MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

By John Fiske

La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivreles croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusqu'auxsuperstitions de nos campagnes. --EDMOND SCHERER

TO MY DEAR FRIEND, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANTAUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND NIXIES, I dedicateTHIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES. 

PREFACE. 

IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series of papers, in which I have endeavoured to touch briefly upon a great many of themost important points in the study of mythology, I think it right toobserve that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricatediscussions, I have sometimes cut the matter short, expressing myselfwith dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might perhapshave seemed more becoming. In treating of popular legends andsuperstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and seldomcan we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have travelled all theway around Robin Hood's barn and back again. I am sure that the readerwould not have thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes with thethorns and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to suchan extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever reaching the high road. I have not attempted to review, otherwise than incidentally, the worksof Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor; nor can I pretendto have added anything of consequence, save now and then some bit ofexplanatory comment, to the results obtained by the labour of thesescholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these results in sucha way as to awaken general interest in them. And accordingly, in dealingwith a subject which depends upon philology almost as much as astronomydepends upon mathematics, I have omitted philological considerationswherever it has been possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe thatnothing has been advanced as established which is not now generallyadmitted by scholars, and that nothing has been advanced as probable forwhich due evidence cannot be produced. Yet among many points which areproved, and many others which are probable, there must always remainmany other facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanationis the true one; and the student who endeavours to fathom the primitivethoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will do well to bear inmind the modest words of Jacob Grimm, --himself the greatest scholar andthinker who has ever dealt with this class of subjects, --"I shall indeedinterpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I shouldlike. "

PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872. 

CONTENTS. 

 I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

 II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE

 III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

 IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS

 V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

 VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI

 VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

 NOTE

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS. 

I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 

FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His exploitshave been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and one of the mostpopular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless familiar tomany who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who are quiteignorant of the prowess of Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot, nay, even Charlemagne, are but empty names. 

Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely thatno such person as William Tell ever existed, and it is certain that thestory of his shooting the apple from his son's head has no historicalvalue whatever. In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forcedupon us as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with thecanons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point to Tell'slime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal atZurich, as unimpeachable witnesses to the truth of the story. It is invain that we are told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify toit; therefore, deny it not. " These proofs are not more valid than thehandkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross. For ifrelics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the truth ofevery miracle narrated by the Bollandists. 

The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures of WilliamTell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in 1482. Asthe shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in 1296, thisleaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years, during whichneither a Tell, nor a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty ofGessler, received any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man bythe name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenthcentury, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical actsby which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do notonce mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with hisexploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he isnot alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John ofWinterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was livingat the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father waspresent. He tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he sawDuke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal field, half dead withfear. He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, allthe incidents of the Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a wordabout William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive. These mediaevalchroniclers, who never failed to go out of their way after a bit of theepigrammatic and marvellous, who thought far more of a pointed storythan of historical credibility, would never have kept silent about theadventures of Tell, if they had known anything about them. 

After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors whodescribe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topographyand chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to confront us whenwe leave the solid ground of history and begin to deal with floatinglegends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have beenits origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand thediscussion. 

The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William Tellwas Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in 1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words, concludes by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is sopopular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we aretold, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burntalive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had a Danishorigin. [1]

The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many otherheretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of Tell is given asfollows, by Saxo Grammaticus:--

"A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's body-guard, hadmade his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zealwith which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This manonce, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was soskilled an archer that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long wayoff on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by theears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, markhow the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the sire to theperil of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge of his lifeshould be placed instead of the wand, with a threat that, unless theauthor of this promise could strike off the apple at the first flight ofthe arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the lossof his head. The king's command forced the soldier to perform morethan he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by the tongues ofslanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did nothis sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slander, suffer himto lay aside his firmness of heart; nay, he accepted the trial the morereadily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently whenhe took his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calmears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he shoulddefeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking further counsel toprevent his fear, he turned away his face, lest he should be scared atthe sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, hestruck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows fromthe quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortuneof the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the swervingof the first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my innocencemight have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free. '" [2]

This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth, andthe occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story appearsnot only in Denmark, but in England, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was knownin India. In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of WaylandSmith, the Norse Vulcan. In England there is the ballad of William ofCloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many details of the archery scenein "Ivanhoe. " Here, says the dauntless bowman, "I have a sonne seven years old; Hee is to me full deere; I will tye him to a stake-- All shall see him that bee here-- And lay an apple upon his head, And goe six paces him froe, And I myself with a broad arrowe Shall cleave the apple in towe. "

In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famousmagician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castren dug up thesame legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to theTurks and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who neverheard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter andverse, of one of their marksmen. " Finally, in the Persian poem ofFarid-Uddin Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shootsan apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories, namesand motives of course differ; but all contain the same essentialincidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at the capriciouscommand of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him asmall object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archeralways provides himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned as tothe use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable replyis, "To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son. " Now, when a marvellousoccurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure thatit never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselvesindefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking anddramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected leadinevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in itsgeneral features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left theirprimitive dwelling-place in Central Asia. 

It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen mayreally have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the legend;and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from onecountry to another and from age to age, may have formed the theme forall the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La Fontainewere patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many ofChaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt therehas been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the legends ofdifferent peoples, as well as among the words of different languages;and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may havenow and then been carried about the world in this manner. But as thephilologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between thenative and the imported words in any Aryan language, by examining theirphonetic peculiarities, so the student of popular traditions, thoughworking with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, withreference to a vast number of legends, that they cannot have beenobtained by any process of conscious borrowing. The difficultiesinseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more apparentas we proceed to examine a few other stories current in differentportions of the Aryan domain. 

As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived ofhis brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate I confess to having shedmore tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunesof many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how the dear old brutekilled the wolf which had come to devour Llewellyn's child, and how theprince, returning home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's mouthdripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the childfrom behind the cradle and the sight of the wolf's body had rectifiedhis error. To this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touchingstory, and shown the place, called Beth-Gellert, [3] where the dog'sgrave is still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in thefireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form itstarted in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and ithas even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, aninsect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the following comical shape:"A Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Waliwithin an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with hisefforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discoveredamongst the herbs a poisonous snake. " [4] Now this story of the Wali isas manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as the English wordFATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain thatthe word father is in any sense derived from pater, so it would beimpossible to represent either the Welsh or the Egyptian legend as acopy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is forced upon us that thestories, like the words, are related collaterally, having descended froma common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by one and the sameprimeval idea. 

Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of Faithful Johnand of Rama and Luxman. In the German story, Faithful John accompaniesthe prince, his master, on a journey in quest of a beautiful maiden, whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are carrying her home acrossthe seas, Faithful John hears some crows, whose language he understands, foretelling three dangers impending over the prince, from which hisfriend can save him only by sacrificing his own life. As soon as theyland, a horse will spring toward the king, which, if he mounts it, willbear him away from his bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, andtells the king the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee. Then, before the wedding a bridal garment will lie before the king, which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the Nessos-shirt ofHerakles; but whoever throws the shirt into the fire and tells theking the reason, will be turned into stone from knee to heart. Finally, during the wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon, and "unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right breastshe will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king the reason, willbe turned into stone from head to foot. Thus forewarned, Faithful Johnsaves his master from all these dangers; but the king misinterpretshis motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to be hanged. On thescaffold he tells his story, and while the king humbles himself in anagony of remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone. 

In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying homehis bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking about the perils that awaithis master and mistress. First he saves them from being crushed by thefalling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an archwhich immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman killsit with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra'sblood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief atthis unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned into stone. [5]

For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the "Giantwho had no Heart in his Body, " as related by Dr. Dasent. This burlymagician having turned six brothers with their wives into stone, theseventh brother--the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of Europeanfolk-lore--sets out to obtain vengeance if not reparation for the evildone to his kith and kin. On the way he shows the kindness of his natureby rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The gratefulwolf carries him on his back to the giant's castle, where the lovelyprincess whom the monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to act, in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finallysuccumbs to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies anisland; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; inthat well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg; and in that eggthere lies my heart, you darling. " Boots, thus instructed, rides on thewolf's back to the island; the raven flies to the top of the steeple andgets the church-keys; the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, andbrings up the egg from the place where the duck had dropped it; andso Boots becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the egg, the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which Bootspromises to spare on condition that his brothers and their brides shouldbe released from their enchantment. But when all has been duly effected, the treacherous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantlybursts. 

The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is publishedin Miss Frere's remarkable collection of tales entitled "Old DeccanDays. " In the Hindu version the seven daughters of a rajah, withtheir husbands, are transformed into stone by the great magicianPunchkin, --all save the youngest daughter, whom Punchkin keeps shut upin a tower until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marryhim. But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the cradle, whogrows up to manhood unmolested, and finally undertakes the rescue of hisfamily. After long and weary wanderings he finds his mother shut up inPunchkin's tower, and persuades her to play the part of the princessin the Norse legend. The trick is equally successful. "Hundreds ofthousands of miles away there lies a desolate country covered with thickjungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and inthe centre of the circle stand six jars full of water, piled one aboveanother; below the sixth jar is a small cage which contains a littlegreen parrot; on the life of the parrot depends my life, and if theparrot is killed I must die. " [6] The young prince finds the placeguarded by a host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from adevouring serpent in the course of his journey take him on theircrossed wings and carry him to the place where the jars are standing. Heinstantly overturns the jars, and seizing the parrot, obtains from theterrified magician full reparation. As soon as his own friends and astately procession of other royal or noble victims have been set atliberty, he proceeds to pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legscome away, so tumble off the arms and legs of the magician; and finallyas the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own head roundand dies. 

The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some portionsof it will be recognized by the reader as incidents in the Arabiantale of the Princess Parizade. The union of close correspondence inconception with manifest independence in the management of the detailsof these stories is striking enough, but it is a phenomenon with whichwe become quite familiar as we proceed in the study of Aryan popularliterature. The legend of the Master Thief is no less remarkable thanthat of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the Thief, wishing to getpossession of a farmer's ox, carefully hangs himself to a tree by theroadside. The farmer, passing by with his ox, is indeed struck by thesight of the dangling body, but thinks it none of his business, anddoes not stop to interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief letshimself down, and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself withequal precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is astonishedand puzzled; but when for the third time he meets the same unwontedspectacle, thinking that three suicides in one morning are too much foreasy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether the othertwo bodies are really where he thought he saw them. While he is framinghypotheses of witchcraft by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thiefgets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives a finerpoint. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the market to buya goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. Theystationed themselves at intervals on the high road. When the Brahman, who carried the goat on his back, approached the first thief, thethief said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahmanreplied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat. ' A little while after he wasaccosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dogon your back?' The Brahman felt perplexed, put the goat down, examinedit, took it up again, and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by thethird thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?'Then the Brahman was frightened, threw down the goat, and walked home toperform his ablutions for having touched an unclean animal. The thievestook the goat and ate it. " The adroitness of the Norse King in "TheThree Princesses of Whiteland" shows but poorly in comparison with thekeen psychological insight and cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. In the course of his travels this prince met three brothers fightingon a lonely moor. They had been fighting for a hundred years about thepossession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which would make thewearer invisible, and convey him instantly whithersoever he might wishto go. The King consents to act as umpire, provided he may once try thevirtue of the magic garments; but once clothed in them, of course hedisappears, leaving the combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs. Now in the "Sea of Streams of Story, " written in the twelfth century bySomadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King Putraka, wandering in the VindhyaMountains, similarly discomfits two brothers who are quarrelling overa pair of shoes, which are like the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl whichhas the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race forthem?" suggests Putraka; and, as the two blockheads start furiously off, he quietly picks up the bowl, ties on the shoes, and flies away! [7]

It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The tales here quotedare fair samples of the remarkable correspondence which holds goodthrough all the various sections of Aryan folk-lore. The hypothesisof lateral diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails to explaincoincidences which are maintained on such an immense scale. It is quitecredible that one nation may have borrowed from another a solitarylegend of an archer who performs the feats of Tell and Palnatoki; but itis utterly incredible that ten thousand stories, constituting the entiremass of household mythology throughout a dozen separate nations, shouldhave been handed from one to another in this way. No one would ventureto suggest that the old grannies of Iceland and Norway, to whom we owesuch stories as the Master Thief and the Princesses of Whiteland, hadever read Somadeva or heard of the treasures of Rhampsinitos. A largeproportion of the tales with which we are dealing were utterly unknownto literature until they were taken down by Grimm and Frere andCastren and Campbell, from the lips of ignorant peasants, nurses, orhouse-servants, in Germany and Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland. Yet, as Mr. Cox observes, these old men and women, sitting by thechimney-corner and somewhat timidly recounting to the literary explorerthe stories which they had learned in childhood from their ownnurses and grandmas, "reproduce the most subtle turns of thought andexpression, and an endless series of complicated narratives, in whichthe order of incidents and the words of the speakers are preservedwith a fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition of historicalevents. It may safely be said that no series of stories introducedin the form of translations from other languages could ever thus havefiltered down into the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprungup again, like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened beauty. "There is indeed no alternative for us but to admit that these firesidetales have been handed down from parent to child for more than a hundredgenerations; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his eveningmeal of yava and sipped his fermented mead, listened with his childrento the stories of Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the dayswhen the squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-skinned Sudrawas as yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origincan explain the community in character between the stories told by theAryan's descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands ofScotland. 

This conclusion essentially modifies our view of the origin and growthof a legend like that of William Tell. The case of the Tell legend isradically different from the case of the blindness of Belisarius orthe burning of the Alexandrian library by order of Omar. The latter areisolated stories or beliefs; the former is one of a family of stories orbeliefs. The latter are untrustworthy traditions of doubtful events; butin dealing with the former, we are face to face with a MYTH. 

What, then, is a myth? The theory of Euhemeros, which was so fashionablea century ago, in the days of the Abbe Banier, has long since been soutterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. Thepeculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the extraordinaryfeatures of a given myth, wherein dwelt its inmost significance, and tothe dull and useless residuum accorded the dignity of primeval history. In this way the myth was lost without compensation, and the student, in seeking good digestible bread, found but the hardest of pebbles. Considered merely as a pretty story, the legend of the golden fruitwatched by the dragon in the garden of the Hesperides is not without itsvalue. But what merit can there be in the gratuitous statement which, degrading the grand Doric hero to a level with any vulgar fruit-stealer, makes Herakles break a close with force and arms, and carry off a cropof oranges which had been guarded by mastiffs? It is still worse whenwe come to the more homely folk-lore with which the student of mythologynow has to deal. The theories of Banier, which limped and stumbledawkwardly enough when it was only a question of Hermes and Minos andOdin, have fallen never to rise again since the problems of Punchkinand Cinderella and the Blue Belt have begun to demand solution. The conclusion has been gradually forced upon the student, that themarvellous portion of these old stories is no illegitimate extres-cence, but was rather the pith and centre of the whole, [8] in days when therewas no supernatural, because it had not yet been discovered that therewas such a thing as nature. The religious myths of antiquity and thefireside legends of ancient and modern times have their common root inthe mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recordedutterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world intowhich they were born. 

That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men are wontto regard natural phenomena was in early times unknown. We have cometo regard all events as taking place regularly, in strict conformity tolaw: whatever our official theories may be, we instinctively take thisview of things. But our primitive ancestors knew nothing about laws ofnature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations ofcause and effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things. There was a time in the history of mankind when these things had neverbeen inquired into, and when no generalizations about them had beenframed, tested, or established. There was no conception of an order ofnature, and therefore no distinct conception of a supernatural order ofthings. There was no belief in miracles as infractions of natural laws, but there was a belief in the occurrence of wonderful events too mightyto have been brought about by ordinary means. There was an unlimitedcapacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had notyet been checked and headed off in various directions by establishedrules of experience. Physical science is a very late acquisition of thehuman mind, but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be almostcompletely disabled from comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors. "How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and heaven to bemade out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell representingheaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding fluid thecircumambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it remains afact that they did so regard them. How the Scandinavians could havesupposed the mountains to be the mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun, and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot conceive; yet such atheory was solemnly taught and accepted. How the ancient Indians couldregard the rain-clouds as cows with full udders milked by the windsof heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet their Veda containsindisputable testimony to the fact that they were so regarded. " We haveonly to read Mr. Baring-Gould's book of "Curious Myths, " from whichI have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's treatise on "NorthernMythology, " to realize how vast is the difference between ourstand-point and that from which, in the later Middle Ages, our immediateforefathers regarded things. The frightful superstition of werewolves isa good instance. In those days it was firmly believed that men could be, and were in the habit of being, transformed into wolves. It was believedthat women might bring forth snakes or poodle-dogs. It was believed thatif a man had his side pierced in battle, you could cure him by nursingthe sword which inflicted the wound. "As late as 1600 a German writerwould illustrate a thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn by a pictureof a dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongueand iron teeth. "

Now if such was the condition of the human intellect only three or fourcenturies ago, what must it have been in that dark antiquity when noteven the crudest generalizations of Greek or of Oriental science hadbeen reached? The same mighty power of imagination which now, restrainedand guided by scientific principles, leads us to discoveries andinventions, must then have wildly run riot in mythologic fictionswhereby to explain the phenomena of nature. Knowing nothing whateverof physical forces, of the blind steadiness with which a given effectinvariably follows its cause, the men of primeval antiquity couldinterpret the actions of nature only after the analogy of their ownactions. The only force they knew was the force of which they weredirectly conscious, --the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined allthe outward world to be endowed with volition, and to be directed by it. They personified everything, --sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean, earthquake, whirlwind. [9] The comparatively enlightened Athenians ofthe age of Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it torain upon their gardens. [10] And for calling the moon a mass of deadmatter, Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients the moonwas not a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it was the horned huntress, Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing herself in theclear lake; or it was Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of thesea-foam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of vaporizedwater: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking byHermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain bythe unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flittingacross the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field toreceive the souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mightymountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses thedivining-wand of the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. Theyellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flamingchariot; or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust fromthe sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole), which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazingfuneral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath; or, as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters, to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash, inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot toonear the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorchingarrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land. Still otherconceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderfultreasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and again itwas Ixion himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for violenceoffered to Here, the queen of the blue air. 

This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and plausible, it is, in its essential points, demonstrated. It stands on as firm afoundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory theory inmolecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us to read theprimitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the names of Greek godsand heroes have no meaning in the Greek language; but these names occuralso in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings. In the Veda we findZeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameias or Hermes, meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We find Athene (Ahana), meaningthe light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled to understand why theGreek described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There toowe find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight, whom the Panis, ornight-demons, who serve as the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, striveto seduce from her allegiance to the solar monarch. Even Achilleus(Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive Briseis (Brisaya'soffspring); and the fierce Kerberos (Carvara) barks on Vedic ground instrict conformity to the laws of phonetics. [11] Now, when the Hindutalked about Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he thought of thepersonified sky and clouds; he had not outgrown the primitive mentalhabits of the race. But the Greek, in whose language these physicalmeanings were lost, had long before the Homeric epoch come to regardZeus and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus, as mere persons, and in most cases the originals of his myths were completely forgotten. In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in the sky, between the brightdeities and the demons of night; but the Greek poet, influenced perhapsby some dim historical tradition, has located the contest on the shoreof the Hellespont, and in his mind the actors, though superhuman, arestill completely anthropomorphic. Of the true origin of his epic storyhe knew as little as Euhemeros, or Lord Bacon, or the Abbe Banier. 

After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being misunderstoodwhen we define a myth as, in its origin, an explanation, by theuncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not anesoteric symbol, --for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect inmyths the remnants of a refined primeval science, --but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means ofallegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles whenplain language would serve their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure, worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they said, save that where we propound a scientifictheorem, they constructed a myth. [12] A thing is said to be explainedwhen it is classified with other things with which we are alreadyacquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of which the highestscience is capable. We explain the origin, progress, and ending of athunder-storm, when we classify the phenomena presented by it along withother more familiar phenomena of vaporization and condensation. But theprimitive man explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when hehad classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition, by constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerringarrows of a heavenly archer. We consider the nature of the stars toa certain extent explained when they are classified as suns; but theMohammedan compiler of the "Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih" was content to explainthem as missiles useful for stoning the Devil! Now, as soon as the oldGreek, forgetting the source of his conception, began to talk of a humanOidipous slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the Mussulman began, if he ever did, to tell his children how the Devil once got a goodpelting with golden bullets, then both the one and the other weretalking pure mythology. 

We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between a myth anda legend. Though the words are etymologically parallel, and though inordinary discourse we may use them interchangeably, yet when strictaccuracy is required, it is well to keep them separate. And it isperhaps needless, save for the sake of completeness, to say thatboth are to be distinguished from stories which have been designedlyfabricated. The distinction may occasionally be subtle, but is usuallybroad enough. Thus, the story that Philip II. Murdered his wifeElizabeth, is a misrepresentation; but the story that the same Elizabethwas culpably enamoured of her step-son Don Carlos, is a legend. Thestory that Queen Eleanor saved the life of her husband, Edward I. , bysucking a wound made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a legend; butthe story that Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus, who had stolen hiscattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is a myth. While a legend isusually confined to one or two localities, and is told of not more thanone or two persons, it is characteristic of a myth that it is spread, in one form or another, over a large part of the earth, the leadingincidents remaining constant, while the names and often the motivesvary with each locality. This is partly due to the immense antiquityof myths, dating as they do from a period when many nations, now widelyseparated, had not yet ceased to form one people. Thus many elements ofthe myth of the Trojan War are to be found in the Rig-Veda; and the mythof St. George and the Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But wemust not always infer that myths have a common descent, merely becausethey resemble each other. We must remember that the proceedings of theuncultivated mind are more or less alike in all latitudes, and thatthe same phenomenon might in various places independently give rise tosimilar stories. [13] The myth of Jack and the Beanstalk is found notonly among people of Aryan descent, but also among the Zulus of SouthAfrica, and again among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace astory in this way from one end of the world to the other, or through awhole family of kindred nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that weare dealing with a true myth, and not with a mere legend. 

Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at once obtain avalid explanation of its origin. The conception of infallible skillin archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popularfairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of thesun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrowsand spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armourcan protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes. The shafts of Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon of therain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure destructionto the serpent of winter. Odysseus, warring against the impiousnight-heroes, who have endeavoured throughout ten long years or hours ofdarkness to seduce from her allegiance his twilight-bride, the weaverof the never-finished web of violet clouds, --Odysseus, stripped ofhis beggar's raiment and endowed with fresh youth and beauty by thedawn-goddess, Athene, engages in no doubtful conflict as he raises thebow which none but himself can bend. Nor is there less virtue in thespear of Achilleus, in the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland'sstout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bediverewas so loath to part. All these are solar weapons, and so, too, arethe arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William ofCloudeslee, whose surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the Phaiakianland. William Tell, whether of Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the lastreflection of the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrainedfor a while to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness, asApollo served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bidding of Eurystheus. His solar character is well preserved, even in the sequel of the Swisslegend, in which he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as anarcher, and in which, after traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous seaof night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, andstrikes down the oppressor who has held him in bondage. 

But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he succumbs to treachery, is bound by the frost-giants, or slain by the demons of darkness. Thepoisoned shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to the mightyHerakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to save him fromthe craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy solarhero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be cut off by anuntimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe oldage, and triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, mustnevertheless yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and lookupon new works of strange men, until at last he is swallowed up in thewestern sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean shoulddisappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is that thehorned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in the far east. It isperhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as athorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in theheel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseusescapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition byhis old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of theSleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep whenpricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is lockedin icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, untilthe kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity. 

The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories ofspell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, andheroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposedto slumber. Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said tosleep through the winter months; and at the time of the falling leaves, by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe anddivinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape, fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek myth theshepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial slumber. TheGerman Siegfried, pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping untilhe shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by theVierwald-stattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when theircountry shall again need to be delivered from the oppressor. Charlemagneis reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming ofAntichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; andin a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossaslumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him tosally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms ofthe world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastianof Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers ofEphesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of theheathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and awoke tofind a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in thelegend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with Goda thousand years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutesentranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on wakingfrom his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family oflegends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until thelast days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound byVivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed awayfifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills. [14]

We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderfulsleepers; but, on the principle of the association of opposites, weare here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph ofArimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternitychases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classicTithonos; and the Man in the Moon. 

The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of humanfancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had beenbefore him. "Every one, " says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moonis inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has beenexiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he isbeyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if thenursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that

 'The Man in the Moon Came down too soon And asked his way to Norwich';

but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does notstate. " Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has him put up there as apunishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespearealso loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him adog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is stated to havebeen, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking, --an idea derived from the OldTestament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caughtgathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he iscondemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version places with him a woman, whosecrime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries her butter-tub; andthis brings us to Mother Goose again:--

 "Jack and Jill went up the hill To get a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after. "

This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view fromwhich it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsensein the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one. InIcelandic mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children whomthe moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They had been drawingwater in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole placedacross their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to thepresent day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the moon-spotsis to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They fall away oneafter the other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail symbolizes thesupposed connection of the moon with rain-storms. Other forms of themyth occur in Sanskrit. 

The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was calledHorsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediaeval mythology as apersecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, who all suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. Themeaning of the myth is obvious. In German mythology, England is thePhaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her loverbefore daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is callingher in England. " [15] The companions of Ursula are the pure stars, wholeave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regionsof day. In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis; but, in accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the sensualAphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story ofTannhauser. 

The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, betweenEisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope yawns a cavern, theHorselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, asof subterranean water. From this cave, in old times, the frightenedinhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night wild moansand cries issuing, mingled with peals of demon-like laughter. Here itwas believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few whodeclared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning themfrom the mouth of the chasm. " [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight andfamous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before himand beckoning him to her. " Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palacein the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in carelessrevelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpseof the pure light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, whotook compassion on him and released him. He sought a village church, andto priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution, until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt such ashis could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand growgreen and blossom. "Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his souldarkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to him, theVenusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discoveredthat his pastoral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower. Then he sent messengers after Tannhauser, and they reached the Horselvale to hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, hadjust entered the Horselloch. Since then Tannhauser has not been seen. "(p. 201. )

As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend, in itsChristianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the struggle betweenthe new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated withpagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled bythe hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up indespair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery. 

