to the parents
-in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all enquiries in the
-Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the Œdipus myth),
-a _command to investigate_, or a riddle which must be _solved_. For
-the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare Freud,
-Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare the
-author’s extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and
-the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection,
-Vienna and Leipzig, 1911).
-
-[108] Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy.
-_Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen_, Vol. I, 1909.
-
-[109] Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of
-Greek Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and
-the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually
-reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is
-recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered
-to the rank of a nurse. There may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded
-as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.
-
-[110] Abraham, _loc. cit._, p. 40; Riklin, _loc. cit._, p. 74.
-
-[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay,
-because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A.
-Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441)
-which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger
-writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself
-to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The
-desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant
-circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early
-years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she
-was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who
-had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her
-grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become
-entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any
-harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that
-she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter
-of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She
-therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of
-which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests
-the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”
-
-The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case
-from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in
-isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in
-Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of
-her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed
-by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer
-of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own
-daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian
-language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to
-her masculine energy, is a matter of history.
-
-Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v.
-Roscher).
-
-[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous
-and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des
-Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und
-ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.
-
-[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where
-the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can
-enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through
-castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against
-the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance.
-Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the
-infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile
-Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy
-(Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).
-
-[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s
-Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.
-
-[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of
-Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels:
-Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).
-
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