But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in thefolk-lore of every people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read itwithout being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill), entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numato the grove of the nymph Egeria; of Odysseus held captive by the LadyKalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale ofPrince Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus isensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph of darkness, Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or cover). So the zone of the moon-goddessAphrodite inveigles all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on MountIda; and by a similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemlyidleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world. The disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by VenusUrsula, the pale goddess of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance. 

But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources ofpopular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint Germanpicture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the wholewild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we seethe fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral armsoutstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, thealarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul withtheir weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnishedby this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest thesimplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; forthe true significance of the whole picture is contained in the father'saddress to his child, "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind; In durren Blattern sauselt der Wind. "

The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of RobertBrowning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people ofHamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direfulhost of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in abunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town ofthe vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe andpiped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackenedthe face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and followed thepiper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they alls jumpedin and were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone, the townsfolkrefused to pay the piper on the ground that he was evidently a wizard. He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, andputting his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat all thelittle, plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children came merrily runningafter him, their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do, while he led them up a hill in the neighbourhood. A door opened in themountain-side, through which he led them in, and they never were seenagain; save one lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in beforethe door shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he had notbeen able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street throughwhich this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to beplayed. For a long time the town dated its public documents from thisfearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historicalevent. [17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and, strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in Englandbelieve that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and inScandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs ofelf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagersto destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to followhim. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighingthrough untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than thewind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of thedead. " To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wailof the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past theircottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities. He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bearsaway the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes fillfilsa double function, is supposed to rush at night over the tree-tops, "accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's spirits. " And readersof recent French literature cannot fail to remember Erokmann-Chatrian'sterrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he sped throughthe forest, carrying away a young girl's soul. 

Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking noneother than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is the classicHermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and theSanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre ofApollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen byJack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. [18] And thefather, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures hischild that the siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of thewind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple class of phenomenaarose this entire family of charming legends. 

But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos), alsodraw rats after him? In answering this we shall have occasion to notethat the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice against thebrute creation which is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In manycountries, rats and mice have been regarded as sacred animals; but inGermany they were thought to represent the human soul. One story out ofa hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, aservant-girl fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling nuts. Theyobserved a little red mouse creep from her mouth and run out of thewindow. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wakeher, so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back tothe former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her, it vanished; at the same moment the girl died. " [19] This completes theexplanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to the horriblestory of Bishop Hatto. 

This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle ofwhich stream he possessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as theMouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and peoplecame from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's ample andwell-filled granaries. Well, he told them all to go into the barn, andwhen they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to thebarn and burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry supper. Butwhen he arose next morning, he heard that an army of rats had eaten allthe corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to storm the palace. Looking from his window, he saw the roads and fields dark with them, as they came with fell purpose straight toward his mansion. In frenziedterror he took his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river. But itwas of no use: down into the water marched the rats, and swam across, and scaled the walls, and gnawed through the stones, and came swarmingin about the shrieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all. Now, bearing in mind what was said above, there can be no doubt thatthese rats were the souls of those whom the Bishop had murdered. Thereare many versions of the story in different Teutonic countries, andin some of them the avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strangemetamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims. St. Gertrude, moreover, the heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead anarmy of mice; she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, inhis character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats. [20]

As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is thepsychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vediccounterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canineattributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the earlyAryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As thefearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the house-top, the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith berequired of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the howlingof a dog under the window is supposed to portend a death in the family. It is the fleet greyhound of Hermes, come to escort the soul to theriver Styx. [21]

But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing can be moretransparent than the phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes isdescribed as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in thecradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo, and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as crawlingthrough the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from underhim and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype not only ofthe crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slavewho robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in partthe conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pryand peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract orexpand himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale, [22]whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whomthe fisherman releases from the bottle. 

The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions suggestedby the storm-cloud and the lightning must be reserved for a futureoccasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate theconclusion which is the result of the present inquiry, that themarvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryanhousehold have a common origin with the classic legends of gods andheroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student'sserious attention. These stories--some of them familiar to us ininfancy, others the delight of our maturer years--constitute the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distanthighlands of ancient mythology. 

September, 1870. 

II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 

IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a smallinland village, I came upon an unexpected illustration of the tenacitywith which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have nowand then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under thetrees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct ofhalf a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly manwas moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forkedtwig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turnedupward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that theshank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certainspot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had assumed thelikeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain pointingto something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceededto try the experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something inthe ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not passover that spot without bending down and pointing to it. 

My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, asI perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the longdrought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and herewas an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. Thesemen were seeking water with a divining-rod. Here, alive before my eyes, was a superstitious observance, which I had supposed long since dead andforgotten by all men except students interested in mythology. 

As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy cameup, stoutly affirming his incredulity, and offering to show the company how he could carry the rod motionlessacross the charmed spot. But when he came to take the weird twig hetrembled with an ill-defined feeling of insecurity as to the soundnessof his conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet the rodbent in spite of him, --as was not so very strange. For, with all hisvague scepticism, the honest lad had not, and could not be supposed tohave, the foi scientifique of which Littre speaks. [23]

Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod; but something in my mannerseemed at once to excite the suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes, take it, " said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it;there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you breakyour back trying to hold it. " So he gave me the twig, and awaited, witha smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfitureof the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five timesacross the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward thezenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize. "Well, " said he, "you see, your temperament is peculiar; the conditionsain't favourable in your case; there are some people who never can workthese things. But there's water below here, for all that, as you'llfind, if you dig for it; there's nothing like a hazel-rod for findingout water. "

Very true: there are some persons who never can make such things work;who somehow always encounter "unfavourable conditions" when they wishto test the marvellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can make"Planchette" move in conformity to the requirements of any knownalphabet; who never see ghosts, and never have "presentiments, " savesuch as are obviously due to association of ideas. The ill-success ofthese persons is commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in themajority of cases, it might be more truly referred to the strength oftheir faith, --faith in the constancy of nature, and in the adequacyof ordinary human experience as interpreted by science. [24] La foiscientifique is an excellent preventive against that obscure, though notuncommon, kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to writeand tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without theconscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, nodoubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit toParis, [25] and which has in late years prevented persons from obtainingthe handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first authenticcase of clairvoyance. 

But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in hisphilosophizing, was certainly very defective in his acquaintance withthe time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries soas to cover the field of Indo-European tradition, he would have learnedthat the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, theHindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as thehazel for the purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in duecourse of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod itselfis but one among a large class of things to which popular belief hasascribed, along with other talismanic properties, the power of openingthe ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures. Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek forcooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us endeavour toelucidate the origin of this curious superstition. 

The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use towhich the divining-rod has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it wasregularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation ofJacques Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horriblemurder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has been used from time immemorialby miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in thedays when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field, instead of being exposed to the risks of financial speculation, thedivining-rod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours'wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he wouldhave taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to search for the buriedtreasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure ofdisease, and has been kept in households, like a wizard's charm, toinsure general good-fortune and immunity from disaster. 

As we follow the conception further into the elf-land of populartradition, we come upon a rod which not only points out the situation ofhidden treasure, but even splits open the ground and reveals the mineralwealth contained therein. In German legend, "a shepherd, who was drivinghis flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped to rest, leaning on hisstaff, the mountain suddenly opened, for there was a springwort in hisstaff without his knowing it, and the princess [Ilse] stood before him. She bade him follow her, and when he was inside the mountain she toldhim to take as much gold as he pleased. The shepherd filled all hispockets, and was going away, when the princess called after him, 'Forgetnot the best. ' So, thinking she meant that he had not taken enough, he filled his hat also; but what she meant was his staff with thespringwort, which he had laid against the wall as soon as he steppedin. But now, just as he was going out at the opening, the rock suddenlyslammed together and cut him in two. " [26]

Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the enclosedspringwort, but in many cases a leaf or flower is itself competent toopen the hillside. The little blue flower, forget-me-not, about whichso many sentimental associations have clustered, owes its name to thelegends told of its talismanic virtues. [27] A man, travelling on alonely mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks it in his hat. Forthwith an iron door opens, showing up a lighted passage-way, throughwhich the man advances into a magnificent hall, where rubies anddiamonds and all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great heaps onthe floor. As he eagerly fills his pockets his hat drops from his head, and when he turns to go out the little flower calls after him, "Forgetme not!" He turns back and looks around, but is too bewildered with hisgood fortune to think of his bare head or of the luck-flower which hehas let fall. He selects several more of the finest jewels he canfind, and again starts to go out; but as he passes through the door themountain closes amid the crashing of thunder, and cuts off one of hisheels. Alone, in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain for themysterious door: it has disappeared forever, and the traveller goes onhis way, thankful, let us hope, that he has fared no worse. 

Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess Ilse, who invites thefinder of the luck-flower to help himself to her treasures, and whoutters the enigmatical warning. The mountain where the event occurredmay be found almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it stood inPersia, in the golden prime of Haroun Alraschid. In the story of theForty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talisman toopen and shut the secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; andwhen the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the contemplation of thebags of gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula, he meets no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In thestory of Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow which guides the youngadventurer through the hillside to the grotto of the Peri Banou. Inthe tale of Baba Abdallah, it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid whichreveals at a single glance all the treasures hidden in the bowels of theearth. 

The ancient Romans also had their rock-breaking plant, called Saxifraga, or "sassafras. " And the further we penetrate into this charmed circleof traditions the more evident does it appear that the power of cleavingrocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive element, intothe conception of these treasure-showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gouldhas given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends concerning thewonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon was said to have builthis temple. From Asmodeus, prince of the Jann, Benaiah, the son ofJehoiada, wrested the secret of a worm no bigger than a barley-corn, which could split the hardest substance. This worm was called schamir. "If Solomon desired to possess himself of the worm, he must find thenest of the moor-hen, and cover it with a plate of glass, so that themother bird could not get at her young without breaking the glass. Shewould seek schamir for the purpose, and the worm must be obtained fromher. " As the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the stonesfor that temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron, [28] he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According toanother account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon topenetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni, the wise king covered a raven's eggs with a plate of crystal, and thusobtained schamir which the bird brought in order to break the plate. [29]

In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent, due to theprolonged intercourse between the Jews and the Persians, a new featureis added to those before enumerated: the rock-splitting talisman isalways found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in the mythreappears on Aryan soil. The springwort, whose marvellous powers we havenoticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, accordingto Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps itsyoung. The bird flies away, and presently returns with the springwort, which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a loudexplosion. The same account is given in German folk-lore. Elsewhere, as in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece, the bird is an eagle, aswallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe. 

In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "raven-stone, "also renders its possessor invisible, --a property which it shares withone of the treasure-finding plants, the fern. [30] In this respectit resembles the ring of Gyges, as in its divining and rock-splittingqualities it resembles that other ring which the African magrician gaveto Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the cavern where stood thewonderful lamp. 

According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower also will makeits finder invisible at pleasure. But, as the myth shrewdly adds, it isabsolutely essential that the flower be found by accident: he who seeksfor it never finds it! Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled, even if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of reasoning isfavoured by our modern dealers in mystery: somehow the "conditions"always are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to test theirpretensions. 

In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and grotesquelymetamorphosed. The hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried andprepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as theHand of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks, but alsolulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its influence, it is ofcourse invaluable to thieves and burglars. I quote the following storyfrom Thorpe's "Northern Mythology": "Two fellows once came to Huy, whopretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when they had supped wouldnot retire to a sleeping-room, but begged their host would allow themto take a nap on the hearth. But the maid-servant, who did not like thelooks of the two guests, remained by the kitchen door and peeped througha chink, when she saw that one of them drew a thief's hand from hispocket, the fingers of which, after having rubbed them with an ointment, he lighted, and they all burned except one. Again they held this fingerto the fire, but still it would not burn, at which they appeared muchsurprised, and one said, 'There must surely be some one in the housewho is not yet asleep. ' They then hung the hand with its four burningfingers by the chimney, and went out to call their associates. But themaid followed them instantly and made the door fast, then ran up stairs, where the landlord slept, that she might wake him, but was unable, notwithstanding all her shaking and calling. In the mean time thethieves had returned and were endeavouring to enter the house by awindow, but the maid cast them down from the ladder. They then took adifferent course, and would have forced an entrance, had it not occurredto the maid that the burning fingers might probably be the cause of hermaster's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she ran to the kitchenand blew them out, when the master and his men-servants instantlyawoke, and soon drove away the robbers. " The same event is said to haveoccurred at Stainmore in England; and Torquermada relates of Mexicanthieves that they carry with them the left hand of a woman who has diedin her first childbed, before which talisman all bolts yield and allopposition is benumbed. In 1831 "some Irish thieves attempted to commita robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. Theyentered the house armed with a dead man's hand with a lighted candle init, believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed in a deadman's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; andalso that if a candle in a dead hand be introduced into a house, it willprevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, however, werealarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them. " [31]

In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just like thedivining-rod, for the detection of buried treasures. 

Here, then, we have a large and motley group of objects--the forkedrod of ash or hazel, the springwort and the luck-flower, leaves, worms, stones, rings, and dead men's hands--which are for the most partcompetent to open the way into cavernous rocks, and which all agreein pointing out hidden wealth. We find, moreover, that many of thesecharmed objects are carried about by birds, and that some of thempossess, in addition to their generic properties, the specific power ofbenumbing people's senses. What, now, is the common origin of this wholegroup of superstitions? And since mythology has been shown to be theresult of primeval attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, whatnatural phenomenon could ever have given rise to so many seeminglywanton conceptions? Hopeless as the problem may at first sight seem, ithas nevertheless been solved. In his great treatise on "The Descentof Fire, " Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and traditions aredescended from primitive myths explanatory of the lightning and thestorm-cloud. [32]

To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed byscience, the sky is known to be merely an optical appearance due to thepartial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick stratumof atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of wateryvapour, which descend in rain-drops when sufficiently condensed; andthe lightning is known to be a flash of light accompanying an electricdischarge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have beenattained only through centuries of philosophizing and after carefulobservation and laborious experiment. To the untaught mind of a child orof an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural and plausible to regardthe sky as a solid dome of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains, or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning as a flashing dart ora fiery serpent. In point of fact, we find that the conceptions actuallyentertained are often far more grotesque than these. I can recollectonce framing the hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset weretransient apparitions, vouchsafed us by way of warning, of that burningCalvinistic hell with which my childish imagination had been unwiselyterrified; [33] and I have known of a four-year-old boy who thought thatthe snowy clouds of noonday were the white robes of the angels hung outto dry in the sun. [34] My little daughter is anxious to know whetherit is necessary to take a balloon in order to get to the place whereGod lives, or whether the same end can be accomplished by going to thehorizon and crawling up the sky; [35] the Mohammedan of old was workingat the same problem when he called the rainbow the bridge Es-Sirat, overwhich souls must pass on their way to heaven. According to the ancientJew, the sky was a solid plate, hammered out by the gods, and spreadover the earth in order to keep up the ocean overhead; [36] but theplate was full of little windows, which were opened whenever it becamenecessary to let the rain come through. [37] With equal plausibilitythe Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve in which the daughtersof Danaos were vainly trying to draw water; while to the Hindu therain-clouds were celestial cattle milked by the wind-god. In primitiveAryan lore, the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were shipssailing over it; and an English legend tells how one of these shipsonce caught its anchor on a gravestone in the churchyard, to the greatastonishment of the people who were coming out of church. Charon'sferry-boat was one of these vessels, and another was Odin's golden ship, in which the souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Valhalla. Hence itwas once the Scandinavian practice to bury the dead in boats; and inAltmark a penny is still placed in the mouth of the corpse, that it mayhave the means of paying its fare to the ghostly ferryman. [38] In sucha vessel drifted the Lady of Shalott on her fatal voyage; and of similarnature was the dusky barge, "dark as a funeral-scarf from stem tostern, " in which Arthur was received by the black-hooded queens. [39]

But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained in one way did nothinder it from being explained in a dozen other ways. The fact that thesun was generally regarded as an all-conquering hero did not preventits being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the waters, orIxion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or the stone of Sisyphos, whichwas no sooner pushed to the zenith than it rolled down to the horizon. So the sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but it wasalso the Aleian land through which Bellerophon wandered, the country ofthe Lotos-eaters, or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight;and finally it was personified and worshipped as Dyaus or Varuna, theVedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos. The clouds, too, hadmany other representatives besides ships and cows. In a future paper itwill be shown that they were sometimes regarded as angels or houris; atpresent it more nearly concerns us to know that they appear, throughoutall Aryan mythology, under the form of birds. It used to be a matter ofhopeless wonder to me that Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's eggto hang in the dome of his palace should have been regarded as a crimeworthy of punishment by the loss of the wonderful lamp; the obscurestpart of the whole affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusionto the egg as his master: "Wretch! dost thou command me to bring theemy master, and hang him up in the midst of this vaulted dome?" But theincident is to some extent cleared of its mystery when we learn thatthe roc's egg is the bright sun, and that the roc itself is the rushingstorm-cloud which, in the tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starryfirmament, symbolized as a valley of diamonds. [40] According to oneArabic authority, the length of its wings is ten thousand fathoms. Butin European tradition it dwindles from these huge dimensions to the sizeof an eagle, a raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated byKuhn and others as representing the storm-cloud are likewise the wrenor "kinglet" (French roitelet); the owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo, stork, and sparrow; and the red-breasted robin, whose name Robert wasoriginally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In certain parts ofFrance it is still believed that the robbing of a wren's nest willrender the culprit liable to be struck by lightning. The same belief wasformerly entertained in Teutonic countries with respect to the robin;and I suppose that from this superstition is descended the prevalentnotion, which I often encountered in childhood, that there is somethingpeculiarly wicked in killing robins. 

Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir, is thedark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or pebble whichthe bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing moreor less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the cloud. "If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird, the lightnings wereregarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fieryserpents, elikiai gram-moeidws feromenoi, are believed in to this day bythe Canadian Indians, who call the thunder their hissing. " [41]

But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to be foundwrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the divining-rod. Thepersons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious allegoriesabout thunder-storms; they were telling stories, or giving utteranceto superstitions, of which the original meaning was forgotten. The oldgrannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quailsand partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of killingrobins, did not add that I should be struck by lightning if I failed toheed their admonitions. They had never heard that the robin was the birdof Thor; they merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition whichhad survived to their own times, while the essential part of it had longsince faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a robin'slife as more sacred than a partridge's had been forgotten; but it leftbehind, as was natural, a vague recognition of that mythical sanctity. The primitive meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as theprimitive meaning of a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of aworm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderboltsthan the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees the wordostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes the phrase goodbye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth isfelt, and its period of luxuriant development dates from the time whenits physical significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greekhad forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make himking over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried hissignificance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attainedsuch an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obviouspedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu. 

Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted merely the wonderfulstories which their own nurses and grandmas had told them, and had nointention of weaving subtle allegories or wrapping up a physicaltruth in mystic emblems, it follows that they were not bound toavoid incongruities or to preserve a philosophical symmetry in theirnarratives. In the great majority of complex myths, no such symmetry isto be found. A score of different mythical conceptions would get wroughtinto the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and construct asingle harmonious system of conceptions out of the pieces must often endin ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is unquestionably the sun, so is theeye of Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out. [42] But the Greek poet knewnothing of the incongruity, for he was thinking only of a superhumanhero freeing himself from a giant cannibal; he knew nothing of Sanskrit, or of comparative mythology, and the sources of his myths were ascompletely hidden from his view as the sources of the Nile. 

We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of theschamir-myth the cloud is the bird which carries the worm, while inanother version the cloud is the rock or mountain which the talismancleaves open; nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which thetwo conceptions are mingled together without regard to an incongruitywhich in the mind of the myth-teller no longer exists. [43]

In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which the clouds aremore frequently represented than by rocks or mountains. Such were theSymplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the wind-god Orpheus, partedto make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of solar heroes. [44] Such, too, were the mountains Ossa and Pelion, which the giantspiled up one upon another in their impious assault upon Zeus, the lordof the bright sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould observes: "The ancient Aryan hadthe same name for cloud and mountain. To him the piles of vapour on thehorizon were so like Alpine ranges, that he had but one word whereby todesignate both. [45] These great mountains of heaven were opened by thelightning. In the sudden flash he beheld the dazzling splendour within, but only for a moment, and then, with a crash, the celestial rocksclosed again. Believing these vaporous piles to contain resplendenttreasures of which partial glimpse was obtained by mortals in amomentary gleam, tales were speedily formed, relating the adventures ofsome who had succeeded in entering these treasure-mountains. "

This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by the arrow ofAhmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the spear of Odin, the tridentof Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked streak of light is thearchetype of the divining-rod in its oldest form, --that in which itnot only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of theIlsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals themto the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to thedivining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall beforked. 

It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the ancientsto speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forkedwand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower orleaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certainsense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too complicatedto be satisfactorily treated within the limits of the present paper. Ithas been said that the point of resemblance between a cow and a comet, that both have tails, was quite enough for the primitive word-maker: itwas certainly enough for the primitive myth-teller. [46] Sometimes thepinnate shape of a leaf, the forking of a branch, the tri-cleft corolla, or even the red colour of a flower, seems to have been sufficient todetermine the association of ideas. The Hindu commentators of the Vedacertainly lay great stress on the fact that the palasa, one of theirlightning-trees, is trident-leaved. The mistletoe branch is forked, likea wish-bone, [47] and so is the stem which bears the forget-me-not orwild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the Hindu ficus religiosaresemble long spear-heads. [48] But in many cases it is impossiblefor us to determine with confidence the reasons which may have guidedprimitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In the case of someof these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity to attempt toassign a mythical origin for each point of detail. The ointment of thedervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has probably no specialmythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of thestory, in an age when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated andmingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as anotherthe purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of Indo-Europeanfolk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of; for however difficult itmay be for us to perceive any connection between them and the celestialphenomena which they represent, the myths concerning them are sonumerous and explicit as to render it certain that some such connectionwas imagined by the myth-makers. The superstition concerning the handof glory is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of the Finns, thestorm-cloud is a black man with a bright copper hand; and in Hindustan, Indra Savitar, the deity who slays the demon of the cloud, isgolden-handed. The selection of the hand of a man who has been hangedis probably due to the superstition which regarded the storm-god Odinas peculiarly the lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon thegallows is placed directly in the track of the wild huntsman, who comeswith his hounds to carry off the victim; and hence the notion, which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in Germany and not extinct inEngland, " that every suicide by hanging is followed by a storm. 

The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have now pursuedthem long enough I believe, to have arrived at a tolerably clearunderstanding of the original nature of the divining-rod. Its power ofrevealing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its affinityfor water results so obviously from the character of the lightning-mythas to need no further comment. But its power of detecting criminalsstill remains to be accounted for. 

In Greek mythology, the being which detects and punishes crime is theErinys, the prototype of the Latin Fury, figured by late writers as ahorrible monster with serpent locks. But this is a degradation of theoriginal conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean Fury, andit cannot be explained from Greek sources alone. It appears in Sanskritas Saranyu, a word which signifies the light of morning creeping overthe sky. And thus we are led to the startling conclusion that, as thelight of morning reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night, so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to be regarded under one aspectas the terrible detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling as theconclusion is, it is based on established laws of phonetic change, andcannot be gainsaid. 

But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the lightning and thedivining-rod? To the modern mind the association is not an obvious one:in antiquity it was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths ofthe lightning often resemble each other so closely that, except by adelicate philological analysis, it is difficult to distinguish the onefrom the other. The reason is obvious. In each case the phenomenon to beexplained is the struggle between the day-god and one of the demonsof darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the mind of theprimitive man between the Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows andkeep them in a dark cavern all night, and the throttling snake Ahi orEchidna, who imprisons the waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloudand covers the earth with a short-lived darkness. And so the poisonedarrows of Bellerophon, which slay the storm-dragon, differ in noessential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus slaughters thenight-demons who have for ten long hours beset his mansion. Thus thedivining-rod, representing as it does the weapon of the god of day, comes legitimately enough by its function of detecting and avengingcrime. 

But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives water tothe thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under cover of darkness;it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of theGorgon Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus the ointmentof the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all thetreasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy manwho tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open barsand bolts, benumbs also those who happen to be near it. Indeed, few ofthe favoured mortals who were allowed to visit the caverns opened bysesame or the luck-flower, escaped without disaster. The monkish tale of"The Clerk and the Image, " in which the primeval mythical features arecuriously distorted, well illustrates this point. 

In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its right handextended and on its forefinger the words "strike here. " Many wise menpuzzled in vain over the meaning of the inscription; but at last acertain priest observed that whenever the sun shone on the figure, theshadow of the finger was discernible on the ground at a little distancefrom the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until midnight, andthen began to dig. At last his spade struck upon something hard. Itwas a trap-door, below which a flight of marble steps descended into aspacious hall, where many men were sitting in solemn silence amid pilesof gold and diamonds and long rows of enamelled vases. Beyond this hefound another room, a gynaecium filled with beautiful women recliningon richly embroidered sofas; yet here, too, all was profound silence. A superb banqueting-hall next met his astonished gaze; then a silentkitchen; then granaries loaded with forage; then a stable crowdedwith motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly lighted by acarbuncle which was suspended in one corner of the reception-room; andopposite stood an archer, with his bow and arrow raised, in the act oftaking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed back through this hall, hesaw a diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carryaway something wherewith to accredit his story, he reached out hishand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. Thearcher had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into athousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found himselfburied alive. [49]

Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead, with itsbasilisk glance, those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns, it isregarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings withwhich the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower as itrevived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth ofOidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds, " is thedemon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering, darksayings which none but the all-knowing sun may understand. The flashof solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down from thecliff with a fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besidesthis, the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summerhas produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as thelife-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence the use of thedivining-rod in the cure of disease; and hence the large family ofschamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs. In Grimm's tale of the "Three Snake Leaves, " a prince is buried alive(like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching herbody, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawling fromthe corner, saw the other lying dead, and going, away soon returnedwith three green leaves in its mouth; then laying the parts of the bodytogether so as to join, it put one leaf on each wound, and the deadsnake was alive again. The prince, applying the leaves to his wife'sbody, restores her also to life. " [50] In the Greek story, told byAElian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with the corpse of Glaukos, which he is ordered to restore to life. He kills a dragon which isapproaching the body, but is presently astonished at seeing anotherdragon come with a blade of grass and place it upon its dead companion, which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos takes the same blade ofgrass, and with it resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in theHindu story of Panch Phul Ranee, and in Fouque's "Sir Elidoc, " which isfounded on a Breton legend. 

We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeuticproperties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to thevarious lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made ofmistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific againstepilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passedthrough holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods areused in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, andhorses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the venomof serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is notextinct even in the United States. The other day I was told, not by anold granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed with a very unusualamount of good common-sense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go throughfire than creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an ash-tree. Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who adds that if you drawa circle with an ash rod around the spot of ground on which a snakeis lying, the animal must die of starvation, being as effectuallyimprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is believedthat a blow from an ash stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ashshares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A Swedish peasant will tellyou that snakes may be deprived of their venom by a touch with a hazelwand; and when an ancient Greek had occasion to make his bed in thewoods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that the smellof them would drive away poisonous animals. [51]

But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more clearlyin another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of lightcoming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire forthe benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians accountfor the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship; they say that"their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendlypanther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill. " [52]This panther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird whichdrops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkableconception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar tothat employed by Count Rumford in his experiments on the generation ofheat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords around a pointedstick in such a way that the unwinding of the one would wind up theother, and then, placing the point of the stick against a circular diskof wood, twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. Thisinstrument is called a chark, and is still used in South Africa, [53]in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russiansfound it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, fromLabrador to the Straits of Magellan. [54] The Hindus churned milk bya similar process; [55] and in order to explain the thunder-storm, aSanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and theiropponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churningthe ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immortality. They took MountMandara for a churning-stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesharound it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, theDevas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head. " [56]In this myth the churning-stick, with its flying serpent-cords, isthe lightning, and the armrita, or drink of immortality, is simply therain-water, which in Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing virtuesas the lightning. "In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life whichrestores the dead earth, a water brought by a bird from the depths of agloomy cave. " [57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra lovesto drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is thecharmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to human shapethe victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life whichmediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce deLeon traversed the wilds of Florida. [58]

"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, andprepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He gota block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he cut andpointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, workedit round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity. Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burstinto a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark androasted them. "--Reade, Never too Late to Mend, chap. Xxxviii. 

The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the peakedmountain Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and devils took for theirchurning-stick. The word means "a churning-stick, " and it appears also, with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologicallyidentical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stolefire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons. This sublime personage was originally nothing but the celestial drillwhich churns fire out of the clouds; but the Greeks had so entirelyforgotten his origin that they interpreted his name as meaning "the onewho thinks beforehand, " and accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus, or "the one who thinks too late. " The Greeks had adopted another name, trypanon, for their fire-drill, and thus the primitive character ofPrometheus became obscured. 

I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely essential thatthe divining-rod should be forked. To this rule, however, there was oneexception, and if any further evidence be needed to convince themost sceptical that the divining-rod is nothing but a symbol ofthe lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For thisexceptional kind of divining-rod was made of a pointed stick rotatingin a block of wood, and it was the presence of hidden water or treasurewhich was supposed to excite the rotatory motion. 

In the myths relating to Prometheus, the lightning-god appears as theoriginator of civilization, sometimes as the creator of the human race, and always as its friend, [59] suffering in its behalf the most fearfultortures at the hands of the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates manby making a clay image and infusing into it a spark of the fire which hehad brought from heaven; in another story he is himself the first man. In the Peloponnesian myth Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under anothername, is the first man, and his mother was an ash-tree. In Norsemythology, also, the gods were said to have made the first man out ofthe ash-tree Yggdrasil. The association of the heavenly fire withthe life-giving forces of nature is very common in the myths of bothhemispheres, and in view of the facts already cited it need not surpriseus. Hence the Hindu Agni and the Norse Thor were patrons of marriage, and in Norway, the most lucky day on which to be married is stillsupposed to be Thursday, which in old times was the day of thefire-god. [60] Hence the lightning-plants have divers virtues inmatters pertaining to marriage. The Romans made their wedding torchesof whitethorn; hazel-nuts are still used all over Europe in divinationsrelating to the future lover or sweetheart; [61] and under a mistletoebough it is allowable for a gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number ofkindred superstitions are described by Mr. Kelly, to whom I am indebtedfor many of these examples. [62]

Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the divining-rod, oras it is called in this sense the wish-rod, with its kindred talismans, from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to the Sangreal, the philosopher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. Thesesymbols of the reproductive energies of nature, which give to thepossessor every good and perfect gift, illustrate the uncurbed belief inthe power of wish which the ancient man shared with modern children. Inthe Norse story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes a whimsical shape. The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of gold, when everybody hadwhatever he wanted. This was because the giant Frodi had a mill whichground out peace and plenty and abundance of gold withal, so that it layabout the roads like pebbles. Through the inexcusable avarice ofFrodi, this wonderful implement was lost to the world. For he kept hismaid-servants working at the mill until they got out of patience, andbegan to make it grind out hatred and war. Then came a mighty sea-roverby night and slew Frodi and carried away the maids and the quern. Whenhe got well out to sea, he told them to grind out salt, and so they didwith a vengeance. They ground the ship full of salt and sank it, and sothe quern was lost forever, but the sea remains salt unto this day. 

Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro or Freyr, andobserves that the magic mill is only another form of the fire-churn, orchark. According to another version the quern is still grinding awayand keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it lies there is aprodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which sucks down ships. 

In its completed shape, the lightning-wand is the caduceus, or rod ofHermes. I observed, in the preceding paper, that in the Greek conceptionof Hermes there have been fused together the attributes of two deitieswho were originally distinct. The Hermes of the Homeric Hymn is awind-god; but the later Hermes Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, themutilation of whose statues caused such terrible excitement in Athensduring the Peloponnesian War, is a very different personage. He isa fire-god, invested with many solar attributes, and represents thequickening forces of nature. In this capacity the invention of fire wasascribed to him as well as to Prometheus; he was said to be the friendof mankind, and was surnamed Ploutodotes, or "the giver of wealth. "

The Norse wind-god Odin has in like manner acquired several of theattributes of Freyr and Thor. [63] His lightning-spear, which isborrowed from Thor, appears by a comical metamorphosis as a wish-rodwhich will administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor. Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an old coat, nameyour intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howlwith pain at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's taleof "The Lad who went to the North Wind, " with which we may concludethis discussion. The story is told, with little variation, in Hindustan, Germany, and Scandinavia. 

The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes, once blew away apoor woman's meal. So her boy went to the North Wind and demanded hisrights for the meal his mother had lost. "I have n't got your meal, "said the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which will cover itself with anexcellent dinner whenever you tell it to. " So the lad took the cloth andstarted for home. At nightfall he stopped at an inn, spread his clothon the table, and ordered it to cover itself with good things, and soit did. But the landlord, who thought it would be money in his pocketto have such a cloth, stole it after the boy had gone to bed, andsubstituted another just like it in appearance. Next day the boy wenthome in great glee to show off for his mother's astonishment what theNorth Wind had given him, but all the dinner he got that day was whatthe old woman cooked for him. In his despair he went back to the NorthWind and called him a liar, and again demanded his rights for the mealhe had lost. "I have n't got your meal, " said the Wind, "but here's aram which will drop money out of its fleece whenever you tell it to. " Sothe lad travelled home, stopping over night at the same inn, and when hegot home he found himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of itsfleece. A third time he visited the North Wind, and obtained a bag witha stick in it which, at the word of command, would jump out of the bagand lay on until told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to hiscloth and ram, he turned in at the same tavern, and going to a bench laydown as if to sleep. The landlord thought that a stick carried about ina bag must be worth something, and so he stole quietly up to the bag, meaning to get the stick out and change it. But just as he got withinwhacking distance, the boy gave the word, and out jumped the stickand beat the thief until he promised to give back the ram and thetablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for the meal which the NorthWind had blown away. October, 1870. 

III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 

IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited Zeusto dinner, and served up for him a dish of human flesh, in order to testthe god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the impiousmonarch received the punishment which his crime had merited. He wastransformed into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the viandswith which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of Olympos. From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was eachyear, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin of a certainlake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into the waterand became a wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed about theadjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during allthis time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his clotheswere hanging, put them on, and return to his natural form. It is furtherrelated of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been present ata human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and wastransformed into a wolf for a term of ten years. [64]

These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the mediaevalimagination into the horrible superstition of werewolves. 

A werewolf, or loup-garou [65] was a person who had the power oftransforming himself into a wolf, being endowed, while in the lupinestate, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and theirresistible strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the existenceof such persons; but in the Middle Ages the metamorphosis was supposedto be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the present day, in secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still cherishedby peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast amountof evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed intoinsignificance. It is the business of the comparative mythologist totrace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may havesprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascertainingand classifying the actual facts which this particular conception wasused to interpret. 

The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to illustratethe complicated manner in which divers mythical conceptions andmisunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate along-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe thatthe whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon words; butthe careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz andBaring-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstanceshave been at work. The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in itsorigin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious mixtureof mythical and historical elements. 

With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is probablyright. The story seems to belong to that large class of myths which havebeen devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whosetrue significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios, as applied toZeus, had originally no reference to wolves: it means "the bright one, "and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only because of the similarityin sound between the names for "wolf" and "brightness. " Aryan mythologyfurnishes numerous other instances of this confusion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but popularetymology made a kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name asthe "wolf-born. " The name of the hero Autolykos means simply the"self-luminous"; but it was more frequently interpreted as meaning "avery wolf, " in allusion to the supposed character of its possessor. Bazra, the name of the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for"fortress"; but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide, " and hencethe story of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in order to measurethe area of the place to be fortified. The old theory that the Irishwere Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designatethe old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, "fair, " seen in thename of the hero Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclersidentified Fena with phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a likemisunderstanding of the epithet Miledh, or "warrior, " applied to Fion bythe Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and thesoubriquet "Milesian, " colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish. [66] So the Franks explained the name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chiefmagistrate with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give": [67] theGreek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs uswith equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander overcameCodomannus with dorn, "the spear. " A certain passage in the Alps iscalled Scaletta, from its resemblance to a staircase; but according to alocal tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons of acompany of Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, whileattempting to penetrate into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotesthe town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemishhandt werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend of the giantwho cut of the hands of those who passed his castle without paying himblack-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt. " [68] In the myth of BishopHatto, related in a previous paper, the Mause-thurm is a corruption ofmaut-thurm; it means "customs-tower, " and has nothing to do with miceor rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating mythgetting fastened to this particular place; that it did not give riseto the myth itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in otherplaces. Somewhere in England there is a place called Chateau Vert; thepeasantry have corrupted it into Shotover, and say that it hasborne that name ever since Little John shot over a high hill in theneighbourhood. [69] Latium means "the flat land"; but, according toVirgil, it is the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the wrathof his usurping son Jupiter. [70]

It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear receivedits name. The Greek word arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meantoriginally any bright object, and was applied to the bear--for whatreason it would not be easy to state--and to that constellation whichwas most conspicuous in the latitude of the early home of the Aryans. When the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi, they symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, asMax Muller observes, "the name of the Arctic regions rests on amisunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in CentralAsia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful observer has lookedat these seven bright stars, wondering why they were ever called theBear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human speech. "Among the Algonquins the sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, hisname being compounded of michi, "great, " and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabosalso meant "white, " so that the god was doubtless originally calledsimply "the Great White One. " The same naive process has made bears ofthe Arkadians, whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely signifiedthat they were "children of light"; and the metamorphosis of Kallisto, mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, restsapparently upon no other foundation than an erroneous etymology. Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but another form ofPhoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, hislegend is but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time of droughtoffers to Zeus the flesh of his own offspring, the withered fruits, andis punished for his impiety. 

It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though valid as faras it goes, is inadequate to explain all the features of the werewolfsuperstition, or to account for its presence in all Aryan countries andamong many peoples who are not of Aryan origin. There can be no doubtthat the myth-makers transformed Lykaon into a wolf because of hisunlucky name; because what really meant "bright man" seemed to themto mean "wolf-man"; but it has by no means been proved that a similarequivocation occurred in the case of all the primitive Aryan werewolves, nor has it been shown to be probable that among each people thebeing with the uncanny name got thus accidentally confounded with theparticular beast most dreaded by that people. Etymology alone does notexplain the fact that while Gaul has been the favourite haunt of theman-wolf, Scandinavia has been preferred by the man-bear, and Hindustanby the man-tiger. To account for such a widespread phenomenon we mustseek a more general cause. 

Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking than theclose community of nature which it assumes between man and brute. Thedoctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other allover the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two; theHindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow, and willon no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but it mayhe his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M`Lennan and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the primevalworship of ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism. [71]

The worship of ancestors seems to have been every where the oldestsystematized form of fetichistic religion. The reverence paid to thechieftain of the tribe while living was continued and exaggerated afterhis death The uncivilized man is everywhere incapable of graspingthe idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized people. He cannotunderstand that a man should pass away so as to be no longer capable ofcommunicating with his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comraderemains in his mind, and the savage's philosophic realism far surpassesthat of the most extravagant mediaeval schoolmen; to him the persistenceof the idea implies the persistence of the reality. The dead man, accordingly, is not really dead; he has thrown off his body like a husk, yet still retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to his oldfriends, especially after nightfall. He is no doubt possessed of moreextensive powers than before his transformation, [72] and may verylikely have a share in regulating the weather, granting or withholdingrain. Therefore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled andpropitiated more sedulously now than before his strange transformation. 

This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the statereligion of China, and it still exists as a portion of Brahmanism; butin the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its vigour and in allits naive simplicity. According to the ancient Aryan, the pitris, or"Fathers" (Lat. Patres), live in the sky along with Yama, the greatoriginal Pitri of mankind. This first man came down from heaven in thelightning, and back to heaven both himself and all his offspring musthave gone. There they distribute light unto men below, and they shinethemselves as stars; and hence the Christianized German peasant, fiftycenturies later, tells his children that the stars are angels' eyes, andthe English cottager impresses it on the youthful mind that it is wickedto point at the stars, though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are notstars only, nor do they content themselves with idly looking down onthe affairs of men, after the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities ofLucretius. They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather;they send rain, thunder, and lightning; and they especially delightin rushing over the housetops in a great gale of wind, led on by theirchief, the mysterious huntsman, Hermes or Odin. 

It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound ofHermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is suchan alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughoutall Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on thenight-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng thesouls of those just dying as they pass by their houses. [73] Sometimesthe whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a singledog, the messenger of the god of shades, who comes to summon thedeparting soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great raveningwolf who comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured little Red Riding-Hoodwith her robe of scarlet twilight. [74] Thus we arrive at a truewerewolf myth. The storm-wind, or howling Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore, is "a great misshapen giant with red beard and red hair, with pointedprotruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human flesh; his body iscovered with coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he looksfrom side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh and blood of men, to satisfy his raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst. Towardsnightfall his strength increases manifold; he can change his shape atwill; he haunts the woods, and roams howling through the jungle. " [75]

Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri whoappears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves or wish-hounds, or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious to themythopoeic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And tothe uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencerhas shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldicemblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degeneratedescendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by abeast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; andthe descendant of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyaena cannot bepronounced unfaithful to his own style of philosophizing, if he regardshis ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of night, as belonging to whatever order of beasts his totem associations maysuggest. 

Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject ofmetempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the curious process by whichthe intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion thatmen could be transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soulcan temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been universallyentertained; and from the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but ashort step to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Agesthe phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the theorythat the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it. Hence itwas very difficult for a person accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi;for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was innocentlyreposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was obvious that the soul maynevertheless have been in attendance at the witches' Sabbath or busiedin maiming a neighbour's cattle. According to one mediaeval notion, thesoul of the werewolf quit its human body, which remained in a tranceuntil its return. [76]

The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is now, I believe, sufficiently indicated. The belief, however, did not reach its completedevelopment, or acquire its most horrible features, until the paganhabits of thought which had originated it were modified by contactwith Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing necessarilydiabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. ButChristianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions under suchstrange disguises, which degraded the "All-father" Odin into the ogreof the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and which blendedthe beneficent lightning-god Thor and the mischievous Hermes and thefaun-like Pan into the grotesque Teutonic Devil, did not fail to imparta new and fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropybecame regarded as a species of witchcraft; the werewolf was supposedto have obtained his peculiar powers through the favour or connivanceof the Devil; and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken onthe wheel for having availed themselves of the privilege ofbeast-metamorphosis. The superstition, thus widely extended and greatlyintensified, was confirmed by many singular phenomena which cannotbe omitted from any thorough discussion of the nature and causes oflycanthropy. 

The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity, characteristicof Scandinavia, but not unknown in other countries. In times whenkilling one's enemies often formed a part of the necessary business oflife, persons were frequently found who killed for the mere love of thething; with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merelya means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which worshipsmammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the current idea of heavenwas that of a place where people could hack each other to pieces throughall eternity, and when the man who refused a challenge was punished withconfiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, the chief business and amusement in life was to set sail for somepleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the coasts andnavigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre. When at home, in theintervals between their freebooting expeditions, they were liable tobecome possessed by a strange homicidal madness, during which they wouldarray themselves in the skins of wolves or bears, and sally forth bynight to crack the backbones, smash the skulls, and sometimes to drinkwith fiendish glee the blood of unwary travellers or loiterers. Thesefits of madness were usually followed by periods of utter exhaustion andnervous depression. [77]

Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was thecelebrated "Berserker rage, " not peculiar to the Northland, althoughthere most conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, wefind that in comparatively civilized countries there have been manycases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two most celebrated cases, among those collected by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Marechalde Retz, in 1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in theseventeenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young girls intoher palace on divers pretexts, and then coolly murdered them, for thepurpose of bathing in their blood. The spectacle of human sufferingbecame at last such a delight to her, that she would apply with herown hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks of hervictims as the epicure relishes each sip of his old Chateau Margaux. In this way she is said to have murdered six hundred and fiftypersons before her evil career was brought to an end; though, when onerecollects the famous men in buckram and the notorious trio of crows, one is inclined to strike off a cipher, and regard sixty-five as asufficiently imposing and far less improbable number. But the case ofthe Marechal de Retz is still more frightful. A marshal of France, ascholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life, he became suddenlypossessed by an uncontrollable desire to murder children. During sevenyears he continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, at the rate of about TWO EACH WEEK, (?) and then put them to death invarious ways, that he might witness their agonies and bathe in theirblood; experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse, but led on by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When thisunparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle was foundto contain bins full of children's bones. The horrible details of thetrial are to be found in the histories of France by Michelet and Martin. 

Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to murderhas been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of Chalons wassentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy. "This wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked themin the gloaming when they strayed in the woods, had torn them with histeeth and killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed theirflesh as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great relish. Thenumber of little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A whole caskfulof bones was discovered in his house. " [78] About 1850 a beggar in thevillage of Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved to have killed and eatenfourteen children. A house had one day caught fire and burnt to theground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape. Thebeggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering from excessivehunger, could not resist the temptation of making a meal off the charredbody. From that moment he was tormented by a craving for human flesh. He met a little orphan girl, about nine years old, and giving her apinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like it under a tree in theneighbouring wood. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, andeaten. In the course of three years thirteen other children mysteriouslydisappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an innkeepermissed a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of this beggar'shonesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin, burst suddenly in at the door, and to his horror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak asevered head; a bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces ofa thigh were cooking over the fire. [79]

This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, thoughruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been subject to anymental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, inwhich the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by genuinehallucination. Forms of insanity in which the afflicted persons imaginethemselves to be brute animals are not perhaps very common, but they arenot unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man who believed himselfto be a horse, and would stand by the hour together before a manger, nibbling hay, or deluding himself with the presence of so doing. Manyof the cannibals whose cases are related by Mr. Baring-Gould, inhis chapter of horrors, actually believed themselves to have beentransformed into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy ofthirteen, partially idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy;his jaws were large and projected forward, and his canine teeth wereunnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believedhimself to be a werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, he scared them out of their wits by telling them that as soon as the sunhad set he would turn into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few dayslater, one little girl, having gone out at nightfall to look after thesheep, was attacked by some creature which in her terror she mistook fora wolf, but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean Grenier. She beat him off with her sheep-staff, and fled home. As severalchildren had mysteriously disappeared from the neighbourhood, Grenierwas at once suspected. Being brought before the parliament of Bordeaux, he stated that two years ago he had met the Devil one night in the woodsand had signed a compact with him and received from him a wolf-skin. Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after dark, resuming his humanshape by daylight. He had killed and eaten several children whom he hadfound alone in the fields, and on one occasion he had entered a housewhile the family were out and taken the baby from its cradle. A carefulinvestigation proved the truth of these statements, so far as thecannibalism was concerned. There is no doubt that the missing childrenwere eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no doubt that in his own mindthe halfwitted boy was firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here thelycanthropy was complete. 

In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, somecountrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horriblymutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The mengave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lostthem; when, suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chatteringwith fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, andwith his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and wereclotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh. " [80]

This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature under thedominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to piecesthe corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether there wereany wolves in the case, except what the excited imaginations of the menmay have conjured up, I will not presume to determine; but it is certainthat Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate severalpersons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced to death, but the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence, and charitably shuthim up in a madhouse. 

The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to these ofGrenier and Roulet. Their share in maintaining the werewolf superstitionis undeniable; but modern science finds in them nothing that cannot bereadily explained. That stupendous process of breeding, which we callcivilization, has been for long ages strengthening those kindly socialfeelings by the possession of which we are chiefly distinguished fromthe brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses to die for want ofexercise, or checking in every possible way their further expansion bylegislative enactments. But this process, which is transforming us fromsavages into civilized men, is a very slow one; and now and then thereoccur cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to anancestral type of character. Now and then persons are born, in civilizedcountries, whose intellectual powers are on a level with those of themost degraded Australian savage, and these we call idiots. And now andthen persons are born possessed of the bestial appetites and cravingsof primitive man, his fiendish cruelty and his liking for human flesh. Modern physiology knows how to classify and explain these abnormalcases, but to the unscientific mediaeval mind they were explicable onlyon the hypothesis of a diabolical metamorphosis. And there is nothingstrange in the fact that, in an age when the prevailing habits ofthought rendered the transformation of men into beasts an easilyadmissible notion, these monsters of cruelty and depraved appetiteshould have been regarded as capable of taking on bestial forms. Nor isit strange that the hallucination under which these unfortunate wretcheslaboured should have taken such a shape as to account to their feebleintelligence for the existence of the appetites which they wereconscious of not sharing with their neighbours and contemporaries. Ifa myth is a piece of unscientific philosophizing, it must sometimesbe applied to the explanation of obscure psychological as well as ofphysical phenomena. Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and says, "Arrested development, " the terrified ancient made the sign of the crossand cried, "Werewolf. "

We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for amoment to examine the wild superstitions about "changelings, " whichcontributed, along with so many others, to make the lives of ourancestors anxious and miserable. These superstitions were for the mostpart attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and otherobscure nervous diseases. A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, and whose actions have been consistent and rational, suddenly loses allself-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself. Modernscience possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it wasexplicable only on the hypothesis that a demon had entered the bodyof the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man andsubstituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in stature andfeatures. Hence the numerous legends of changelings, some of whichare very curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one Rickard, surnamed the Rake, from his worthless character. A good-natured, idlefellow, he spent all his evenings in dancing, --an accomplishment inwhich no one in the village could rival him. One night, in the midst ofa lively reel, he fell down in a fit. "He's struck with a fairy-dart, "exclaimed all the friends, and they carried him home and nursed him; buthis face grew so thin and his manner so morose that by and by all beganto suspect that the true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in hisplace. Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician; and so, in order to put the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in theroom by the side of his bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all were supposed to be in the field making hay, some membersof the family secreted in a clothes-press saw the bedroom door open alittle way, and a lean, foxy face, with a pair of deep-sunken eyes, peeranxiously about the premises. Having satisfied itself that the coastwas clear, the face withdrew, the door was closed, and presently suchravishing strains of music were heard as never proceeded from a bagpipebefore or since that day. Soon was heard the rustle of innumerablefairies, come to dance to the changeling's music. Then the "fairy-man"of the village, who was keeping watch with the family, heated a pairof tongs red-hot, and with deafening shouts all burst at once into thesick-chamber. The music had ceased and the room was empty, but in at thewindow glared a fiendish face, with such fearful looks of hatred, thatfor a moment all stood motionless with terror. But when the fairy-man, recovering himself, advanced with the hot tongs to pinch its nose, itvanished with an unearthly yell, and there on the bed was Rickard, safeand sound, and cured of his epilepsy. [81]

Comparing this legend with numerous others relating to changelings, and stripping off the fantastic garb of fairy-lore with which popularimagination has invested them, it seems impossible to doubt that theyhave arisen from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the obscurephenomena of mental disease. If this be so, they afford an excellentcollateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same mentalhabits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic person as achangeling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy as the temporarydeparture of a witch's soul from its body, would enable them toattribute a wolf's nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibalappetites. And when the myth-forming process had got thus far, it wouldnot stop short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupinebody; for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such atransformation. 

It remains for us to sum up, --to tie into a bunch the keys whichhave helped us to penetrate into the secret causes of the werewolfsuperstition. In a previous paper we saw what a host of myths, fairy-tales, and superstitious observances have sprung from attempts tointerpret one simple natural phenomenon, --the descent of fire from theclouds. Here, on the other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitudeof mythical elements may combine to build up in course of time a singleenormous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and fancy haveco-operated in keeping the superstition from falling. In the first placethe worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notionof the transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves; and thisnotion was confirmed by the ambiguous explanation of the storm-windas the rushing of a troop of dead men's souls or as the howling ofwolf-like monsters. Mediaeval Christianity retained these conceptions, merely changing the superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally theoccurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied bylycanthropic hallucinations, being interpreted as due to such demoniacalmetamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the MiddleAges. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinentlyascribe the origin of the entire superstition, seemed to me to haveplayed a very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose that JeanGrenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolfsounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of alight-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet asfar as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtlesshelped to sustain the delusion. 

Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creatureof undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be quiteimperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by whichhis change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolfwas commonly called a "skin-changer" or "turn-coat" (versipellis), andsimilar epithets were applied to him in the Middle Ages The mediaevaltheory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form, his hair grewinwards; when he wished to become a wolf, he simply turned himselfinside out. In many trials on record, the prisoners were closelyinterrogated as to how this inversion might be accomplished; but I amnot aware that any one of them ever gave a satisfactory answer. Atthe moment of change their memories seem to have become temporarilybefogged. Now and then a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off, or was partially flayed, in order that the ingrowing hair might bedetected. [82] Another theory was, that the possessed person had merelyto put on a wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the lupine formand character; and in this may perhaps be seen a vague reminiscence ofthe alleged fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the woodsby night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears. [83] Such a wolfskinwas kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand, confessed tousing a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of becoming a werewolfwas to obtain a girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases arerelated in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology. " One hot day in harvest-timesome reapers lay down to sleep in the shade; when one of them, who couldnot sleep, saw the man next him arise quietly and gird him with a strap, whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up from among thesleepers and ran off across the fields. Another man, who possessed sucha girdle, once went away from home without remembering to lock itup. His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and as heproceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became instantly transformedinto a strange-looking beast. Just then his father came in, and seizingthe girdle restored the child to his natural shape. The boy said that nosooner had he buckled it on than he was tormented with a raging hunger. 

Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. AtCaseburg, as a man and his wife were making hay, the woman threw downher pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beastshould come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it. Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him. The man threw his hat at it, but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the animalwith his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's dead body layat his feet. 

A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to have the hat thrownat her, in order that she might be henceforth free from her liabilityto become a werewolf. A man was one night returning with his wife froma merry-making when he felt the change coming on. Giving his wife thereins, he jumped from the wagon, telling her to strike with her apronat any animal which might come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up tothe side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with her apron, itbit off a piece and ran away. Presently the man returned with thepiece of apron in his mouth and consoled his terrified wife with theinformation that the enchantment had left him forever. 

A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into theannals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attackedby a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beastmade a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of itsfore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best ofhis way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend, to whom heexhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a woman's hand, upon which was a wedding-ring. His wife's ring was at once recognized bythe other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of hiswife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hiddenbeneath her apron, when the husband, seizing her by the arm, found histerrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidentlyjust fresh from the wound. She was given into custody, and in the eventwas burned at Riom, in presence of thousands of spectators. " [84]

Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recognizing him while in hisbrute shape. A Swedish legend tells of a cottager who, on entering theforest one day without recollecting to say his Patter Noster, got intothe power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For many years hiswife mourned him as dead. But one Christmas eve the old Troll, disguisedas a beggarwoman, came to the house for alms; and being taken in andkindly treated, told the woman that her husband might very likely appearto her in wolf-shape. Going at night to the pantry to lay aside a jointof meat for tomorrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws onthe window-sill, looking wistfully in at her. "Ah, dearest, " said she, "if I knew that thou wert really my husband, I would give thee a bone. "Whereupon the wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her inthe same old clothes which he had on the day that the Troll got hold ofhim. 

In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to creep through acolt's placental membrane stretched between four sticks, she would forthe rest of her life bring forth children without pain or illness; butall the boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls Maras, or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition appears that curiouskinship between the werewolf and the wife or maiden of supernaturalrace, which serves admirably to illustrate the nature of bothconceptions, and the elucidation of which shall occupy us throughout theremainder of this paper. 

It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality of thenightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine. The Mara was a femaledemon, [85] who would come at night and torment men or women bycrouching on their chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration. The scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's picture, though thefrenzied-looking horse which there accompanies the demon has no placein the original superstition. A Netherlandish story illustrates thecharacter of the Mara. Two young men were in love with the same damsel. One of them, being tormented every night by a Mara, sought advice fromhis rival, and it was a treacherous counsel that he got. "Hold a sharpknife with the point towards your breast, and you'll never see the Maraagain, " said this false friend. The lad thanked him, but when he laydown to rest he thought it as well to be on the safe side, and so heldthe knife handle downward. So when the Mara came, instead of forcing theblade into his breast, she cut herself badly, and fled howling; and letus hope, though the legend here leaves us in the dark, that this pooryouth, who is said to have been the comelier of the two, revengedhimself on his malicious rival by marrying the young lady. 

But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting shape, and became themistress or even the wife of some mortal man to whom she happened totake a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on being recognized. Thereis a well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who, journeying one daythrough the forest, found a beautiful lady stripped naked and tied to atree, her back all covered with deep gashes streaming with blood, from aflogging which some bandits had given her. Of course he took her hometo his castle and married her, and for a while they lived very happilytogether, and the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that kings andemperors held tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight usedto go to mass every Sunday, and greatly was he scandalized when he foundthat his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but would alwaysget up and walk out of church just as the choir struck up. All herhusband's coaxing was of no use; threats and entreaties were alikepowerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At lastthe good man determined to use force; and so one Sunday, as the lady gotup to go out, according to custom, he seized her by the arm and sternlycommanded her to remain. Her whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and herdark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly brilliancy. The services pausedfor a moment, and all eyes were turned toward the knight and hislady. "In God's name, tell me what thou art, " shouted the knight; andinstantly, says the chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady meltedaway, and was seen no more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror, an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapelroof asunder, and disappeared in the air. "

In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, orSwan-maidens. A peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in the habitof coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until hediscovered her creeping into the room through a small knot-hole in thedoor. Next day he made a peg, and after she had come to him, drove inthe peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and livedtogether many years; but one night it happened that the man, joking withhis wife about the way in which he had secured her, drew the peg fromthe knot-hole, that she might see how she had entered his room. As shepeeped through, she became suddenly quite small, passed out, and wasnever seen again. 

The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient toaccount for the mediaeval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's bosomand hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legendsrelating to the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is neededto account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may interfere with ourbreathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through keyholes, nor does it bring wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to anancient family, and in passing from the regions of monkish superstitionto those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf, she had once seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara, and adopted the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures asagents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight'swife, in the monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale theMara appears as one of that large family of supernatural wives who arepermitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who arecompelled to flee away when these conditions are broken, as is alwayssure to be the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest of this familyis the Hindu nymph Urvasi, whose love adventures with Pururavas arenarrated in the Puranas, and form the subject of the well-known andexquisite Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live withPururavas so long as she does not see him undressed. But one night herkinsmen, the Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, vexed at her long absence fromheaven, resolved to get her away from her mortal companion, They stolea pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of her couch, whereat shebitterly upbraided her husband. In rage and mortification, Pururavassprang up without throwing on his tunic, and grasping his sword soughtthe robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, andUrvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly vanished. 

The different versions of this legend, which have been elaboratelyanalyzed by comparative mythologists, leave no doubt that Urvasi isone of the dawn-nymphs or bright fleecy clouds of early morning, whichvanish as the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the precedingpaper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the sky as a sea or great lake, and that the clouds were explained variously as Phaiakian ships withbird-like beaks sailing over this lake, or as bright birds of diversshapes and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as mermaids, oras swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage. In Sanskrit they are calledApsaras, or "those who move in the water, " and the Elves and Maras ofTeutonic mythology have the same significance. Urvasi appears in onelegend as a bird; and a South German prescription for getting rid ofthe Mara asserts that if she be wrapped up in the bedclothes andfirmly held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the room, leaving thebedclothes empty. [86]

In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as a kind of mermaid, but in other respects the legend resembles that of Urvasi. Raymond, Count de la Foret, of Poitou, having by an accident killed his patronand benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and despairinto the deep recesses of the forest. All the afternoon and evening hewandered through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he came upona strange scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became lessinterlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his horse, crashingthrough the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant glade, white withrime, and illumined by the new moon; in the midst bubbled up a limpidfountain, and flowed away over a pebbly-floor with a soothing murmur. Near the fountain-head sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses, with long waving golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty. " [87]One of them advanced to meet Raymond, and according to all mythologicalprecedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due time thefountain-nymph [88] became Countess de la Foret, but her husband wasgiven to understand that all her Saturdays would be passed in strictestseclusion, upon which he must never dare to intrude, under penalty oflosing her forever. For many years all went well, save that the fairMelusina's children were, without exception, misshapen or disfigured. But after a while this strange weekly seclusion got bruited about allover the neighbourhood, and people shook their heads and looked graveabout it. So many gossiping tales came to the Count's ears, that hebegan to grow anxious and suspicious, and at last he determined to knowthe worst. He went one Saturday to Melusina's private apartments, andgoing through one empty room after another, at last came to a lockeddoor which opened into a bath; looking through a keyhole, there hesaw the Countess transformed from the waist downwards into a fish, disporting herself like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could notkeep the secret, but when some time afterwards they quarrelled, mustneeds address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his honourablerace. " So she disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hoveredabout her husband's castle of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one ofits lords was about to die. 

The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save thatthe naiad's desire to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign tothe spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which Christianity hadinflicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of Dasent's tales thewater-maiden is replaced by a kind of werewolf. A white bear marries ayoung girl, but assumes the human shape at night. She is never to lookupon him in his human shape, but how could a young bride be expectedto obey such an injunction as that? She lights a candle while he issleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in the world; unluckilyshe drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the story. But she is morefortunate than poor Raymond, for after a tiresome journey to the "landeast of the sun and west of the moon, " and an arduous washing-matchwith a parcel of ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends herhusband's enchantment. [89]

In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or cloud-maiden, has a shirt of swan's feathers which plays the same part as the wolfskincape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get hold of a werewolf'ssack and burn it, a permanent cure was effected. No danger of a relapse, unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. So the swan-maidenkept her human form, as long as she was deprived of her tunic offeathers. Indo-European folk-lore teems with stories of swan-maidensforcibly wooed and won by mortals who had stolen their clothes. A mantravelling along the road passes by a lake where several lovely girlsare bathing; their dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintilywoven, lie on the shore. He approaches the place cautiously and stealsone of these dresses. [90] When the girls have finished their bathing, they all come and get their dresses and swim away as swans; but the onewhose dress is stolen must needs stay on shore and marry the thief. Itis needless to add that they live happily together for many years, or that finally the good man accidentally leaves the cupboard doorunlocked, whereupon his wife gets back her swan-shirt and flies awayfrom him, never to return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers. Inone German story, a nobleman hunting deer finds a maiden bathing in aclear pool in the forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes hernecklace, at which she loses the power to flee. They are married, andshe bears seven sons at once, all of whom have gold chains about theirnecks, and are able to transform themselves into swans whenever theylike. A Flemish legend tells of three Nixies, or water-sprites, who cameout of the Meuse one autumn evening, and helped the villagers celebratethe end of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never been seen inFlanders, and they could sing as well as they could dance. As the nightwas warm, one of them took off her gloves and gave them to her partnerto hold for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two started offin hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry for gloves. The lad wouldkeep them as love-tokens, and so the poor Nixie had to go home withoutthem; but she must have died on the way, for next morning the waters ofthe Meuse were blood-red, and those damsels never returned. 

In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off their skins everyninth night, assume human forms, and sing and dance like men and womenuntil daybreak, when they resume their skins and their seal natures. Of course a man once found and hid one of these sealskins, and so gota mermaid for a wife; and of course she recovered the skin and escaped. [91] On the coasts of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an ordinarything for young sea-fairies to get human husbands in this way; thebrazen things even come to shore on purpose, and leave their red capslying around for young men to pick up; but it behooves the husband tokeep a strict watch over the red cap, if he would not see his childrenleft motherless. 

This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the superstitions ofwitchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red James was aroused from sleepone night by noises in the kitchen. Going down to the door, he saw alot of old women drinking punch around the fireplace, and laughing andjoking with his housekeeper. When the punchbowl was empty, they all puton red caps, and singing

 "By yarrow and rue, And my red cap too, Hie me over to England, "

they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room, and seized thehousekeeper's cap, and went along with them. They flew across the sea toa castle in England, passed through the keyholes from room to room andinto the cellar, where they had a famous carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, beingunused to such good cheer, got drunk, and forgot to put on his cap whenthe others did. So next morning the lord's butler found him dead-drunkon the cellar floor, surrounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to behung without any trial worth speaking of; but as he was carted to thegallows an old woman cried out, "Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would you be aftherdyin' in a strange land without your red birredh?" The lord made noobjections, and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Accordinglywhen Jimmy had got to the gallows and was making his last speech for theedification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat irrelevantlyexclaimed, "By yarrow and rue, " etc. , and was off like a rocket, shooting through the blue air en route for old Ireland. [92]

In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of agreat house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins, so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in theirexuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feelinclined to ask. He desires only "an ould coat, to keep the chill off ofhim these could nights"; but as soon as he gets into the coat he resumeshis human form and bids them good by, and thenceforth they may washtheir own dishes and scour their own tins, for all him. 

But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maidens, and are in dangerof losing ourselves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which is moreintricate than any that Daidalos ever planned. The significance ofall these sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid caps andwerewolf-girdles may best be sought in the etymology of words like theGerman leichnam, in which the body is described as a garment of fleshfor the soul. [93] In the naive philosophy of primitive thinkers, thesoul, in passing from one visible shape to another, had only to put onthe outward integument of the creature in which it wished to incarnateitself. With respect to the mode of metamorphosis, there is littledifference between the werewolf and the swan-maiden; and the similarityis no less striking between the genesis of the two conceptions. Theoriginal werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a manlike deity andnow as a howling lupine fiend; and the original swan-maiden is thelight fleecy cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess or as abird swimming in the sky sea. The one conception has been productive oflittle else but horrors; the other has given rise to a great varietyof fanciful creations, from the treacherous mermaid and the fiendishnightmare to the gentle Undine, the charming Nausikaa, and the statelyMuse of classic antiquity. 

We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is thewild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of asick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has alsobeen supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land. The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered overScandinavian battle-fields to receive the souls of falling heroes, wereidentical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of the Mussulman belongto the same family. Even for the angels, --women with large wings, whoare seen in popular pictures bearing mortals on high towards heaven, --wecan hardly claim a different kinship. Melusina, when she leavesthe castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a commonsuperstition among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with hercomb and looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all onboard. 

October, 1870. 

IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 

WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie ofthe nursery, " he unwittingly made a remark as suggestive in point ofphilology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examinedwith the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or"Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only withthe fairy "Puck, " whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with theSlavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, bothof which are names for the Supreme Being. If we proceed further, andinquire after the ancestral form of these epithets, --so strangelyincongruous in their significations, --we shall find it in the Old Aryan"Bhaga, " which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and hasleft a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus "Bagaios. "It seems originally to have denoted either the unclouded sun or the skyof noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sayana's commentary on theRig-Veda, Bhaga is enumerated among the seven (or eight) sons of Aditi, the boundless Orient; and he is elsewhere described as the lord of life, the giver of bread, and the bringer of happiness. [94]

Thus the same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the timeof Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majestyof deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unableto think without laughing. Such is the irony of fate toward a deposeddeity. The German name for idol--Abgott, that is, "ex-god, " or"dethroned god"--sums up in a single etymology the history of thehavoc wrought by monotheism among the ancient symbols of deity. Inthe hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans a niche was alwaysin readiness for every new divinity who could produce respectablecredentials; but the triumph of monotheism converted the stately mansioninto a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist an "ex-god"was simply a devilish deceiver of mankind whom the true God hadsucceeded in vanquishing; and thus the word demon, which to the ancientmeant a divine or semi-divine being, came to be applied to fiendsexclusively. Thus the Teutonic races, who preserved the name of theirhighest divinity, Odin, --originally, Guodan, --by which to designatethe God of the Christian, [95] were unable to regard the Bog of ancienttradition as anything but an "ex-god, " or vanquished demon. 

The most striking illustration of this process is to be found in theword devil itself: To a reader unfamiliar with the endless tricks whichlanguage delights in playing, it may seem shocking to be told that theGypsies use the word devil as the name of God. [96] This, however, isnot because these people have made the archfiend an object of worship, but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the Sanskrit, has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the Englishlanguage has received only in its debased and perverted sense. TheTeutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may allbe traced back to the Zend dev, [97] a name in which is implicitlycontained the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known tohistory. The influence of the so-called Zoroastrian reform upon thelong-subsequent development of Christianity will receive further noticein the course of this paper; for the present it is enough to know thatit furnished for all Christendom the name by which it designates theauthor of evil. To the Parsee follower of Zarathustra the name of theDevil has very nearly the same signification as to the Christian; yet, as Grimm has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption of deva, theSanskrit name for God. When Zarathustra overthrew the primeval Aryannature-worship in Bactria, this name met the same evil fate which inearly Christian times overtook the word demon, and from a symbol ofreverence became henceforth a symbol of detestation. [98] But throughoutthe rest of the Aryan world it achieved a nobler career, producing theGreek theos, the Lithuanian diewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modernFrench Dieu, all meaning God. 

If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive source in thatonce lost but now partially recovered mother-tongue from which all ourAryan languages are descended, we find a root div or dyu, meaning "toshine. " From the first-mentioned form comes deva, with its numerousprogeny of good and evil appellatives; from the latter is derived thename of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyu, as a noun, means "sky" and "day"; and there are many passages in theRig-Veda where the character of the god Dyaus, as the personificationof the sky or the brightness of the ethereal heavens, is unmistakablyapparent. This key unlocks for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology. So long as there was for Zeus no better etymology than that whichassigned it to the root zen, "to live, " [99] there was little hopeof understanding the nature of Zeus. But when we learn that Zeus isidentical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to understandHorace's expression, "sub Jove frigido, " and the prayer of theAthenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians, and onthe fields. " [100] Such expressions as these were retained by the Greeksand Romans long after they had forgotten that their supreme deitywas once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind the physicalsignificance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak ofhim as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; andin this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent ofthe Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followedinto Old German, where Zio is the god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon, where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday. 

Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from theexamination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the supreme Aryangod, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never havebeen interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to thesun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples, when similarlyanalyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power, nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the lightof the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originatorof all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delightedto believe the source, not only of "the golden light, " [101] but ofeverything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, inaccepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, wemust be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythologyare very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neitherZeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by theancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeusor Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classicpaganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is tosin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy. Philology itselfteaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was originallythe bright sky and nothing more. Although his name became generalized, in the classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite certain that inearly days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no such exaltedsignificance. It was only in Greece and Rome--or, we may say, amongthe still united Italo-Hellenic tribes--that Jupiter-Zeus attained apre-eminence over all other deities. The people of Iran quiterejected him, the Teutons preferred Thor and Odin, and in India he wassuperseded, first by Indra, afterwards by Brahma and Vishnu. We neednot, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among the old Aryans;nor may we expect to find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism inthe primitive intelligence of uncivilized men. [102] The whole fabricof comparative mythology, as at present constituted, and as describedabove, in the first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that theearliest religion was pure fetichism. 

In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods arepresented to us only as vague powers, with their nature and attributesdimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and oftencontradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of onedeity to another. The same pair of divinities appear now as father anddaughter, now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and againthey quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere naturalphenomena. As Muller observes, "The poets of the Veda indulged freely intheogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions. They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the godof gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by nomeans startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or thattheir Agni [Latin ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of twofire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lapof Aditi. " [103] Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, representedas the offspring, of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had severalbrothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarchingfirmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have herebut so many different names for what is at bottom one and the sameconception. The common element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga andIndra, was made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, andlife of day, as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming deathof the night-time. And this common element was personified in as manydifferent ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper sawfit to devise. [104]

Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like the sun, the sky, the dawn, and the night, should be represented in mythology by sucha host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For at one time the Sun isrepresented as the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away frommen the golden treasures of light and warmth, and at another time he isrepresented as a weary voyager traversing the sky-sea amid many perils, with the steadfast purpose of returning to his western home andhis twilight bride; hence the different conceptions of Herakles, Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is represented as the son of the Dawn, and again, with equal propriety, as the son of the Night, and the ficklelover of the Dawn; hence we have, on the one hand, stories of a virginmother who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the other hand, stories of a beautiful maiden who is forsaken and perhaps cruelly slainby her treacherous lover. Indeed, the Sun's adventures with so manydawn-maidens have given him quite a bad character, and the legends arenumerous in which he appears as the prototype of Don Juan. Yet again hisseparation from the bride of his youth is described as due to no faultof his own, but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him awayas Aineias was compelled to abandon Dido. Or, according to a thirdand equally plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic virtues, and thedawn-maiden is a wicked enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, who vainly endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odysseus thesevarious conceptions are blended together. When enticed by artful women, [105] he yields for a while to the temptation; but by and by his longingto see Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record which Penelopemight not altogether have liked. Again, though the Sun, "always roamingwith a hungry heart, " has seen many cities and customs of strange men, he is nevertheless confined to a single path, --a circumstance whichseems to have occasioned much speculation in the primeval mind. Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain Peruvian Inca, who seems tohave been an "infidel" with reference to the orthodox mythology of hisday, that he thought the Sun was not such a mighty god after all; forif he were, he would wander about the heavens at random instead ofgoing forever, like a horse in a treadmill, along the same course. TheAmerican Indians explained this circumstance by myths which told how theSun was once caught and tied with a chain which would only let him swinga little way to one side or the other. The ancient Aryan developed thenobler myth of the labours of Herakles, performed in obedience to thebidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs destroy its parents, the Night and the Dawn; and accordingly his parents, forewarned byprophecy, expose him in infancy, or order him to be put to death; buthis tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter. And again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own, is sometimesrepresented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleusand Meleagros: he is short-lived and ill-fated, born to do much goodand to be repaid with ingratitude; his life depends on the duration of aburning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die. 

The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates themultiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career ofthe solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oraclethat he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipouswas therefore exposed on the hillside, but, like Romulus and Remus, andall infants similarly situated in legend, was duly rescued. He was takento Corinth, where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, hegot into a quarrel with an old man whom he met on the road, and slewhim, who was none other than his father, Laios. Reaching Thebes, hefound the city harassed by the Sphinx, who afflicted the land withdrought until she should receive an answer to her riddles. Oidipousdestroyed the monster by solving her dark sayings, and as a rewardreceived the kingdom, with his own mother, Iokaste, as his bride. Thenthe Erinyes hastened the discovery of these dark deeds; Iokaste died inher bridal chamber; and Oidipous, having blinded himself, fled to thegrove of the Eumenides, near Athens, where, amid flashing lightning andpeals of thunder, he died. 

Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from Herakles andPerseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he performs his marvellous deeds atthe behest of others. His father, Laios, is none other than theVedic Dasyu, the night-demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solaroffspring In the evening, Oidipous is united to the Dawn, the mother whohad borne him at daybreak; and here the original story doubtless ended. In the Vedic hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne), the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight, marries. To theIndian mind the story was here complete; but the Greeks had forgottenand outgrown the primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipousand Iokaste were human, or at least anthropomorphic beings; and amarriage between them was a fearful crime which called for bitterexpiation. Thus the latter part of the story arose in the effort tosatisfy a moral feeling As the name of Laios denotes the dark night, so, like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the word Iokaste signifies the delicateviolet tints of the morning and evening clouds. Oidipous was exposed, like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the earth"), because thesunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside. [106] He is borne onto the destruction of his father and the incestuous marriage with hismother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun cannot but slay thedarkness and hasten to the couch of the violet twilight. [107] TheSphinx is the storm-demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons therain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna, and Chimaira, and isakin to the throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous Here sent todestroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was not derived from Egypt, butthe Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling their conception ofthe Sphinx, called them by the same name. The omniscient Sun comprehendsthe sense of her dark mutterings, and destroys her, as Indra slaysVritra, bringing down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, whobring to light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in aprevious paper, as the personification of daylight, which reveals theevil deeds done under the cover of night. The grove of the Erinyes, likethe garden of the Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network of clouds, which are the first to receive and the last to lose the light of the sunin the morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in athunder-storm, yet the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour isone of deep peace and tranquillity. " [108] To the last remains with himhis daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite, " the pale light whichsprings up opposite to the setting sun. 

These examples show that a story-root may be as prolific ofheterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak, "to look, " begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate, conspicsuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simplerepresentation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyricallygiven in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as thoseof Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the typesupon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some cleverplaywright--I believe it was Scribe--has said that there are only sevenpossible dramatic situations; that is, all the plays in the world may beclassed with some one of seven archetypal dramas. [109] If this betrue, the astonishing complexity of mythology taken in the concrete, ascompared with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need not surpriseus. 

The extreme limits of divergence between stories descended from a commonroot are probably reached in the myths of light and darkness with whichthe present discussion is mainly concerned The subject will be bestelucidated by taking a single one of these myths and following itsvarious fortunes through different regions of the Aryan world. The mythof Hercules and Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an essay whichis one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the study ofcomparative mythology; and while following his footsteps our task willbe an easy one. 

The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest of thetraditions common to the whole Indo-European race, appears in Italy asa purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighthbook of the AEneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his history; andby Propertius and Ovid. Hercules, journeying through Italy after hisvictory over Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the Tiber. While he istaking his repose, the three-headed monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan anda formidable brigand, comes and steals his cattle, and drags themtail-foremost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But the lowing of thecows arouses Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern where the robber, already frightened, has taken refuge. Armed with a huge flinty rock, hebreaks open the entrance of the cavern, and confronts the demon within, who vomits forth flames at him and roars like the thunder in thestorm-cloud. After a short combat, his hideous body falls at the feetof the invincible hero, who erects on the spot an altar to JupiterInventor, in commemoration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient Rometeemed with reminiscences of this event, which Livy regarded as firstin the long series of the exploits of his countrymen. The place whereHercules pastured his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium;near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of the monster'striple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sight-seers were shownthe cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine. Every tenth daythe earlier generations of Romans celebrated the victory with solemnsacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of triumph the fortunategeneral deposited there a tithe of his booty, to be distributed amongthe citizens. 

In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originallyfigure. The Latin Hercules was an essentially peaceful and domesticdeity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin toTerminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solardivinity at all. But the purely accidental resemblance of his name tothat of the Greek deity Herakles, [110] and the manifest identity of theCacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, ledto the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend, who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. NowJohannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky, "a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. Thesame substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to thealteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. Thecorrupted title Cacus was supposed to be identical with the Greek wordkakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet ofHerakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill. " Originally, however, the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or darkens, " and it correspondsliterally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb, preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the clouds. [111]

Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The three-headedCacus is seen to be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros, and of the three-headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the darkregions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa, thefiend of the storm who steals the bright cattle of Helios, and hidesthem in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards rescuedby the schamir or lightning-stone of the solar hero. The physicalcharacter of the myth is apparent even in the description of Virgil, which reads wonderfully like a Vedic hymn in celebration of the exploitsof Indra. But when we turn to the Veda itself, we find the correctnessof the interpretation demonstrated again and again, with inexhaustibleprodigality of evidence. Here we encounter again the three-headedOrthros under the identical title of Vritra, "he who shrouds orenvelops, " called also Cushna, "he who parches, " Pani, "the robber, " andAhi, "the strangler. " In many hymns of the Rig-Veda the story is toldover and over, like a musical theme arranged with variations. Indra, the god of light, is a herdsman who tends a herd of bright golden orviolet-coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster with three heads, steals them and hides them in a cavern, but Indra slays him as Jupiterslew Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The language of the myth isso significant, that the Hindu commentators of the Veda havethemselves given explanations of it similar to those proposed by modernphilologists. To them the legend never became devoid of sense, as themyth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars like Apollodoros. [112]

These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of purple and gold, are the clouds lit up by the solar rays; but the demon who steals themis not always the fiend of the storm, acting in that capacity. They arestolen every night by Vritra the concealer, and Caecius the darkener, and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking for them, sending Sarama, the inconstant twilight, to negotiate for their recovery. Betweenthe storm-myth and the myth of night and morning the resemblance issometimes so close as to confuse the interpretation of the two. Manylegends which Max Muller explains as myths of the victory of day overnight are explained by Dr. Kuhn as storm-myths; and the disagreementbetween two such powerful champions would be a standing reproach to whatis rather prematurely called the SCIENCE of comparative mythology, were it not easy to show that the difference is merely apparent andnon-essential. It is the old story of the shield with two sides; and acomparison of the ideas fundamental to these myths will show that thereis no valid ground for disagreement in the interpretation of them. Themyths of schamir and the divining-rod, analyzed in a previous paper, explain the rending of the thunder-cloud and the procuring of waterwithout especial reference to any struggle between opposing divinities. But in the myth of Hercules and Cacus, the fundamental idea is thevictory of the solar god over the robber who steals the light. Nowwhether the robber carries off the light in the evening when Indra hasgone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against the sky during thedaytime, causing darkness to spread over the earth, would make littledifference to the framers of the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipseis the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly. Why, then, should the primitive thinker have made a distinction betweenthe darkening of the sky caused by black clouds and that caused bythe rotation of the earth? He had no more conception of the scientificexplanation of these phenomena than the chicken has of the scientificexplanation of an eclipse. For him it was enough to know that the solarradiance was stolen, in the one case as in the other, and to suspectthat the same demon was to blame for both robberies. 

The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that the victory ofIndra over Vritra is essentially the same as his victory over the Panis. Vritra, the storm-fiend, is himself called one of the Panis; yet thelatter are uniformly represented as night-demons. They steal Indra'sgolden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to a dark hiding-placenear the eastern horizon. Indra sends the dawn-nymph, Sarama, to searchfor them, but as she comes within sight of the dark stable, the Panistry to coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee our sister, do notgo away again; we will give thee part of the cows, O darling. " [113]According to the text of this hymn, she scorns their solicitations, butelsewhere the fickle dawn-nymph is said to coquet with the powers ofdarkness. She does not care for their cows, but will take a drink ofmilk, if they will be so good as to get it for her. Then she goes backand tells Indra that she cannot find the cows. He kicks her with hisfoot, and she runs back to the Panis, followed by the god, who smitesthem all with his unerring arrows and recovers the stolen light. Fromsuch a simple beginning as this has been deduced the Greek myth of thefaithlessness of Helen. [114]

These night-demons, the Panis, though not apparently regarded with anystrong feeling of moral condemnation, are nevertheless hated and dreadedas the authors of calamity. They not only steal the daylight, but theyparch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation duringthe winter months. As Caecius, the "darkener, " became ultimately changedinto Cacus, the "evil one, " so the name of Vritra, the "concealer, " themost famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized until it came tomean "enemy, " like the English word fiend, and began to be appliedindiscriminately to any kind of evil spirit. In one place he is calledAdeva, the "enemy of the gods, " an epithet exactly equivalent to thePersian dev. 

In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules and Cacus has given rise to avast system of theology. The fiendish Panis are concentrated in Ahrimanor Anro-mainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of darkness, " andwho carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahuramazda, whois described by his ordinary surname, Spentomainyas, as the "spirit oflight. " The ancient polytheism here gives place to a refined dualism, not very different from what in many Christian sects has passed currentas monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who struggles with Ormuzd, notfor the possession of a herd of perishable cattle, but for the dominionof the universe. Ormuzd creates the world pure and beautiful, butAhriman comes after him and creates everything that is evil in it. Henot only keeps the earth covered with darkness during half of the day, and withholds the rain and destroys the crops, but he is the author ofall evil thoughts and the instigator of all wicked actions. Like hisprogenitor Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under theform of a serpent; and the destruction which ultimately awaits thesedemons is also in reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day ofreckoning, when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless, or when, according to another account, he will be converted torighteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the case withSatan. 

This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful influenceupon the development of Christian theology. The very idea of anarchfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems eitherto have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to havederived its principal characteristics from that source. There is noevidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessedthe conception of a Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlierbooks of the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dispensing with hisown hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad. [115] Thestory of the serpent in Eden--an Aryan story in every particular, which has crept into the Pentateuch--is not once alluded to in the OldTestament; and the notion of Satan as the author of evil appears onlyin the later books, composed after the Jews had come into close contactwith Persian ideas. [116] In the Book of Job, as Reville observes, Satanis "still a member of the celestial court, being one of the sons of theElohim, but having as his special office the continual accusation ofmen, and having become so suspicious by his practice as public accuser, that he believes in the virtue of no one, and always presupposesinterested motives for the purest manifestations of human piety. " Inthis way the character of this angel became injured, and he became moreand more an object of dread and dislike to men, until the later Jewsascribed to him all the attributes of Ahriman, and in this singularlyaltered shape he passed into Christian theology. Between the Satan ofthe Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the metamorphosis is as greatas that which degraded the stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light, into the demon-like Fury who torments wrong-doers in Tartarus; and, making allowance for difference of circumstances, the process ofdegradation has been very nearly the same in the two cases. 

The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound ofelements derived from all the systems of pagan mythology whichChristianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelledfrom heaven along with his followers, like the giants who attemptedto scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend whorevolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent princeof the outer darkness, he retains the old characteristics of Vritra, Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna. As the black dog which appears behind thestove in Dr. Faust's study, he is the classic hell-hound Kerberos, theVedic Carvara. From the sylvan deity Pan he gets his goat-like body, hishorns and cloven hoofs. Like the wind-god Orpheus, to whose music thetrees bent their heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on thebagpipes. Like those other wind-gods the psychopomp Hermes and the wildhuntsman Odin, he is the prince of the powers of the air: his flightthrough the midnight sky, attended by his troop of witches mounted ontheir brooms, which sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves fromthe trees, is the same as the furious chase of the Erlking Odin or theBurckar Vittikab. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine to flow fromthe dry wood, alike on the deck of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and inAuerbach's cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a skilfulworker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic fire-godHephaistos or Vulcan; and, like Hephaistos, he is lame from the effectsof his fall from heaven. From the lightning-god Thor he obtains his redbeard, his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts; and, like thatancient deity, he is in the habit of beating his wife behind the doorwhen the rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes a hint fromPoseidon and from the swan-maidens, and appears as a water-imp or Nixy(whence probably his name of Old Nick), and as the Davy (deva) whose"locker" is situated at the bottom of the sea. [117]

According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, the Devil isa learned scholar and profound thinker. Having profited by six thousandyears of intense study and meditation, he has all science, philosophy, and theology at his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased withage, he is far more than a match for mortals in cunning. [118] Such, however, is not the view taken by mediaeval mythology, which usuallyrepresents his stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory ofHercules over Cacus is repeated in a hundred mediaeval legends in whichthe Devil is overreached and made a laughing-stock. The germ of thisnotion may be found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, whichis itself a victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and whichcuriously reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "TheDevil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and whenthe man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether hecan give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another day;and when he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that theoperation cannot be performed rightly unless he is first tightly boundwith his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned he asks theman's name. The reply is Issi (`himself'). When the lead is melted, theDevil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he isblinded, he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which he hadbeen bound; and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thustreated him, his answer is, 'Issi teggi' (`Self did it'). With a laughthey bid him lie on the bed which he has made: 'selbst gethan, selbsthabe. ' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was never seen again. "

In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently foiled bythe superior cunning of mortals. Once, he agreed to build a house fora peasant in exchange for the peasant's soul; but if the house were notfinished before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and void. Just asthe Devil was putting on the last tile the man imitated a cockcrow andwaked up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend hadhis labour for his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold himself tothe Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches for seven years, andthen came to get him. The merchant "took the Devil in a friendly mannerby the hand and, as it was just evening, said, 'Wife, bring a lightquickly for the gentleman. ' 'That is not at all necessary, ' said theDevil; 'I am merely come to fetch you. ' 'Yes, yes, that I know verywell, ' said the merchant, 'only just grant me the time till this littlecandle-end is burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to puton my coat. ' 'Very well, ' said the Devil, 'but only till the candle isburnt out. ' 'Good, ' said the merchant, and going into the next room, ordered the maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to avery deep pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also carried, each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they wereordered each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchantthen returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more than about an inchof candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it willsoon be burnt out. ' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you toyour word, and stay till it IS burnt. ' 'Of course, ' answered the Devil;'I stick to my word. ' 'It is dark in the next room, ' continued themerchant, 'but I must find the great book with clasps, so let me justtake the light for one moment. ' 'Certainly, ' said the Devil, 'but I'llgo with you. ' He did so, and the merchant's trepidation was now on theincrease. When in the next room he said on a sudden, 'Ah, now I know, the key is in the garden door. ' And with these words he ran out with thelight into the garden, and before the Devil could overtake him, threw itinto the pit, and the men and the maids poured water upon it, and thenfilled up the hole with earth. Now came the Devil into the garden andasked, 'Well, did you get the key? and how is it with the candle? whereis it?' 'The candle?' said the merchant. 'Yes, the candle. ' 'Ha, ha, ha!it is not yet burnt out, ' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and will notbe burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies there a hundred fathomsdeep in the earth. ' When the Devil heard this he screamed awfully, andwent off with a most intolerable stench. " [119]

One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit a birdat a dozen paces, sold his soul to the Devil in order to become aFreischutz. The fiend was to come for him in seven years, but must bealways able to name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise thecompact was to be nullified. After that day the fowler never missed hisaim, and never did a fowler command such wages. When the seven yearswere out the fowler told all these things to his wife, and the twain hitupon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped herself, daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled herself up in afeather-bed, cut open for this purpose. Then she hopped and skippedabout the field where her husband stood parleying with Old Nick. "there's a shot for you, fire away, " said the Devil. "Of course I'llfire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else ouragreement is cancelled, Old Boy. " There was no help for it; theDevil had to own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff ofbrimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his good woman. [120]

In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more ingloriouslydefeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being jilted by his sweetheart, went out into the woods to hang himself. As he was sitting on the bough, with the cord about his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge, suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared before him, and offeredhis services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and make hissweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty yearshe must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was struck, forGambrinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy one's self in, andperhaps the Devil might get him in any event; as well be hung for asheep as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented chiming-bells andlager-beer, for both of which achievements his name is held in gratefulremembrance by the Teuton. No sooner had the Holy Roman Emperor quaffeda gallon or two of the new beverage than he made Gambrinus Duke ofBrabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the fiddler's turn tolaugh at the discomfiture of his old sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear ofwomen, says the legend, and so lived in peace. For thirty years he satbeneath his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drinking beer with hisnobles and burghers around him. Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of hisimps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jockowas, like Swiveller's Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, neverhaving drunk of it even in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too muchfor him. He fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noonnext day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to goback to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a century ortwo, and drank so much beer that he turned into a beer-barrel. [121]

The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these legendsis probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk, " of Northernmythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elvesand fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but theirpedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White Ladies, " werenot originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to theswan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was tobe dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having noplace for such beings, degraded them into something like imps; the mostcharitable theory being that they were angels who had remained neutralduring Satan's rebellion, in punishment for which Michael expelled themfrom heaven, but has left their ultimate fate unannounced until the dayof judgment. The Jinn appear to have been similarly degraded on the riseof Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of darkness. They aredescended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern paganism, andthey correspond to the Panis, or night-demons of the Veda. In many Norsetales they are said to burst when they see the risen sun. [122] They eathuman flesh, are ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the deepestrecesses of the forest or in caverns on the hillside, where the sunlightnever penetrates. Some of these characteristics may very likely havebeen suggested by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from whom theAryan invaders wrested the dominion of Europe. [123] In some legends theTrolls are represented as an ancient race of beings now superseded bythe human race. "'What sort of an earth-worm is this?' said one Giant toanother, when they met a man as they walked. 'These are the earth-wormsthat will one day eat us up, brother, ' answered the other; and soonboth Giants left that part of Germany. " "'See what pretty playthings, mother!' cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and showsher a plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back with them this instant, 'cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down as carefully as you can, for these playthings can do our race great harm, and when these come wemust budge. '" Very naturally the primitive Teuton, possessing alreadythe conception of night-demons, would apply it to these men of thewoods whom even to this day his uneducated descendants believe to besorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever contributionshistorical fact may have added to his character, the Troll is originallya creation of mythology, like Polyphemos, whom he resembles in hisuncouth person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His readygullibility is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with theTroll. " Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the counterpart alikeof Jack the Giant-killer, and of Odysseus, is the youngest of threebrothers who go into a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears andthreatens to kill any one who dares to meddle with his timber. The elderbrothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese out ofhis scrip and squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out. "Hold yourtongue, you dirty Troll, " said he, "or I'll squeeze you as I squeezethis stone. " So the Troll grew timid and begged to be spared, [124] andBoots let him off on condition that he would hew all day with him. They worked till nightfall, and the Troll's giant strength accomplishedwonders. Then Boots went home with the Troll, having arranged that heshould get the water while his host made the fire. When they reached thehut there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy that none but a Trollcould lift them, but Boots was not to be frightened. "Bah!" said he. "Doyou suppose I am going to get water in those paltry hand-basins? Holdon till I go and get the spring itself!" "O dear!" said the Troll, "I'drather not; do you make the fire, and I'll get the water. " Then when thesoup was made, Boots challenged his new friend to an eating-match; andtying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to pour soup into it by theladleful. By and by the giant threw down his spoon in despair, and ownedhimself conquered. "No, no! don't give it up yet, " said Boots, "just cuta hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat forever. " And suitingthe action to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Trollcut himself open and died, and Boots carried off all his gold andsilver. 

Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-and-Weather, and Saint Olafhired him to build a church. If the church were completed within acertain specified time, the Troll was to get possession of Saint Olaf. The saint then planned such a stupendous edifice that he thought thegiant would be forever building it; but the work went on briskly, and atthe appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the spire. In his consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed by the Troll'sden, when he heard the giantess telling her children that their father, Wind-and-Weather, was finishing his church, and would be home to-morrowwith Saint Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, "Hold on, Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crooked!" Then the gianttumbled down from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces. As in thecases of the Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end assoon as the enchanter was called by name. 

These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of carryingoff beautiful princesses. This is strictly in keeping with theircharacter as night-demons, or Panis. In the stories of Punchkin andthe Heartless Giant, the night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden afterhaving turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or Indra, insearch of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the Troll's castle, andthen the dawn-nymph, true to her fickle character, cajoles the Giantand enables Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which serves as thebasis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon Fafnirsteals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a castle on theGlistening Heath, until some champion shall be found powerful enoughto rescue her. The castle is as hard to enter as that of the SleepingBeauty; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus, riding on his deathlesshorse, and wielding his resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slaysFafnir, and recovers the Valkyrie. 

In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to the classof cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and that of Herculesand Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit cloudswhich are represented in the one as cows are in the other representedas maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they reappear as the GoldenFleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselvesNiblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there guarded by adragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a fiend of darkness, and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the demon. And--rememberingwhat Scribe said about the fewness of dramatic types--I believe we arewarranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely women held inbondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks, such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solarmyths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say thatthe story-tellers who beguiled their time in stringing together theincidents which make up these legends were conscious of their solarcharacter. They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weaveallegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story of Perseusand Andromeda, the Arabians who devised the tale of Codadad andhis brethren, the Flemings who listened over their beer-mugs tothe adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not thinking of sun-gods ordawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no theory of mythology can be soundwhich implies such an extravagance. Most of these stories have livedon the lips of the common people; and illiterate persons are not inthe habit of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinicalcommentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that the sunand the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed tobe actuated by wills analogous to the human will; that they werepersonified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that theirdoings were described in language which applied so well to the deeds ofhuman or quasi-human beings that in course of time its primitive purportfaded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the mythsof the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology itselfshows that the names employed in them are the names of the greatphenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories had thusarisen, --when once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and howSigurd rescued Brynhild, and how Odysseus blinded the Kyklops, --thencertain mythic or dramatic types had been called into existence; and tothese types, preserved in the popular imagination, future stories wouldinevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no hesitation in admittinga common origin for the vanquished Panis and the outwitted Troll orDevil; we may securely compare the legends of St. George and Jack theGiant-killer with the myth of Indra slaying Vritra; we may see in theinvincible Sigurd the prototype of many a doughty knight-errant ofromance; and we may learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh emphasis bymodern scholarship, that in the deepest sense there is nothing new underthe sun. 

I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me that theunguarded language of many students of mythology is liable to give riseto misapprehensions, and to discredit both the method which they employand the results which they have obtained. If we were to give full weightto the statements which are sometimes made, we should perforce believethat primitive men had nothing to do but to ponder about the sun and theclouds, and to worry themselves over the disappearance of daylight. Butthere is nothing in the scientific interpretation of myths which obligesus to go any such length. I do not suppose that any ancient Aryan, possessed of good digestive powers and endowed with sound common-sense, ever lay awake half the night wondering whether the sun would come backagain. [125] The child and the savage believe of necessity that thefuture will resemble the past, and it is only philosophy which raisesdoubts on the subject. [126] The predominance of solar legends in mostsystems of mythology is not due to the lack of "that Titanic assurancewith which we say, the sun MUST rise"; [127] nor again to the factthat the phenomena of day and night are the most striking phenomena innature. Eclipses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of the mostterrible and astounding kind, and they have all generated myths;yet their contributions to folk-lore are scanty compared with thosefurnished by the strife between the day-god and his enemies. Thesun-myths have been so prolific because the dramatic types to whichthey have given rise are of surpassing human interest. The dragon whoswallows the sun is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toilsfor others, who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tearsof fair-haired damsels, and achieves success in spite of incredibleobstacles, is a being with whom we can all sympathize, and of whom wenever weary of hearing. 

With many of these legends which present the myth of light and darknessin its most attractive form, the reader is already acquainted, and it isneedless to retail stories which have been told over and over again inbooks which every one is presumed to have read. I will content myselfwith a weird Irish legend, narrated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy, [128]in which we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythicalsymbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming through the crystal ofquartz. 

Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at Muskerry aSculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard work and close economyhad amassed enormous wealth. His only son did not resemble him. When theyoung Sculloge looked about the house, the day after his father'sdeath, and saw the big chests full of gold and silver, and the cupboardsshining with piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed withlarge and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever beable to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and gambled, andwasted his time in hunting and horse-racing, until after a while hefound the chests empty and the cupboards poverty-stricken, and thestockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house andgambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him thata few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went tolook at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of waterin the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house allgone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coatof dust and mould over everything. " So he made up his mind to borrow ahorse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his habits. 

As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt, passingthrough a lonely glen he came upon an old man playing backgammon, betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and cursingbecause the right WOULD win. "Come and bet with me, " said he toSculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world, " was the reply;"but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right. " "Done, " said the oldman, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas. " Sothe game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was always thewinner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil withthem. 

Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young farmer wenthome and began to pay his debts, and next week he went to the glenand won another game, and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So Scullogebecame prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a third time, and won a game played for a beautiful wife. The Druid sent her to hishouse the next morning before he was out of bed, and his servants cameknocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up! Master Sculloge, there's a young lady here to see you. " "Bedad, it's the vanithee [129]herself, " said Sculloge; and getting up in a hurry, he spent threequarters of an hour in dressing himself. At last he went down stairs, and there on the sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland!Naturally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as hebegged the lady's pardon for this Druidic style of wooing, and besoughther not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really liked him. But the young lady, who was a king's daughter from a far country, waswondrously charmed with the handsome farmer, and so well did they getalong that the priest was sent for without further delay, and they weremarried before sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warnedher husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old man ofthe glen. So for a while all went happily, and the Druidic bride was asgood as she was beautiful But by and by Sculloge began to think he wasnot earning money fast enough. He could not bear to see his wife's whitehands soiled with work, and thought it would be a fine thing if he couldonly afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with Sabinain an elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and adorned withjewels. 

"I will play one more game and set the stakes high, " said Sculloge tohimself one evening, as he sat pondering over these things; and so, without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the glen, and played a gamefor ten thousand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to pounceon his prey, and he did not play as of old. Sculloge broke into a coldsweat with agony and terror as he saw the left hand win! Then the faceof Lassa Buaicht grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge the cursewhich is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that he should neversleep twice under the same roof, or ascend the couch of the dawn-nymph, his wife, until he should have procured and brought to him the sword oflight. When Sculloge reached home, more dead than alive, he saw that hiswife knew all. Bitterly they wept together, but she told him that withcourage all might be set right. She gave him a Druidic horse, which borehim swiftly over land and sea, like the enchanted steed of the ArabianNights, until he reached the castle of his wife's father who, asSculloge now learned, was a good Druid, the brother of the evil LassaBuaicht. This good Druid told him that the sword of light was kept bya third brother, the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in anenchanted castle, which many brave heroes had tried to enter, butthe dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three high walls surroundedthe castle, and many had scaled the first of these, but none had everreturned alive. But Sculloge was not to be daunted, and, taking fromhis father-in-law a black steed, he set out for the fortress of FiachO'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped the magic horse, andSculloge called aloud on the Druid to come out and surrender his sword. Then came out a tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair andmelancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with the flamingblade. But the Druidic beast sprang back over the wall in the twinklingof an eye and rescued his rider, leaving, however, his tail behind inthe court-yard. Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his father-in-law'spalace, and the night was spent in feasting and revelry. 

Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when he got to Fiach'scastle, he saw the first wall lying in rubbish. He leaped the second, and the same scene occurred as the day before, save that the horseescaped unharmed. 

The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp like that ofOrpheus in his hand, and as he swept its strings the grass bent tolisten and the trees bowed their heads. The castle walls all lay inruins, and Sculloge made his way unhindered to the upper room, whereFiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He seized the swordof light, which was hung by the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard, andmaking the best of his way back to the good king's palace, mounted hiswife's steed, and scoured over land and sea until he found himself inthe gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still crying and cursing andbetting on his left hand against his right. 

"Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light!" shouted Sculloge intones of thunder; and as he drew it from its sheath the whole valleywas lighted up as with the morning sun, and next moment the head of thewretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet wife, who had cometo meet him, was laughing and crying in his arms. November, 1870. 

V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 

THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preceding papers, andillustrated by the examination of numerous myths relating to thelightning, the storm-wind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was originallyframed with reference solely to the mythic and legendary lore of theAryan world. The phonetic identity of the names of many Western gods andheroes with the names of those Vedic divinities which are obviouslythe personifications of natural phenomena, suggested the theory whichphilosophical considerations had already foreshadowed in the worksof Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis of Greek, Hindu, Keltic, and Teutonic legends has amply confirmed. Let us now, beforeproceeding to the consideration of barbaric folk-lore, brieflyrecapitulate the results obtained by modern scholarship working strictlywithin the limits of the Aryan domain. 

In the first place, it has been proved once for all that the languagesspoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Slaves, andTeutons are all descended from a single ancestral language, the OldAryan, in the same sense that French, Italian, and Spanish are descendedfrom the Latin. And from this undisputed fact it is an inevitableinference that these various races contain, along with other elements, a race-element in common, due to their Aryan pedigree. That theIndo-European races are wholly Aryan is very improbable, for in everycase the countries overrun by them were occupied by inferior races, whose blood must have mingled in varying degrees with that of theirconquerors; but that every Indo-European people is in great partdescended from a common Aryan stock is not open to question. 

In the second place, along with a common fund of moral and religiousideas and of legal and ceremonial observances, we find these kindredpeoples possessed of a common fund of myths, superstitions, proverbs, popular poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother amuses her childwith fairy-tales which often correspond, even in minor incidents, withstories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells them inwords which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and Gaelic. Nodoubt many of these stories might have been devised in a dozen differentplaces independently of each other; and no doubt many of them havebeen transmitted laterally from one people to another; but a carefulexamination shows that such cannot have been the case with the greatmajority of legends and beliefs. The agreement between two such stories, for instance, as those of Faithful John and Rama and Luxman is soclose as to make it incredible that they should have been independentlyfabricated, while the points of difference are so important as to makeit extremely improbable that the one was ever copied from the other. Besides which, the essential identity of such myths as those of Sigurdand Theseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us back historically to atime when the scattered Indo-European tribes had not yet begun tohold commercial and intellectual intercourse with each other, andconsequently could not have interchanged their epic materials or theirhousehold stories. We are therefore driven to the conclusion--which, startling as it may seem, is after all the most natural and plausibleone that can be stated--that the Aryan nations, which have inheritedfrom a common ancestral stock their languages and their customs, haveinherited also from the same common original their fireside legends. They have preserved Cinderella and Punchkin just as they have preservedthe words for father and mother, ten and twenty; and the former case, though more imposing to the imagination, is scientifically no lessintelligible than the latter. 

Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales may be grouped ina few pretty well defined classes; and that the archetypal myth of eachclass--the primitive story in conformity to which countless subsequenttales have been generated--was originally a mere description of physicalphenomena, couched in the poetic diction of an age when everything waspersonified, because all natural phenomena were supposed to be due tothe direct workings of a volition like that of which men were consciouswithin themselves. Thus we are led to the striking conclusion thatmythology has had a common root, both with science and with religiousphilosophy. The myth of Indra conquering Vritra was one of the theoremsof primitive Aryan science; it was a provisional explanation of thethunder-storm, satisfactory enough until extended observation andreflection supplied a better one. It also contained the germs of atheology; for the life-giving solar light furnished an important partof the primeval conception of deity. And finally, it became the fruitfulparent of countless myths, whether embodied in the stately epics ofHomer and the bards of the Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler legends ofSt. George and William Tell and the ubiquitous Boots. 

Such is the theory which was suggested half a century ago by theresearches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so far as concerns the mythologyof the Aryan race, is now victorious along the whole line. It remainsfor us to test the universality of the general principles upon which itis founded, by a brief analysis of sundry legends and superstitionsof the barbaric world. Since the fetichistic habit of explaining theoutward phenomena of nature after the analogy of the inward phenomena ofconscious intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ancestors, but is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of the conditionsunder which uncivilized thinking proceeds, we may expect to find thebarbaric mind personifying the powers of nature and making myths abouttheir operations the whole world over. And we need not be surprised ifwe find in the resulting mythologic structures a strong resemblance tothe familiar creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point of fact, weshall often be called upon to note such resemblance; and it accordinglybehooves us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity betweenmythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a common traditionalorigin, and how far it may be interpreted as due merely to the similarworkings of the untrained intelligence in all ages and countries. 

Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages will here be of serviceto us, if used discreetly; otherwise they are likely to bewilder farmore than to enlighten us. A theorem which Max Muller has laid downfor our guidance in this kind of investigation furnishes us with anexcellent example of the tricks which a superficial analogy may playeven with the trained scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actuatedby a praiseworthy desire to raise the study of myths to something likethe high level of scientific accuracy already attained by the study ofwords, Max Muller endeavours to introduce one of the most useful canonsof philology into a department of inquiry where its introduction couldonly work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest lessons to belearned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness ofcomparing together directly the words contained in derivative languages. For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with theLatin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity withoutany hope of reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them:least of all would you suspect that they are descended from the sameradical. But if you take each word by itself and trace it back to itsprimitive shape, explaining every change of every letter as you go, youwill at last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of boththese strangely metamorphosed words. [130] Nor will it do, on the otherhand, to trust to verbal similarity without a historical inquiry intothe origin of such similarity. Even in the same language two words ofquite different origin may get their corners rubbed off till they lookas like one another as two pebbles. The French words souris, a "mouse, "and souris, a "smile, " are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes fromLatin sorex and the other from Latin subridere. 

Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is indispensablein the study of words, is equally indispensable in the study of myths. [131] That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of theHeartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although thetwo correspond in every essential incident. In both legends a magicianturns several members of the same family into stone; the youngest memberof the family comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives ofsundry grateful beasts; arrived at the magician's castle, he findsa captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part ofDelilah to the enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's lifedepends on the integrity of something which is elaborately hidden ina far-distant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed bythe artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of grateful beasts, succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantageto free all his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds todestroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness. Yet, in spite ofthis agreement, Max Muller, if I understand him aright, would not haveus infer the identity of the two stories until we have taken eachone separately and ascertained its primitive mythical significance. Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resemblance may be purelyaccidental, like that of the French words for "mouse" and "smile. "

A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this perplexity, andassure us that the alleged analogy between the comparison of words andthe comparison of stories is utterly superficial. The transformationsof words--which are often astounding enough--depend upon a fewwell-established physiological principles of utterance; and sincephilology has learned to rely upon these principles, it has becomenearly as sure in its methods and results as one of the so-called "exactsciences. " Folly enough is doubtless committed within its precincts bywriters who venture there without the laborious preparation which thisscience, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings ofthe trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trainedastronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat andswallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle arethe same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do witheach other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than theastronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of Venuswhile asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in theatmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, everyphilologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound maydwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausibleetymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o intoa, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, thephilologist will shake his head. 

Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut anddried for us to go by. There is no uniform psychological principlewhich determines that the three-headed snake in one story shall become athree-headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology whichdecides that a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a NorwegianTroll or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not sosimple in application as the laws of utterance. In short, the study ofmyths, though it can be made sufficiently scientific in its methods andresults, does not constitute a science by itself, like philology. Itstands on a footing similar to that occupied by physical geography, or what the Germans call "earth-knowledge. " No one denies that all thechanges going on over the earth's surface conform to physical laws; butthen no one pretends that there is any single proximate principle whichgoverns all the phenomena of rain-fall, of soil-crumbling, of magneticvariation, and of the distribution of plants and animals. All thesethings are explained by principles obtained from the various sciencesof physics, chemistry, geology, and physiology. And in just the same waythe development and distribution of stories is explained by the helpof divers resources contributed by philology, psychology, and history. There is therefore no real analogy between the cases cited by MaxMuller. Two unrelated words may be ground into exactly the same shape, just as a pebble from the North Sea may be undistinguishable fromanother pebble on the beach of the Adriatic; but two stories likethose of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant are no more likely to ariseindependently of each other than two coral reefs on opposite sides ofthe globe are likely to develop into exactly similar islands. 

Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between legends is proofof kinship, and go our way without further misgivings? Unfortunatelywe cannot dispose of the matter in quite so summary a fashion; for itremains to decide what kind and degree of similarity shall be consideredsatisfactory evidence of kinship. And it is just here that doctors maydisagree. Here is the point at which our "science" betrays its weaknessas compared with the sister study of philology. Before we can decidewith confidence in any case, a great mass of evidence must be broughtinto court. So long as we remained on Aryan ground, all went smoothlyenough, because all the external evidence was in our favour. We knewat the outset, that the Aryans inherit a common language and a commoncivilization, and therefore we found no difficulty in accepting theconclusion that they have inherited, among other things, a common stockof legends. In the barbaric world it is quite otherwise. Philology doesnot pronounce in favour of a common origin for all barbaric culture, such as it is. The notion of a single primitive language, standing inthe same relation to all existing dialects as the relation of old Aryanto Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was anotion suited only to the infancy of linguistic science. As the case nowstands, it is certain that all the languages actually existing cannot bereferred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable thatthere never was any such common ancestor. I am not now referring to thequestion of the unity of the human race. That question lies entirelyoutside the sphere of philology. The science of language has nothing todo with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words can tell uswhether the black men are brethren of the white men, or whetheryellow and red men have a common pedigree: these questions belong tocomparative physiology. But the science of language can and does tell usthat a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the productionof a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread to give birth tonumerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric languages are neitherwidespread nor durable. Among savages each little group of families hasits own dialect, and coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in thecourse of two or three generations a dialect gets so strangely alteredas virtually to lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns, which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost every fewyears in Polynesia. Since the time of Captain Cook the Tahitian languagehas thrown away five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced themby brand-new ones; and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent commandof some Indian dialect, and then, coming back after twenty years, findyourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquatedand useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savagesoriginated a language which has held its own like the old Aryan andbecome the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects nowin existence! Before a durable language can arise, there must be anaggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may beneed of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may bestrengthened. Wherever mankind have associated in nations, permanentlanguages have arisen, and their derivative dialects bear theconspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have remained in theirprimitive savage isolation, their languages have remained sporadic andtransitory, incapable of organic development, and showing no traces of akinship which never existed. 

The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion ofbarbaric myths is obvious. The development of a common stock of legendsis, of course, impossible, save where there is a common language; andthus philology pronounces against the kinship of barbaric myths witheach other and with similar myths of the Aryan and Semitic worlds. Similar stories told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a commonpedigree, because the persons who have preserved them in recollectionspeak a common language and have inherited the same civilization. Butsimilar stories told in Labrador and South Africa are not likely tobe genealogically related, because it is altogether probable that theEsquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their present race characteristicsbefore either of them possessed a language or a culture sufficientfor the production of myths. According to the nature and extent of thesimilarity, it must be decided whether such stories have been carriedabout from one part of the world to another, or have been independentlyoriginated in many different places. 

Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be founduseful. In comparing, the vocabularies of different languages, thosewords which directly imitate natural sounds--such as whiz, crash, crackle--are not admitted as evidence of kinship between the languagesin which they occur. Resemblances between such words are obviously noproof of a common ancestry; and they are often met with in languageswhich have demonstrably had no connection with each other. So inmythology, where we find two stories of which the primitive character isperfectly transparent, we need have no difficulty in supposing them tohave originated independently. The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk isfound all over the world; but the idea of a country above the sky, towhich persons might gain access by climbing, is one which could hardlyfail to occur to every barbarian. Among the American tribes, as wellas among the Aryans, the rainbow and the Milky-Way have contributed theidea of a Bridge of the Dead, over which souls must pass on the way tothe other world. In South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits ofthe fox and of his brother the jackal have given rise to fables in whichbrute force is overcome by cunning. In many parts of the world we findcuriously similar stories devised to account for the stumpy tails of thebear and hyaena, the hairless tail of the rat, and the blindness ofthe mole. And in all countries may be found the beliefs that men may bechanged into beasts, or plants, or stones; that the sun is in some waytethered or constrained to follow a certain course; that the storm-cloudis a ravenous dragon; and that there are talismans which willreveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions are so obvious to theuncivilized intelligence, that stories founded upon them need notbe supposed to have a common origin, unless there turns out to be astriking similarity among their minor details. On the other hand, thenumerous myths of an all-destroying deluge have doubtless arisen partlyfrom reminiscences of actually occurring local inundations, and partlyfrom the fact that the Scriptural account of a deluge has been carriedall over the world by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. [132]

By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite a few of theAmerican myths so carefully collected by Dr. Brinton in his admirabletreatise. We shall not find in the mythology of the New World the wealthof wit and imagination which has so long delighted us in the storiesof Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The mythic lore ofthe American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits theproduct of a lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Notonly are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but thereis a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferiorimagination. Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differencesin the artistic method of treatment, there is between the mythologies ofthe Old and the New Worlds a fundamental resemblance. We come upon solarmyths and myths of the storm curiously blended with culture-myths, as inthe cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and Kadmos. The American parallels tothese are to be found in the stories of Michabo, Viracocha, Ioskeha, andQuetzalcoatl. "As elsewhere the world over, so in America, many tribeshad to tell of. . . . An august character, who taught them what theyknew, --the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art ofpicture-writing, the secrets of magic; who founded their institutionsand established their religions; who governed them long with gloryabroad and peace at home; and finally did not die, but, like FredericBarbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanishedmysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment toreturn to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness. "[133] Everyone is familiar with the numerous legends of white-skinned, full-bearded heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl, who in times longprevious to Columbus came from the far East to impart the rudiments ofcivilization and religion to the red men. By those who first heardthese stories they were supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer topre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like that of theNorthmen in the tenth century. But a scientific study of the subject hasdissipated such notions. These legends are far too numerous, they aretoo similar to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to admitof any such interpretation. By comparing them carefully with each other, and with correlative myths of the Old World, their true character soonbecomes apparent. 

One of the most widely famous of these culture-heroes was Manabozho orMichabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, thevarious branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, theLenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, theOttawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps withoutexception, spoke of this chimerical beast, ' as one of the oldmissionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan, which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect. " Not onlywas Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes, --he was thefounder of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing, theruler of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth and heaven. "From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean hefashioned the habitable land, and set it floating on the waters till itgrew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, diedof old age ere he reached its limits. " He was also, like Nimrod, amighty hunter. "One of his footsteps measured eight leagues, the GreatLakes were the beaver-dams he built, and when the cataracts impeded hisprogress he tore them away with his hands. " "Sometimes he was saidto dwell in the skies with his brother, the Snow, or, like many greatspirits, to have built his wigwam in the far North on some floe of icein the Arctic Ocean. . . . . But in the oldest accounts of the missionarieshe was alleged to reside toward the East; and in the holy formulae ofthe meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, theEast is summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, andthere, at the edge of the earth where the sun rises, on the shore of theinfinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and sends theluminaries forth on their daily journeys. " [134] From such accounts asthis we see that Michabo was no more a wise instructor and legislatorthan Minos or Kadmos. Like these heroes, he is a personification of thesolar life-giving power, which daily comes forth from its home in theeast, making the earth to rejoice. The etymology of his name confirmsthe otherwise clear indications of the legend itself. It is compoundedof michi, "great, " and wabos, which means alike "hare" and "white. ""Dialectic forms in Algonquin for white are wabi, wape, wampi, etc. ; formorning, wapan, wapanch, opah; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc. ; for day, wompan, oppan; for light, oppung. " So that Michabo is the Great WhiteOne, the God of the Dawn and the East. And the etymological confusion, by virtue of which he acquired his soubriquet of the Great Hare, affordsa curious parallel to what has often happened in Aryan and Semiticmythology, as we saw when discussing the subject of werewolves. 

Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let us note how fullof meaning are the myths concerning him. In the first cycle of theselegends, "he is grandson of the Moon, his father is the West Wind, and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment ofconception. For the Moon is the goddess of night; the Dawn is herdaughter, who brings forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the act;and the West, the spirit of darkness, as the East is of light, precedes, and as it were begets the latter, as the evening does the morning. Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnaturalfather to revenge the death of his mother, and then commenced a long anddesperate struggle. It began on the mountains. The West was forced togive ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains andlakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold, ' cried he, 'my son, you know my power, and that it is impossible to kill me. ' Whatis this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on fromwhat time 'the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops, 'across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, forboth the opponents are immortal?" [135]

Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative than this. The Iroquois tradition is very similar. In it appear twin brothers, [136] born of a virgin mother, daughter of the Moon, who died in givingthem life. Their names, Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneidadialect the White One and the Dark One. Under the influence of Christianideas the contest between the brothers has been made to assume a moralcharacter, like the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no suchintention appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton has shown thatnone of the American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When thequarrel came to blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; andthe victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother, "established hislodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the suncomes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special guardian ofthe Iroquois. " He caused the earth to bring forth, he stocked the woodswith game, and taught his children the use of fire. "He it was whowatched and watered their crops; 'and, indeed, without his aid, ' saysthe old missionary, quite out of patience with their puerilities, 'they think they could not boil a pot. '" There was more in it than poorBrebouf thought, as we are forcibly reminded by recent discoveries inphysical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil apot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will, --Ioskeha, Michabo, or Phoibos, --the beneficent Sun is the master and sustainerof us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, likeErckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better than to select himas our chief object of worship. 

The same principles by which these simple cases are explained furnishalso the key to the more complicated mythology of Mexico and Peru. Likethe deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas, rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys westward, slayingwith his lightnings the creatures who oppose him, until he finallydisappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his namethe evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the sea"; andhence the "White One" (l'aube), the god of light rising white on thehorizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras spokeof their original ancestors as white; and to this day, as Dr. Brintoninforms us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha. The myth ofQuetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these solar heroespresent in most of their qualities and achievements a striking likenessto those of the Old World. They combine the attributes of Apollo, Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey from east to west, smiting the powers of darkness, storm, and winter with the thunderboltsof Zeus or the unerring arrows of Phoibos, and sinking in a blazeof glory on the western verge of the world, where the waves meet thefirmament. Or like Hermes, in a second cycle of legends, they rise withthe soft breezes of a summer morning, driving before them the brightcelestial cattle whose udders are heavy with refreshing rain, fanningthe flames which devour the forests, blustering at the doors of wigwams, and escaping with weird laughter through vents and crevices. The whiteskins and flowing beards of these American heroes may be aptly comparedto the fair faces and long golden locks of their Hellenic compeers. Yellow hair was in all probability as rare in Greece as a full beardin Peru or Mexico; but in each case the description suits the solarcharacter of the hero. One important class of incidents, however isapparently quite absent from the American legends. We frequently see theDawn described as a virgin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day;but nowhere do we remember seeing her pictured as a lovely or valiant orcrafty maiden, ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her solar lover. Perhaps in no respect is the superior richness and beauty of the Aryanmyths more manifest than in this. Brynhild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne, Oinone, and countless other kindred heroines, with their brilliantlegends, could not be spared from the mythology of our ancestorswithout, leaving it meagre indeed. These were the materials whichKalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen foundready, awaiting their artistic treatment. But the mythology of the NewWorld, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords hardly enough, either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grandepic or a genuine tragedy. 

But little reflection is needed to assure us that the imagination of thebarbarian, who either carries away his wife by brute force or buys herfrom her relatives as he would buy a cow, could never have originatedlegends in which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which theirfavour is won by the performance of deeds of valour. These storiesowe their existence to the romantic turn of mind which has alwayscharacterized the Aryan, whose civilization, even in the times beforethe dispersion of his race, was sufficiently advanced to allow of hisentertaining such comparatively exalted conceptions of the relationsbetween men and women. The absence of these myths from barbaricfolk-lore is, therefore, just what might be expected; but it is a factwhich militates against any possible hypothesis of the common originof Aryan and barbaric mythology. If there were any genetic relationshipbetween Sigurd and Ioskeha, between Herakles and Michabo, it would behard to tell why Brynhild and Iole should have disappeared entirelyfrom one whole group of legends, while retained, in some form orother, throughout the whole of the other group. On the other hand, theresemblances above noticed between Aryan and American mythology fallvery far short of the resemblances between the stories told in differentparts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaricgrowth, has yet been cited which resembles any Aryan legend as the storyof Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless Giant. The mythsof Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of naturalphenomena, just as imitative words are direct copies of natural sounds. Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European had any choice as to the mainfeatures of the career of his solar divinity. He must be born of theNight, --or of the Dawn, --must travel westward, must slay harassingdemons. Eliminating these points of likeness, the resemblance betweenthe Aryan and barbaric legends is at once at an end. Such an identityin point of details as that between the wooden horse which entersIlion, and the horse which bears Sigurd into the place where Brynhildis imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps with Sculloge over thewalls of Fiach's enchanted castle, is, I believe, nowhere to be foundafter we leave Indo-European territory. 

Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the legends of the Aryanand the non-Aryan worlds contain common mythical elements, the legendsthemselves are not of common origin. The fact that certain mythicalideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in each casea similar human intelligence has been at work explaining similarphenomena; but in order to prove a family relationship between theculture of these different races, we need something more than this. We need to prove not only a community of mythical ideas, but also acommunity between the stories based upon these ideas. We must show notonly that Michabo is like Herakles in those striking features whichthe contemplation of solar phenomena would necessarily suggest tothe imagination of the primitive myth-maker, but also that the twocharacters are similarly conceived, and that the two careers agree inseemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the case in the stories ofPunchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, allover the world, travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness is ofgreat value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but itis of no value as evidence for or against an alleged community ofcivilization between different races. The same is true of the sacrednessuniversally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that thesanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due toa primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes very probablewhen we recollect that the similar pre-eminence of seven is almostdemonstrably connected with the adoration of the sun, moon, andfive visible planets, which has left its record in the structure andnomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic week. [137]

In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric mythswith each other and with the legends of the Aryan world becomes doublyinteresting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of theuntrained intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw howthe moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Europeans, as aman with a thorn-bush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on apole. In Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering halfstarved in the forest, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to himto be slain and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it onhigh in the moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvelat its piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are supposedto be portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammeringsomething with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like abread-fruit that the woman asked it to come down and let her childeat off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled upwoman, mallet, and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may stillbehold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the Hare toinform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men dieand again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot the purport of themessage, and, coming down to the earth, proclaimed it far and wide thatthough the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever she died, mankind, on the other hand, should die and go to the Devil. When the silly brutereturned to the lunar country and told what he had done, the Moon was soangry that she took up an axe and aimed a blow at his head to split it. But the axe missed and only cut his lip open; and that was the originof the "hare-lip. " Maddened by the pain and the insult, the Hare flew atthe Moon and almost scratched her eyes out; and to this day she bears onher face the marks of the Hare's claws. [138]

Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene cast Endymion intoa profound slumber because he refused her love, and how at sundown sheused to come and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch him ashe lay asleep on the marble steps of a temple half hidden among droopingelm-trees, over which clambered vines heavy with dark blue grapes. Thisrepresents the rising moon looking down on the setting sun; in Labradora similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat different story. Amongthe Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden and the Moon is her brother, whois overcome by a wicked passion for her. Once, as this girl was at adancing-party in a friend's hut, some one came up and took hold of herby the shoulders and shook her, which is (according to the legend) theEsquimaux manner of declaring one's love. She could not tell who it wasin the dark, and so she dipped her hand in some soot and smeared one ofhis cheeks with it. When a light was struck in the hut, she saw, to herdismay, that it was her brother, and, without waiting to learn any more, she took to her heels. He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran tillthey got to the end of the world, --the jumping-off place, --when theyboth jumped into the sky. There the Moon still chases his sister, theSun; and every now and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth, when he becomes so dark that you cannot see him. [139]

Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as wellas Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens. In theisland of Celebes it is said that "seven heavenly nymphs came down fromthe sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who thought firstthat they were white doves, but in the bath he saw that they were women. Then he stole one of the thin robes that gave the nymphs their power offlying, and so he caught Utahagi, the one whose robe he had stolen, and took her for his wife, and she bore him a son. Now she was calledUtahagi from a single white hair she had, which was endowed with magicpower, and this hair her husband pulled out. As soon as he had doneit, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi went up to heaven. The childcried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was in great grief, and cast abouthow he should follow Utahagi up into the sky. " Here we pass to the mythof Jack and the Beanstalk. "A rat gnawed the thorns off the rattans, andKasimbaha clambered up by them with his son upon his back, till he cameto heaven. There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, andafter various adventures he took up his abode among the gods. " [140]

In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which also reminds us ofthe story of the Heartless Giant. A certain Samojed once went out tocatch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded bygloomy pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore. Hecrept up and stole one of these dresses, and by and by the swan-maidencame to him shivering with cold and promising to become his wife if hewould only give her back her garment of feathers. The ungallant fellow, however, did not care for a wife, but a little revenge was not unsuitedto his way of thinking. There were seven robbers who used to prowl aboutthe neighbourhood, and who, when they got home, finding their heartsin the way, used to hang them up on some pegs in the tent. One of theserobbers had killed the Samojed's mother; and so he promised to returnthe swan-maiden's dress after she should have procured for him theseseven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and the Samojed smashed six ofthem, and then woke up the seventh robber, and told him to restore hismother to life, on pain of instant death, Then the robber produced apurse containing the old woman's soul, and going to the graveyard shookit over her bones, and she revived at once. Then the Samojed smashed theseventh heart, and the robber died; and so the swan-maiden got back herplumage and flew away rejoicing. [141]

Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, found among theMinussinian Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons, like theGreek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in battle. There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight;but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black storm-fiend, whorages for blood, like a werewolf. 

In South Africa we find the werewolf himself. [142] A certain Hottentotwas once travelling with a Bushwoman and her child, when they perceivedat a distance a troop of wild horses. The man, being hungry, asked thewoman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these horses, thatthey might eat of it; whereupon the woman set down her child, and takingoff a sort of petticoat made of human skin became instantly transformedinto a lioness, which rushed across the plain, struck down a wild horseand lapped its blood. The man climbed a tree in terror, and conjured hiscompanion to resume her natural shape. Then the lioness came back, andputting on the skirt made of human skin reappeared as a woman, and tookup her child, and the two friends resumed their journey after making ameal of the horse's flesh. [143]

The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished with hiswolf-skin sack; but neither in America nor in Africa is he the genuineEuropean werewolf, inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for humanflesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men can be changedinto beasts or have in some cases descended from beast ancestors, butthe application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibalcravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf ofthe Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man, --he was an insanecannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of theDevil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shapeof it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kindof thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races, whilebelieving in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not asufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception ofdiabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the mediaeval European wasa phenomenon so strange as to demand a mythological explanation, would not impress the barbarian as either very exceptional or veryblameworthy. 

In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most quick-witted andintelligent of African races, the cannibal possesses many features incommon with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a liking for humanflesh. As we saw in the preceding paper, the Troll has very likelyderived some of his characteristics from reminiscences of the barbarousraces who preceded the Aryans in Central and Northern Europe. In likemanner the long-haired cannibal of Zulu nursery literature, who isalways represented as belonging to a distinct race, has been supposed tobe explained by the existence of inferior races conquered and displacedby the Zulus. Nevertheless, as Dr. Callaway observes, neither thelong-haired mountain cannibals of Western Africa, nor the Fulahs, nor the tribes of Eghedal described by Barth, "can be considered asanswering to the description of long-haired as given in the Zulu legendsof cannibals; neither could they possibly have formed their historicalbasis. . . . . It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legendsare not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; theyare remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors. " Veryprobably they may have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin tothose which begot the Panis of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. Theparallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one which can be found incomparing barbaric with Aryan folk-lore. Like the Panis and Trolls, thecannibals are represented as the foes of the solar hero Uthlakanyana, who is almost as great a traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence ofmind amid trying circumstances is not to be surpassed by that of theincomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles or Hermes. He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he entered the world thanhe begins to outwit other people and get possession of their property. He works bitter ruin for the cannibals, who, with all their strength andfleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit than the Trolls, whomBoots invariably victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana fellin with a cannibal. Their greetings were cordial enough, and they ate abit of leopard together, and began to build a house, and killed a coupleof cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat. Then the crafty traveller, fearing that his companion might insist uponhaving the fat cow, turned and said, "'Let the house be thatched nowthen we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall get wet. ' Thecannibal said, 'You are right, child of my sister; you are a man indeedin saying, let us thatch the house, for we shall get wet. 'Uthlakanyana said, 'Do you do it then; I will go inside, and push thethatching-needle for you, in the house. ' The cannibal went up. His hairwas very, very long. Uthlakanyana went inside and pushed the needle forhim. He thatched in the hair of the cannibal, tying it very tightly; heknotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by separate locks andfastening it firmly, that it might be tightly fastened to the house. "Then the rogue went outside and began to eat of the cow which wasroasted. "The cannibal said, 'What are you about, child of my sister?Let us just finish the house; afterwards we can do that; we will do ittogether. ' Uthlakanyana replied, 'Come down then. I cannot go into thehouse any more. The thatching is finished. ' The cannibal assented. Whenhe thought he was going to quit the house, he was unable to quit it. He cried out saying, 'Child of my sister, how have you managed yourthatching?' Uthlakanyana said, 'See to it yourself. I have thatchedwell, for I shall not have any dispute. Now I am about to eat in peace;I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am now alone with my cow. '"So the cannibal cried and raved and appealed in vain to Uthlakanyana'ssense of justice, until by and by "the sky came with hailstones andlightning Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house; he stayed inthe house and lit a fire. It hailed and rained. The cannibal cried onthe top of the house; he was struck with the hailstones, and died thereon the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said, 'Uncle, justcome down, and come to me. It has become clear. It no longer rains, andthere is no more hail, neither is there any more lightning. Why are yousilent?' So Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it. Hethen went on his way. " [144]

In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and shut upin the rock Itshe-likantunjambili, which, like the rock of the FortyThieves, opens and shuts at the command of those who understand itssecret. She gets possession of the secret and escapes, and when themonsters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabash full of sesame, which they stop to eat. At last, getting tired of running, she climbs atree, and there she finds her brother, who, warned by a dream, has comeout to look for her. They ascend the tree together until they come to abeautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They kill an ox, and whileits flesh is roasting they amuse themselves by making a stout thong ofits hide. By and by one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking meat, comes to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy and girlin the sky-country! They invite him up there; to share in their feast, and throw him an end of the thong by which to climb up. When thecannibal is dangling midway between earth and heaven, they let go therope, and down he falls with a terrible crash. [145]

In this story the enchanted rock opened by a talismanic formula bringsus again into contact with Indo-European folk-lore. And that theconception has in both cases been suggested by the same naturalphenomenon is rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in which thecannibal's cave is opened by a swallow which flies in the air. Here wehave the elements of a genuine lightning-myth. We see that among theseAfrican barbarians, as well as among our own forefathers, the cloudshave been conceived as birds carrying the lightning which can cleavethe rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent. The Dakotahsexplain the thunder as "the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings, "and the Caribs describe the lightning as a poisoned dart which the birdblows through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting. [146]On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloud-bird, butexplain the lightning as something analogous to the flames of a volcano. The Kamtchatkans say that when the mountain goblins have got theirstoves well heated up, they throw overboard, with true barbaricshiftlessness, all the brands not needed for immediate use, which makesa volcanic eruption. So when it is summer on earth, it is winter inheaven; and the gods, after heating up their stoves, throw away theirspare kindlingwood, which makes the lightning. [147]

When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the unvarying, unresting course of the sun variously explained as due to the subjectionof Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or tothe curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has workedat the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are morechildlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun usedto race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylightto hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an inventive genius, namedMaui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun in a noose and makinghim go more deliberately. He plaited ropes and made a strong net, and, arming himself with the jawbone of his ancestress, Muri-ranga-whenua, called together all his brethren, and they journeyed to the place wherethe Sun rises, and there spread the net. When the Sun came up, he stuckhis head and fore-paws into the net, and while the brothers tightenedthe ropes so that they cut him and made him scream for mercy, Maui beathim with the jawbone until he became so weak that ever since he hasonly been able to crawl through the sky. According to another Polynesianmyth, there was once a grumbling Radical, who never could be satisfiedwith the way in which things are managed on this earth. This boldRadical set out to build a stone house which should last forever; butthe days were so short and the stones so heavy that he despaired ofever accomplishing his project. One night, as he lay awake thinking thematter over, it occurred to him that if he could catch the Sun in a net, he could have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish hishouse. So he borrowed a noose from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, when the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary. TheSun cried till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned theisland; but it was of no use; there he is tethered to this day. 

Similar stories are met with in North America. A Dog-Rib Indian oncechased a squirrel up a tree until he reached the sky. There he set asnare for the squirrel and climbed down again. Next day the Sun wascaught in the snare, and night came on at once. That is to say, the sunwas eclipsed. "Something wrong up there, " thought the Indian, "I musthave caught the Sun"; and so he sent up ever so many animals to releasethe captive. They were all burned to ashes, but at last the mole, goingup and burrowing out through the GROUND OF THE SKY, (!) succeeded ingnawing asunder the cords of the snare. Just as it thrust its head outthrough the opening made in the sky-ground, it received a flash of lightwhich put its eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind. The Sun gotaway, but has ever since travelled more deliberately. [148]

These sun-myths, many more of which are to be found collected in Mr. Tylor's excellent treatise on "The Early History of Mankind, " wellillustrate both the similarity and the diversity of the results obtainedby the primitive mind, in different times and countries, when engagedupon similar problems. No one would think of referring these stories toa common traditional origin with the myths of Herakles and Odysseus; yetboth classes of tales were devised to explain the same phenomenon. Bothto the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast but deliberate journeyof the sun through the firmament was a strange circumstance which calledfor explanation; but while the meagre intelligence of the barbariancould only attain to the quaint conception of a man throwing a nooseover the sun's head, the rich imagination of the Indo-European createdthe noble picture of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, inaccordance with the resistless decree of fate. 

Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar are the mental habitsof uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion of agreat tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from fallingis familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise, swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his back; but by andby, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will growweary and sink under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmedby a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demonstook Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to makeambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at thebottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon. But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the originalconception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in aboundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower plate whichcovers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell which covers his back isthe sky; and the human race lives and moves and has its being inside ofthe tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of Redskinshold substantially the same theory of the universe. They regard thetortoise as the symbol of the world, and address it as the mother ofmankind. Once, before the earth was made, the king of heaven quarrelledwith his wife, and gave her such a terrible kick that she fell down intothe sea. Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back, and proceededto raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the motherof mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in theground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife toofar and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea anddrowned all the human race save one man. [149] In Finnish mythology theworld is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part isthe ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. InIndia this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among theYorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, onemaking a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beastcalled Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is verylarge and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body itwas winter, and in others it was early harvest. " Many broad rivers flowover his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicatedin his name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast. " In thisgroup of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, which lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated uponits back, and at last it became covered with trees. And lastly, passingfrom barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest levelof Indo-European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and Kepleramusing themselves with speculations in which the earth figures as astupendous animal?

VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI. [150]

TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and theHomeric Age, " Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the warning addressed byAgamemnon to the priest of Apollo, "Let not Nemesis catch me by the swift ships. "

he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to classicalstudies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been, they have yieldedto the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground, --a desire as strongin the breast of the classical scholar as was the yearning which ledOdysseus to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so that he mightbut once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of hisnative Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the World, " Mr. Gladstone discusses the same questions which were treated in his earlierwork; and the main conclusions reached in the "Studies on Homer"are here so little modified with reference to the recent progress ofarchaeological inquiries, that the book can hardly be said to have hadany other reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by theships of the Argives, and of returning thither as often as possible. 

The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a veryappropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the point ofview from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readilyacquiesce in its use, and pass it by without comment, trusting thatthe author understood himself when he adopted it, were it not that byincidental references, and especially by his allusions to the legendaryliterature of the Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that he means more by thetitle than it can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks todetermine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and Danaos, andAbraham, is at once liable to the suspicion of holding very inadequateviews as to the character of the epoch which may properly be termed the"youth of the world. " Often in reading Mr. Gladstone we are remindedof Renan's strange suggestion that an exploration of the Hindu Kushterritory, whence probably came the primitive Aryans, might throw somenew light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be more futile. The primitive Aryan language has already been partly reconstructed forus; its grammatical forms and syntactic devices are becoming familiar toscholars; one great philologist has even composed a tale in it; yetin studying this long-buried dialect we are not much nearer the firstbeginnings of human speech than in studying the Greek of Homer, theSanskrit of the Vedas, or the Umbrian of the Igovine Inscriptions. TheAryan mother-tongue had passed into the last of the three stages oflinguistic growth long before the break-up of the tribal communitiesin Aryana-vaedjo, and at that early date presented a less primitivestructure than is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our owntimes. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, and wellillustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees less primitive than thatwhich is revealed to us by the archaeological researches either ofPictet and Windischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Lennan. We shallgather evidences of this as we proceed. Meanwhile let us remember thatat least eleven thousand years before the Homeric age men lived incommunities, and manufactured pottery on the banks of the Nile; and letus not leave wholly out of sight that more distant period, perhaps amillion years ago, when sparse tribes of savage men, contemporaneouswith the mammoths of Siberia and the cave-tigers of Britain, struggledagainst the intense cold of the glacial winters. 

Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a late one whenconsidered with reference to the whole career of the human race, thereis a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as the "youth ofthe world. " However long man may have existed upon the earth, he becomesthoroughly and distinctly human in the eyes of the historian only at theepoch at which he began to create for himself a literature. As far backas we can trace the progress of the human race continuously by means ofthe written word, so far do we feel a true historical interest in itsfortunes, and pursue our studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse oftime is powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history neverhas been and never will be written, whose career on the earth, datelessand chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by palaeontology, excites in us a very different feeling. Though with the keenest interestwe ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface for informationabout him, we are all the while aware that what we are studying ishuman zoology and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not acharacter. We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name, whowere his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His languagehas died with him, and he can render no account of himself. We can onlyregard him specifically as Homo Anthropos, a creature of bigger brainthan his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater promise. Butthis, we say, is physical science, and not history. 

For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various socialrelations, the youth of the world is the period at which literaturebegins. We regard the history of the western world as beginning aboutthe tenth century before the Christian era, because at that date we findliterature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw direct lightupon the social and intellectual condition of a portion of mankind. That great empires, rich in historical interest and in materials forsociological generalizations, had existed for centuries before thatdate, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they appear at thedawn of history with all the marks of great antiquity; but the onlysteady historical light thrown upon them shines from the pages of Greekand Hebrew authors, and these know them only in their latest period. Forinformation concerning their early careers we must look, not to history, but to linguistic archaeology, a science which can help us to generalresults, but cannot enable us to fix dates, save in the crudest manner. 

We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period atwhich we can begin to study human society in general and Greek societyin particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking, the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. Theearliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of the Olympiadof Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poemswere written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictlyprehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who havenot attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion mighthave been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson mustbe learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach ofcritical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy fromreality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence. " We do notknow who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in allprobability we shall never know. The data for settling the questionare not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will ever bediscovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in anobscurity as deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between theseven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of thepoet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. Thefeebleness of the evidence brought into court may be judged from thefact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's blindness restalike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides(III. 104) accepted as authentic. The majority of modern critics haveconsoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as between the twogreat divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least belonged tothe Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons for doubting thisopinion. He has pointed out several instances in which the poems seemto betray a closer topographical acquaintance with European than withAsiatic Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos have at least asgood a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna. 

It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion asto the date of the Homeric poems, than that we should seek to determinethe exact locality in which they originated. Yet the one question ishardly less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiquityassigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which the earliest isseparated from the most recent by an interval of four hundred and sixtyyears, --a period as long as that which separates the Black Prince fromthe Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the Christian era. While Theopompos quite preposterously brings him down as late as thetwenty-third Olympiad, Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C. The date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is the one assigned byHerodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to meconvincing, for doubting or rejecting this date. 

I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles, whichseems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy testimony, providedit be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone innot regarding the legend as historical in its present shape. In myapprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have no valuewhatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept anydate earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return ofthe Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legendof Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless embodiesa historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as scholarlike orphilosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the wholenarrative nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when theDorian tribes--described in the legend as the allies of the Children ofHerakles--conquered Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequentto the composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliadand the Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Peloponnesos, if there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the timewhen the poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorouslyconsistent in their use of ethnical appellatives; and their author, inspeaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoplesdirectly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes andScotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling inPeloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhabitingCrete. (Odyss. XIX. 175. ) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not theGreeks in general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly. When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas, butas Achaia, --the whole country taking its name from the Achaians, the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the trulyhistorical period, in the eighth century B. C. , all this is changed. The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes; the Dorians rule inPeloponnesos, while their lands are tilled by Argive Helots; and theAchaians appear only as an insignificant people occupying the southernshore of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place we cannot tell. The explanation of it can never be obtained from history, though somelight may perhaps be thrown upon it by linguistic archaeology. But atall events it was a great change, and could not have taken place in amoment. It is fair to suppose that the Helleno-Dorian conquest must havebegun at least a century before the first Olympiad; for otherwise thegeographical limits of the various Greek races would not have been socompletely established as we find them to have been at that date. TheGreeks, indeed, supposed it to have begun at least three centuriesearlier, but it is impossible to collect evidence which will eitherrefute or establish that opinion. For our purposes it is enough to knowthat the conquest could not have taken place later than 900 B. C. ; andif this be the case, the MINIMUM DATE for the composition of the Homericpoems must be the tenth century before Christ; which is, in fact, thedate assigned by Aristotle. Thus far, and no farther, I believe itpossible to go with safety. Whether the poems were composed in thetenth, eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be determined. Weare justified only in placing them far enough back to allow theHelleno-Dorian conquest to intervene between their composition and thebeginning of recorded history. The tenth century B. C. Is the latestdate which will account for all the phenomena involved in the case, andwith this result we must be satisfied. Even on this showing, the Iliadand Odyssey appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-Veda and the sacred books of theAvesta. 

The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for three or fourcenturies without the aid of writing may seem at first sight to justifythe hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere collections of ancientballads, like those which make up the Mahabharata, preserved in thememories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first arranged under the ordersof Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is seen toraise more difficulties than it solves. What was there in the positionof Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the sixth century B. C. , soauthoritative as to compel all Greeks to recognize the recension thenand there made of their revered poet? Besides which the celebratedordinance of Solon respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obligesus to infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous to550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of Peisistratos"presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the mainlineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although manyof the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both byomission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitationsconformably with such understood general type, Peisistratos might hopeboth to procure respect for Athens and to constitute a fashion for therest of Greece. But this step of 'collecting the torn body of sacredHomer' is something generically different from the composition of a newIliad out of pre-existing songs: the former is as easy, suitable, andpromising as the latter is violent and gratuitous. " [151]

As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too long tohave been preserved by memory, it may be met by a simple denial. It is astrange objection indeed, coming from a man of Wolf's retentive memory. I do not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be regarded assuch a very arduous task; and if literature were as scanty now as inGreek antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would long sincehave had them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but littleconscious effort, managed to carry in his head a very considerableportion of Greek and Latin classic literature; and Niebuhr (whoonce restored from recollection a book of accounts which had beenaccidentally destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book andchapter of an ancient author without consulting his notes. Nay, thereis Professor Sophocles, of Harvard University, who, if you suddenly stopand interrogate him in the street, will tell you just how many times anygiven Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in AEschylos, or in Plato, andwill obligingly rehearse for you the context. If all extant copies ofthe Homeric poems were to be gathered together and burnt up to-day, like Don Quixote's library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of whichCardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets of Granada, the poemscould very likely be reproduced and orally transmitted for severalgenerations; and much easier must it have been for the Greeksto preserve these books, which their imagination invested with aquasi-sanctity, and which constituted the greater part of the literaryfurniture of their minds. In Xenophon's time there were educatedgentlemen at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph. Sympos. , III. 5. ) Besides this, we know that at Chios there wasa company of bards, known as Homerids, whose business it was to recitethese poems from memory; and from the edicts of Solon and the SikyonianKleisthenes (Herod. , V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same inother parts of Greece. Passages from the Iliad used to be sung at thePythian festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV. 638), and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean there wereregular competitive exhibitions by trained young men, at which prizeswere given to the best reciter. The difficulty of preserving the poems, under such circumstances, becomes very insignificant; and the Wolfianargument quite vanishes when we reflect that it would have been noeasier to preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long ones. Nay, the coherent, orderly arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey wouldmake them even easier to remember than a group of short rhapsodies notconsecutively arranged. 

When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in them quiteconvincing evidence that they were originally composed for the earalone, and without reference to manuscript assistance. They abound incatchwords, and in verbal repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships, " as Mr. Gladstone has acutely observed, is arranged in well-defined sections, in such a way that the end of each section suggests the beginning ofthe next one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in old-fashionedgrammars. But the most convincing proof of all is to be found in thechanges which Greek pronunciation went through between the ages ofHomer and Peisistratos. "At the time when these poems were composed, thedigamma (or w) was an effective consonant, and figured as such in thestructure of the verse; at the time when they were committed to writing, it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in anyof the manuscripts, --insomuch that the Alexandrian critics, though theyknew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkaios and Sappho, never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexitiesof metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma, were corrected bydifferent grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lostletter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by thesupposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of timeto the memory, the voice, and the ear exclusively. " [152]

Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the Wolfians; butthe inference drawn from them, that the Homeric poems began to exist ina piecemeal condition, is, as we have seen, unnecessary. These poems mayindeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the early sacred andepic literature of the Jews, Indians, and Teutons. But if we assign aplurality of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata, the Vedas, and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence furnishedby the books themselves, and not because these books could not have beenpreserved by oral tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems anysuch internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished bythe interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch? Acareful investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar whohas given some attention to the subject can readily distinguish theElohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch; and, save inthe case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics coincide in theseparation which they make between the two. But the attempts which havebeen made to break up the Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no suchharmonious agreement. There are as many systems as there are critics, and naturally enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much alikeas two peas, and the resemblance which holds between the two holds alsobetween the different parts of each poem. From the appearance of theinjured Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the intervention of Atheneon the field of contest at Ithaka, we find in each book and in eachparagraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the samehabits of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the facultyof observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the observationslovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case inballad-literature, this argument from similarity might not carry with itmuch conviction. But when we reflect that throughout the whole courseof human history no other works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare, have ever been written which for combined keenness of observation, elevation of thought, and sublimity of style can compare with theHomeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great weightindeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and twenty-fourth booksof the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminentchampion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors. Human speech has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of itscapacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam andAchilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview between Hektorand Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power oflanguage. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether itis probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn ofexpression, and alike exhibiting the same unapproachable degree ofexcellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And thephysiologist--with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton'stheory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass thenegroes--has a right to ask whether it is in the natural course ofthings for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in theirminutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the same time. And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we reflect thatit is the coexistence of not two only, but at least twenty such geniuseswhich the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That theoryworked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly assumed that theIliad and Odyssey were analogous to ballad poetry. But, except in thesimplicity of the primitive diction, there is no such analogy. Thepower and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it isrendered into the style of a modern ballad. One might as well attemptto preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas byturning it into the light Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by aBee. " The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which defies translation, is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with asustained elevation of style, which can be explained only as due toindividual genius. 

The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artisticstructure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey in particular, Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughlyintegral, that no considerable portion could be subtracted withoutconverting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment. TheIliad stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakablepeculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote, whoutterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up oftwo poems; although he inclines to the belief that the later poemwas grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of furtherelucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added anew part to "Faust. " According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originallyconceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated inthe opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus andthe unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot ofthis primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I. , VIII. , andXI. -XXII. ; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure thesymmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration ofthe Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, undulyanticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and istherefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands ofan inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books, with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet, with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad, describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to thishypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, theone best entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point connectedwith Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory restssolely upon imagined difficulties which have no real existence. I doubtif any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck bythese alleged inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggestedby some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in spite ofMr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of theseover-refined criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an accountof the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the siege, andit does not continue to the capture of the city. It is simply occupiedwith an episode in the war, --with the wrath of Achilleus and itsconsequences, according to the plan marked out in the opening lines. Thesupposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to the poema somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate changed its primitivecharacter of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem even called for by theoriginal conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have insertedthe battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of theGreeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would havebeen too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell determination. Andafter the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful interventionof Achilleus appears in far grander proportions than would otherwisebe possible. As for the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, Iam unable to see how the final reconciliation with Agamemnon would becomplete without it. As Mr. Gladstone well observes, what Achilleuswants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon offers no apologyuntil the nineteenth book. In his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleusscornfully rejects the proposals which imply that the mere return ofBriseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be accompaniedwith that public humiliation to which circumstances have not yetcompelled the leader of the Greeks to subject himself. Achilleus is notto be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the Greeks in thethirteenth book does not prevail upon him; nor is there anything in thepoem to show that he ever would have laid aside his wrath, had not thedeath of Patroklos supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen motive. It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after the death of hisfriend would lose half its poetic effect, were it not preceded by somesuch scene as that in the ninth book, in which he is represented as deafto all ordinary inducements. As for the two concluding books, which Mr. Grote is inclined to regard as a subsequent addition, not necessitatedby the plan of the poem, I am at a loss to see how the poem can beconsidered complete without them. To leave the bodies of Patroklosand Hektor unburied would be in the highest degree shocking to Greekreligious feelings. Remembering the sentence incurred, in far lesssuperstitious times, by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible tobelieve that any conclusion which left Patroklos's manes unpropitiated, and the mutilated corpse of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfiedeither the poet or his hearers. For further particulars I must referthe reader to the excellent criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to thearticle on "Greek History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's"Dissertations and Discussions. " A careful study of the arguments ofthese writers, and, above all, a thorough and independent examination ofthe Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the student that this greatpoem is from beginning to end the consistent production of a singleauthor. 

The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and Odyssey, takenas wholes, to two different authors, rest chiefly upon some apparentdiscrepancies in the mythology of the two poems; but many of thesedifficulties have been completely solved by the recent progress of thescience of comparative mythology. Thus, for example, the fact that, in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while in theOdyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited even byMr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are not by the same author. Itseems to me that one such discrepancy, in the midst of complete generalagreement, would be much better explained as Cervantes explained his owninconsistency with reference to the stealing of Sancho's mule, in thetwenty-second chapter of "Don Quixote. " But there is no discrepancy. Aphrodite, though originally the moon-goddess, like the GermanHorsel, had before Homer's time acquired many of the attributes of thedawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had been to agreat extent transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her renovatedcharacter, as goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite became identified withCharis, who appears in the Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-Homericmythology, the two were again separated, and Charis, becoming divided inpersonality, appears as the Charites, or Graces, who were supposed to beconstant attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems the two arestill identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wifeof the fire-god, without inconsistency. 

Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite right inmaintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are, from beginning to end, with the exception of a few insignificant interpolations, the work of asingle author, whom we have no ground for calling by any other name thanthat of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this author lived before thebeginning of authentic history, and that we can determine neither hisage nor his country with precision. We can only decide that he was aGreek who lived at some time previous to the year 900 B. C. 

Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr. Gladstone, andshall henceforth unfortunately have frequent occasion to differ from himon points of fundamental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only regardsthe Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic history, buthe even goes much further than this. He would not only fix the date ofHomer positively in the twelfth century B. C. , but he regards theTrojan war as a purely historical event, of which Homer is the authentichistorian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he even takes the wordof the poet as proof conclusive of the historical character of eventshappening several generations before the Troika, according to thelegendary chronology. He not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus, and Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same reality tocharacters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of the Pelopidand Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos, with as much confidenceas if he were dealing with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch ofthe Crusades. 

It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has beenfinally settled by writers like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis, to come upon such views in the work of a man of scholarship andintelligence. One begins to wonder how many more times it will benecessary to prove that dates and events are of no historical value, unless attested by nearly contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarchwere able men no doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; butwhat these writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age ofHomer, and the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the criticalhistorian, since even in the time of Thukydides these events wereas completely obscured by lapse of time as they are now. There is noliterary Greek history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, threecenturies subsequent to the first recorded Olympiad. A portion of thisperiod is satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these fail usbefore we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable date. Even the career of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems to belong tothe commencement of the eighth century B. C. , presents us, from lack ofanything like contemporary records, with many insoluble problems. TheHelleno-Dorian conquest, as we have seen, must have occurred at sometime or other; but it evidently did not occur within two centuries ofthe earliest known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imaginethat we can determine its date or ascertain the circumstances whichattended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in Greekantiquity directly known to us, --the existence of the Homeric poems. Thebelief that there was a Trojan war rests exclusively upon the contentsof those poems: there is no other independent testimony to it whatever. But the Homeric poems are of no value as testimony to the truth of thestatements contained in them, unless it can be proved that their authorwas either contemporary with the Troika, or else derived his informationfrom contemporary witnesses. This can never be proved. To assume, as Mr. Gladstone does, that Homer lived within fifty years after the Troika, isto make a purely gratuitous assumption. For aught the wisest historiancan tell, the interval may have been five hundred years, or a thousand. Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it is dealing with anancient state of things which no longer exists. It is difficult to seewhat else can be meant by the statement that the heroes of the Troikabelong to an order of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. 304. ) Most assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the sonof Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary mortals, suchas might have been seen and conversed with by the poet's grandfather. They belong to an inferior order of gods, according to the peculiaranthropomorphism of the Greeks, in which deity and humanity are soclosely mingled that it is difficult to tell where the one begins andthe other ends. Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the gentleAphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the terrible Ares. Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we are told, not two menamong the poet's contemporaries could by their united exertions raiseand place upon a table. Aias and Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous massesof rock as easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All thisshows that the poet, in his naive way, conceiving of these heroes aspersonages of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as possible toascribe to them the attributes of superior beings. If all that weredivine, marvellous, or superhuman were to be left out of the poems, thesupposed historical residue would hardly be worth the trouble of saving. As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrativethat Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, andbefore whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimantsfor the golden apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of theDioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no other purposethan to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of thesea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord ofundying horses, goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own; thathis wrath is roused because he is robbed of the maiden Briseis, and thathenceforth he takes no part in the strife until his friend Patroklos hasbeen slain; that then he puts on the new armour which Thetis brings tohim from the anvil of Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the victory. Thedetails are throughout of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converseswith Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bearaway the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the far-offland of light. " In view of all this it is evident that Homer was notdescribing, like a salaried historiographer, the state of things whichexisted in the time of his father or grandfather. To his mind theoccurrences which he described were those of a remote, a wonderful, asemi-divine past. 

This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by reference tothe Iliad itself, becomes irresistible as soon as we take into accountthe results obtained during the past thirty years by the science ofcomparative mythology. As long as our view was restricted to Greece, it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and Paris should be taken forexaggerated copies of actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid thefoundations of the science of mythology, all this has been changed. Itis now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena are to be found, notonly in the Iliad, but also in the Rig-Veda, and therefore, as mythicalconceptions, date, not from Homer, but from a period preceding thedispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath of Achilleus, farfrom originating with Homer, far from being recorded by the author ofthe Iliad as by an eyewitness, must have been known in its essentialfeatures in Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when the Indian, theGreek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the same. For the story hasbeen retained by the three races alike, in all its principal features;though the Veda has left it in the sky where it originally belonged, while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth, the one locating it in Asia Minor, and the other in Northwestern Europe. [153]

In the Rig-Veda the Panis are the genii of night and winter, corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of the Mist, " in theTeutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in the Greekmyth of the Golden Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun (Indra, Helios, Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to a dark caveeastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to find andrecover them. The Panis then tamper with Sarama, and try their best toinduce her to betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailedupon to dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give Indra theinformation needful in order that he might conquer the Panis, justas Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately returns to herwestern home, carrying with her the treasures (ktemata, Iliad, II. 285)of which Paris had robbed Menelaos. But, before the bright Indra and hissolar heroes can reconquer their treasures they must take captive theoffspring of Brisaya, the violet light of morning. Thus Achilleus, answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the daughter ofBrises. But as the sun must always be parted from the morning-light, toreturn to it again just before setting, so Achilleus loses Briseis, and regains her only just before his final struggle. In similar wiseHerakles is parted from Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd fromBrynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires from the conflict, and hisMyrmidons are no longer seen on the battle-field, as the sun hidesbehind the dark cloud and his rays no longer appear about him. Yettoward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might, clothedin the dazzling armour wrought for him by the fire-god Hephaistos, andwith his invincible spear slays the great storm-cloud, which during hisabsence had wellnigh prevailed over the champions of the daylight. Buthis triumph is short-lived; for having trampled on the clouds that hadopposed him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the sharparrow of the night-demon Paris slays him at the Western Gates. We havenot space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's "Mythology of theAryan Nations, " and "Tales of Ancient Greece, " the reader will find theentire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated bycomparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs. 

Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern incomparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded. Thedate of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never bedetermined; but I do not see how any competent scholar can well place itat less than eight hundred or a thousand years before the time of Homer. Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguageshad time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth of the world, " inwhich the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and possessingno philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and theDawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later than this, --perhaps as late as theIliad, --nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of thisperiod. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the fickletwilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive to coax her from herallegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of action in the sky. Butthe Homeric Greek had long since forgotten that Helena and Paris wereanything more than semi-divine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and theson of the Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("thebright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one") the dawn, and spoke significantly when he called the latter the daughter of theformer. But the Greek could not know that Zeus was derived from a rootdiv, "to shine, " or that Helena belonged to a root sar, "to creep. "Phonetic change thus helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism. His nature-gods became thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably nomore remembered that Achilleus originally signified the sun, than weremember that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast ofconceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-wind. Indeed, when thefetichistic tendency led the Greek again to personify the powers ofnature, he had recourse to new names formed from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo we have Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eosbeside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further consequence of thisdecomposition and new development of the old Aryan mythology, we find, as might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistentin their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is--to Max Muller's perplexity--invested with many of the attributes ofthe bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, heis doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed inhis infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd. " All the solarheroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the darknight (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they arealike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night andthe dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The exposure of the child ininfancy represents the long rays of the morning-sun resting on thehillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the wine-coloured one"), butmeets her again at the gloaming when she lays herself by his side amidthe crimson flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, ismade to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by hisfriend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the Lykians, or"children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn, from the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus andthe gods of Olympos. 

The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages beforethe Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to beconquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that thelegend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization ofmythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition. In this viewI am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of theproblem before us. 

The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed tohave been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the French nation northe French language can properly be said to have existed; and he isrepresented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought ofuntil long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagneare not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology. He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth, --an avatar, or atleast a representative, of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his caselegend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for usas unreal as Agamemnon. 

History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German inrace, name, and language, who was one of the two or three greatest menof action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth centuryruled over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in manyparticulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact, which without the information supplied by history we might perhaps setdown as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy, and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman has wellobserved, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are good evidence thatthere were crusades, although the real Karl had nothing whatever to dowith one. 

Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne, exceptthat we no longer have history to help us in rectifying the legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large portion ofthe islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject to acommon suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly suggested, the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or Spartaor Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence of thetrustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the legend wasconstrained by some remembered fact, instead of being guided by generalprobability. Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred inromance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Paris, says Mr. Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to Aachen. Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by historicrecords, is here at least supported by archaeologic remains, which proveMykenai to have been at some time or other a place of great consequence. Then, as to the Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several timescrossed the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of AsiaMinor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their homesmany warlike communities of Lydians and Bithynians, and we may besure that this was not done without prolonged fighting. There may veryprobably have been now and then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was in mediaeval Europe; and whether the great suzerain atMykenai ever attended one or not, legend would be sure to send him onsuch an expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade. 

It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may representdimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their characters and actionsdistorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solarmyth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that ofthe Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther, seem to be merepersonifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich are noneother than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attributes; andeven the conception of Brunhild has been supposed to contain elementsderived from the traditional recollection of the historical Brunehault. When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true sun-god, to have died bya wound from a sharp instrument in the only vulnerable part of his body, we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts himself in manyrespects like a solar deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso representsthe sun ensnared and held captive by the pale goddess of night, thelegend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodiesa portion of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederichave been substituted for Odin; we may suspect that with the mythicalimpersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures maybe blended. We should remember that in early times the solar-myth was asort of type after which all wonderful stories would be patterned, andthat to such a type tradition also would be made to conform. 

In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems whichthe labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to havesatisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history canbe obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting outthe mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscenceof an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in mythicalphraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can it be construedinto history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr. Gladstoneto attempt to base historical conclusions upon the fact that Helena isalways called "Argive Helen, " or to draw ethnological inferences fromthe circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the Greekheroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so described. TheArgos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though doubtlessso construed even in Homer's time. It is "the bright land" where Zeusresides, and the epithet is applied to his wife Here and his daughterHelena, as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with Sarameyasin the Veda. As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that Greeks haveever commonly possessed it; but no other colour would do for a solarhero, and it accordingly characterizes the entire company of them, wherever found, while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is notrequired. 

A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained duringthe past thirty years by the comparative study of languages andmythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to reconsider many of his viewsconcerning the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to cut outhalf or two thirds of his book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter onthe divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be rewritten, andthe ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation abandoned. One can hardlypreserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone derives Apollo from theHebrew Messiah, and Athene from the Logos. To accredit Homer with anacquaintance with the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist untilthe time of Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian formuntil the middle of the second century after Christ, is certainly astrange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that theauthors of the Volsunga Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd fromthe "Thirty-Nine Articles. " It is true that these deities, Athene andApollo, are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than anyof the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated. For allHellas, Apollo was the interpreter of futurity, and in the maid Athenewe have perhaps the highest conception of deity to which the Greek mindhad attained in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but thedawn; but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories ofdaybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the impersonation of theilluminating and knowledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, sheis daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from hisforehead; but, according to the Greek conception, this imagery signifiesthat she shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdomof Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the peculiarprivilege of the sun, who, from his lofty position, sees everything thattakes place upon the earth. Even the secondary divinity Helios possessesthis prerogative to a certain extent. 

Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry for theGreek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance with the old Aryanmythology vitiates all his conclusions. No doubt the Greek mythology isin some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions. Aphrodite wasoriginally a purely Greek divinity, but in course of time she acquiredsome of the attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improvedby the change. Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported intoGreece. But the same cannot be proved of Poseidon; [154] far less ofHermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas, the rising wind, the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome wind-god, who inventedmusic, and conducts the souls of dead men to the house of Hades, evenas his counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-tops leadingthe host of the departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's promise to Noah, oneis at a loss to understand the relationship between the two conceptions. Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks than to call the rainbow themessenger of the sky-god to earth-dwelling men; to call it a token setin the sky by Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a very different thing. We may admit the very close resemblance between the myth of Bellerophonand Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha; but the fact that the Greekstory is explicable from Aryan antecedents, while the Hebrew story isisolated, might perhaps suggest the inference that the Hebrews were theborrowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of the myth of Eden. Lastly, to conclude that Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reignsin the East over Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pureGreek for the sun? and where should his sacred island be placed, if notin the East? As for his oxen, which wrought such dire destruction to thecomrades of Odysseus, and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, theyare those very same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by thestorm-demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and which furnished endlessmaterial for legends to the poets of the Veda. 

But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be terraincognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the even tenour of his way inutter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf. He takes no note of the Rig-Veda, nor does he seem to realize that therewas ever a time when the ancestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshippedthe same gods. Two or three times he cites Max Muller, but makes nouse of the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only workwhich seems really to have attracted his attention is M. Jacolliot'svery discreditable performance called "The Bible in India. " Mr. Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly approve of this book; butneither does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece ofcharlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudiments of thesubject which he professes to handle. 

Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to treat purelyphilological questions. Of the science of philology, as based uponestablished laws of phonetic change, he seems to have no knowledgewhatever. He seems to think that two words are sufficiently proved tobe connected when they are seen to resemble each other in spelling or insound. Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the name Themis froman assumed verb them, "to speak, " whereas it is notoriously derived fromtiqhmi, as statute comes ultimately from stare. His reference of hieros, "a priest, " and geron, "an old man, " to the same root, is utterlybaseless; the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, "a powerful man, " the otheris the Sanskrit jaran, "an old man. " The lists of words on pages 96-100are disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole purpose forwhich they are given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's philology is inarrears. The theory of Niebuhr--that the words common to Greek andLatin, mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgian--wasserviceable enough in its day, but is now rendered wholly antiquatedby the discovery that such words are Aryan, in the widest sense. ThePelasgian theory works very smoothly so long as we only compare theGreek with the Latin words, --as, for instance, sugon with jugum; butwhen we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit yugam, it is evident thatwe have got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But what shall we saywhen we find Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus in support ofthis antiquated theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is, or should be, significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a Latin word atall, except by adoption. One might as well cite the word ensemble toprove the original identity or kinship between English and French. 

When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and appliedphilology, confines himself to illustrating the contents of the Homericpoems, he is always excellent. His chapter on the "Outer Geography" ofthe Odyssey is exceedingly interesting; showing as it does how muchmay be obtained from the patient and attentive study of even a singleauthor. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the SURFACE of the Iliad andOdyssey, so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he attemptsto penetrate beneath the surface and survey the treasures hidden in thebowels of the earth, that he shows himself unprovided with the talismanof the wise dervise, which alone can unlock those mysteries. But modernphilology is an exacting science: to approach its higher problemsrequires an amount of preparation sufficient to terrify at the outsetall but the boldest; and a man who has had to regulate taxation, andmake out financial statements, and lead a political party in a greatnation, may well be excused for ignorance of philology. It is difficultenough for those who have little else to do but to pore over treatiseson phonetics, and thumb their lexicons, to keep fully abreast with thelatest views in linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly everbroach a new hypothesis without misgivings lest somebody, in some weeklyjournal published in Germany, may just have anticipated and refuted it. Yet while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philology, it is far less excusable that he should sit down to write a book aboutHomer, abounding in philological statements, without the slightestknowledge of what has been achieved in that science for several yearspast. In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abidingtaste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain kindof praise. I hope, --though just now the idea savours of theludicrous, --that the day may some time arrive when OUR Congressmen andSecretaries of the Treasury will spend their vacations in writing booksabout Greek antiquities, or in illustrating the meaning of Homericphrases. 

July, 1870. 

VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 

NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten or whollyoutlived the feeling of delight awakened by the first perusal of MaxMuller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative Mythology, "--a work in whichthe scientific principles of myth-interpretation, though not newlyannounced, were at least brought home to the reader with such an amountof fresh and striking concrete illustration as they had not beforereceived. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader that, whilethe analyses of myths contained in this noble essay are in the mainsound in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless the author'stheory of the genesis of myth is expressed, and most likely conceived, in a way that is very suggestive of carelessness and fallacy. There areobvious reasons for doubting whether the existence of mythology can bedue to any "disease, " abnormity, or hypertrophy of metaphor in language;and the criticism at once arises, that with the myth-makers it was notso much the character of the expression which originated the thought, as it was the thought which gave character to the expression. It is notthat the early Aryans were myth-makers because their language aboundedin metaphor; it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphorbecause the men and women who spoke it were myth-makers. And they weremyth-makers because they had nothing but the phenomena of human will andeffort with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it was thatthey spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer, and classified inanimate no less than animate objects as masculine andfeminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essayand in his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of thecurious manner in which he combines a marvellous penetration into thesignificance of details with a certain looseness of general conception. [155] The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensableaid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which thepowers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinkingpersons; but before we can get at the secret of the myth-making tendencyitself, we must leave philology and enter upon a psychological study. We must inquire into the characteristics of that primitive style ofthinking to which it seemed quite natural that the sun should be anunerring archer, and the thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robberfinding his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant Lord ofLight. 

Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting problem, we shall find it advantageous to give especial attention to Mr. Tylor's"Primitive Culture, " [156] one of the few erudite works which are atonce truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning displayedin it would do credit to a German specialist, both for extent and forminuteness, while the orderly arrangement of the arguments and theelegant lucidity of the style are such as we are accustomed to expectfrom French essay-writers. And what is still more admirable is theway in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and originalspeculator is tempered by the patience and caution of a cool-headedcritic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed than in writerswho deal with mythology and with primitive religious ideas; but thesequalities are too seldom found in combination with the speculativeboldness which is required when fresh theories are to be framed or newpaths of investigation opened. The state of mind in which the explainingpowers of a favourite theory are fondly contemplated is, to some extent, antagonistic to the state of mind in which facts are seen, with theeye of impartial criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromisingreality. To be able to preserve the balance between the two opposingtendencies is to give evidence of the most consummate scientifictraining. It is from the want of such a balance that the recent greatwork of Mr. Cox is at times so unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seemill-natured to say so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylaysevery available illustration of the physical theory of the origin ofmyths has now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader'sconviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part, though by nomeans inclined to waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted on goodgrounds, I never felt so much like rebelling against the mythologicsupremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. That Mr. Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory, awakens nosuch rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception and realizationof the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a single formulasuch many-sided correspondences as those which primitive poetry endphilosophy have discerned between the life of man and the life ofoutward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elf-land of popularfancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode of myth into someanswering physical event, his only criterion being outward resemblance, cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns forevidence he is sure to find something that can be made to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or nursery rhyme is safe fromhis hermeneutics. "Should he, for instance, demand as his propertythe nursery 'Song of Sixpence, ' his claim would be easilyestablished, --obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are thefour-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlyingearth covered with the overarching sky, --how true a touch of natureit is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the birdsbegin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money ispouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae; the Queen isthe Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangsout the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird, who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour ofsunrise. " In all this interpretation there is no a priori improbability, save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and completeness. Thatsome points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antiqueinterpretations of physical events, is in harmony with all that we knowconcerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the time-honoured rhyme reallywants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proofby some argument more valid than analogy. " The character of the argumentwhich is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to the rhyme aboutJack and Jill, explained some time since in the paper on "The Origins ofFolk Lore. " If the argument be thought valid which shows these ill-fatedchildren to be the spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists, not in the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, butin the fact that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of ourown day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an explanationof the moon-spots. To the neglect of this distinction between what isplausible and what is supported by direct evidence, is due much of thecrude speculation which encumbers the study of myths. 

It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the widerinquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of thinking inwhich myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practicalvalue of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety whicheverywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer whocan treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his head overallegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a savageis not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, buta plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feebleintelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic allegory with which suchmodern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity isno part of their original clothing, but is rather the late product ofa style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which weshall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their primitiveconstructions. The myths and customs and beliefs which, in an advancedstage of culture, seem meaningless save when characterized bysome quaintly wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seemmeaningless in the lower culture which gave birth to them. Myths, likewords, survive their primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth ispart and parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanationwhich it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one which wouldmost readily occur to any one thinking on the theme with which the mythis concerned. But by and by the mode of philosophizing has changed;explanations which formerly seemed quite obvious no longer occur to anyone, but the myth has acquired an independent substantive existence, andcontinues to be handed down from parents to children as something true, though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly, the myth itselfgradually fades from remembrance, often leaving behind it some utterlyunintelligible custom or seemingly absurd superstitious notion. Forexample, --to recur to an illustration already cited in a previouspaper, --it is still believed here and there by some venerable grannythat it is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the beliefto the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient existence, wouldbe making one of the blunders which are always committed by thosewho reason a priori about historical matters without following thehistorical method. At an earlier date the superstition existed in theshape of a belief that the killing of a robin portends some calamity;in a still earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again, still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward reveals thatthe dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that he is the birdof Thor, the lightning god; and finally we reach that primitive stageof philosophizing in which the lightning is explained as a red birddropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, thebelief that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life ofa drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case ofsurvival in culture. In the older form of the superstition it is heldthat the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and thus wepass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the seizing of theunfortunate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angryat being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudgeagainst the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him. 

The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning asthe work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are parts of that primitivephilosophy of nature in which all forces objectively existing areconceived as identical with the force subjectively known as volition. It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr. Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism, " whichwe must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications. When we have properly characterized some of the processes which theuntrained mind habitually goes through, we shall have incidentallyarrived at a fair solution of the genesis of mythology. 

Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or uncultivated mindreaches all manner of apparently fanciful conclusions through recklessreasoning from analogy. It is through the operation of certain laws ofideal association that all human thinking, that of the highest as wellas that of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law ofgravitation, as well as the invention of such a superstition as theHand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association of ideas. Thedifference between the scientific and the mythologic inference consistssolely in the number of checks which in the former case combine toprevent any other than the true conclusion from being framed into aproposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experienceshave taught the modern that there are many associations of ideas whichdo not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in theworld of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newlyframed notions the rigid test of verification. Besides which the sameaccumulation of experiences has built up an organized structure of idealassociations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notionshave any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage whois to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of thesemultifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer towhat are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilizedmodern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind ofthe savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testingany of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest. Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide thecourse of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which hearrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparentlyat haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which Europeanand barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which the myth-makerwas but reasoning according to the best methods at his command. To thissimplest class, in which the association of ideas is determined by mereanalogy, belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece ofwood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is aboutto trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape theconscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket, --a symbolicway of repudiating manhood. " [157] A similar style of thinking underliesthe mediaeval necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of hisenemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about theenemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in aprevious paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be administeredto an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imaginedto cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtlessfamiliar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving soamusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a fieldof cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, andimagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host ofcaitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking ofa mirror heralds a death in the family, --probably because of thedestruction of the reflected human image; that the "hair of the dog thatbit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that thetears shed by human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring downshowers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's remark, "thatthe king had been ill, and that people generally expected the illnessto be fatal, because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. 'So wild and capricious is the human mind, '" observesthe elegant letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "thethought was neither wild nor capricious; it was simply such an argumentfrom analogy as the educated world has at length painfully learned to beworthless, but which, it is not too much to declare, would to thisday carry considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the humanrace. " Upon such symbolism are based most of the practices of divinationand the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story, thatwhen two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, thephysician, concluded from the coincidence that they were twins, butPoseidonios, the astrologer, considered rather that they were born underthe same constellation; we may add that either argument would be thoughtreasonable by a savage. " So when a Maori fortress is attacked, thebesiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the moon. The moonrepresents the fortress; and if it appears below the companion planet, the besiegers will carry the day, otherwise they will be repulsed. Equally primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on thememorable day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as tothe safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by throwing astone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss, sign of damnation!"The tree being a large one and very near at hand, the result of theexperiment was reassuring, and the young philosopher walked away withoutfurther misgivings concerning this momentous question. [158]

When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result only inspeculations of this childlike character, is confronted with thephenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make of them. His practical knowledge of psychology is too limited to admit of hisdistinguishing between the solidity of waking experience and what we maycall the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learnedthat the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logicachieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go bycontraries. " But the Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryanlearned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being purelysubjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much objectivereality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours. When the savagerelates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain dogs, dead warriors, or demons last night, the implication being that the things seen wereobjects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude languagefails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his languageit not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference toothers, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence inthe absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that ofthose to whom he tells his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has beenaway and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find amongvarious existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of theearly civilized races. " [159]

Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER SELF, forupon this is based the great mass of crude inference which constitutesthe primitive man's philosophy of nature. The hypothesis of the OTHERSELF, which serves to account for the savage's wanderings during sleepin strange lands and among strange people, serves also to account forthe presence in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to bedead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and converses withthe other selves of his dead brethren, joins with them in the hunt, orsits down with them to the wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the beliefin an ever-present world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entireexperience of uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. Theexistence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute ofreligious belief has often been hastily asserted and as often called inquestion. But there is no question that, while many savages are unableto frame a conception so general as that of godhood, on the other handno tribe has ever been found so low in the scale of intelligence asnot to have framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities, capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with. Indeed it isnot improbable a priori that the original inference involved in thenotion of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fallwithin the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilizedman. An authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, beingaccustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on hishaunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball placed on thechimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play with him. [160] Such a fact as this is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte'ssuggestion that such intelligent animals as dogs, apes, and elephantsmay be capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour ofthe terrier here rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to thesame sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which implies, notthat the wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in hismind the distinction between life and inanimate existence has never beenthoroughly established. Just this confusion between things livingand things not living is present throughout the whole philosophy offetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things dreamed, which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to this sametwilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearlydemonstrated his immeasurable superiority to the brutes. [161]

The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away fromthe body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from thephenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy, [162] which occurless rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, thanamong civilized men. "Further verification, " observes Mr. Spencer, "isafforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absenceof the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happenthat the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his bodyhas been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed'by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism andinsanity. " Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollectthat savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed tofoul play, [163] we must readily admit that the weird reflection of theperson and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland poolswill go far to intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent butuniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe withintwo centuries have been commonly interpreted as the voices of mockingfiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well regard as theutterances of his other self. 

With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it fallinto the hands of some enemy who may injure him by conjuring with it, may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward tellinghis name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelarghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriouslyassociated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of itsgetting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarlyoriginated fear that the person whose name is spoken may resent suchmeddling with his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak willnot allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the chief" or"jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man withthe fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord";while in more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talkof the Devil, and he will appear, " with which we may also compare suchexpressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for the Furies, and otherlike euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil mortuis nisi bonum had mostlikely at one time a fetichistic flavour. 

In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above specified, the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously "tabu, " that commonwords and even syllables resembling that name in sound must be omittedfrom the language. In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or"knife, " it became necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, "star, " had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike, " became tiai, etc. , because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with thelanguages of these islands by this ever-recurring necessity. Among theKafirs the women have come to speak a different dialect from the men, because words resembling the names of their lords or male relatives arein like manner "tabu. " The student of human culture will trace amongsuch primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronouncethe name of Jehovah; and hence we may perhaps have before us theultimate source of the horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regardssuch forms of light swearing--"Mon Dieu, " etc. --as are still toleratedon the continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society inPuritanic England and America. The reader interested in this group ofideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. 142, 363; Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th edition, Vol. II. P. 37;Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. P. 146. 

Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widelydiffused family of legends, which show that a man's shadow has beengenerally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritualattendant of the body, which under certain circumstances it maypermanently forsake. It is in strict accordance with this idea that notonly in the classic languages, but in various barbaric tongues, theword for "shadow" expresses also the soul or other self. Tasmanians, Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited byMr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow withthe ghost or phantasm seen in dreams; the Basutos going so far as tothink "that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize hisshadow in the water and draw him in. " Among the Algonquins a sick personis supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily detached fromhis body, and the convalescent is at times "reproached for exposinghimself before his shadow was safely settled down in him. " If the sickman has been plunged into stupor, it is because his other self hastravelled away as far as the brink of the river of death, but not beingallowed to cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon asimilar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and raise a hueand cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr. Tylor, "invarious countries the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular partof the sorcerer's or priest's profession. " [164] On Aryan soil we findthe notion of a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late datein the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath while herearthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The primeval conceptionreappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference to hisliving contemporaries whose souls he met with in the vaults of hell, while their bodies were still walking about on the earth, inhabited bydevils. 

The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and supposes theshadow to depart with the sickness and death of the body, would seemliable to be attended with some difficulties in the way of verification, even to the dim intelligence of the savage. But the propriety ofidentifying soul and breath is borne out by all primeval experience. Thebreath, which really quits the body at its decease, has furnished thechief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew, the Sanskrit, and theclassic tongues; not only to German and English, where geist, and ghost, according to Max Muller, have the meaning of "breath, " and are akinto such words as gas, gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbariclanguages. Among the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and inWest Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze whichpasses in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the breath andthe shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died inchildbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her partingspirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use. . . . . Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, whocan still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death likea little white cloud. " [165] It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where awell-known witch died a few years since; "but before she could 'shuffleoff this mortal coil' she must needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT tosome trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouringtownship was consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival wasimmediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed between them hasnever fully transpired, but it is confidently affirmed that at the closeof the interview this associate RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTOHER MOUTH AND WITH IT HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thusceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were transferred to hercompanion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn wecan point out a farmhouse at no great distance with whose thrifty matronno neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel. " [166]

Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak further on. At present let us not pass over the fact that the other self is not onlyconceived as shadow or breath, which can at times quit the body duringlife, but is also supposed to become temporarily embodied in the visibleform of some bird or beast. In discussing elsewhere the myth of BishopHatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the form of arat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the belief thatthe spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the night-wind, havetaken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with thesequaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock(live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing spirit which hasalready left his body and so conveying it back. " [167] In Castren'sgreat work on Finnish mythology, we find the story of the giant whocould not be killed because he kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headedsnake which he carried in a bag as he rode on horseback; only when thesecret was discovered and the snake carefully killed, did the giantyield up his life. In this Finnish legend we have one of the thousandphases of the story of the "Giant who had no Heart in his Body, " butwhose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in a duck's egg, or in apigeon, carefully disposed in some belfry at the world's end a millionmiles away, or encased in a wellnigh infinite series of Chinese boxes. [168] Since, in spite of all these precautions, the poor giant's heartinvariably came to grief, we need not wonder at the Karen superstitionthat the soul is in danger when it quits the body on its excursions, asexemplified in countless Indo-European stories of the accidental killingof the weird mouse or pigeon which embodies the wandering spirit. Conversely it is held that the detachment of the other self is fraughtwith danger to the self which remains. In the philosophy of "wraiths"and "fetches, " the appearance of a double, like that which troubledMistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been fromtime out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New Zealand it is ominous to seethe figure of an absent person, for if it be shadowy and the face notvisible, his death may erelong be expected, but if the face be seen heis dead already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story) wereseated round a fire in the open air, when there appeared, seen only bytwo of them, the figure of a relative, left ill at home; they exclaimed, the figure vanished, and on the return of the party it appeared thatthe sick man had died about the time of the vision. " [169] The belief inwraiths has survived into modern times, and now and then appears in therecords of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism, "as, for example, in the case of the lady who "thought she saw her ownfather look in at the church-window at the moment he was dying in hisown house. "

The belief in the "death-fetch, " like the doctrine which identifiessoul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in barbaric thought theother self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it hascustomarily been associated. In various savage superstitions the minuteresemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The Australian, forinstance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumbof the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated fromthrowing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixionto decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about thespirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christiandoctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other selfthat figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitiveconception that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in thecoffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, ifit likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in someparts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides byattended by his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are opened, in order that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hinderedfrom joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, afterthe Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing anunfortunate captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like thefiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away thedistressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congonegroes abstained for a whole year after a death from sweeping thehouse, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost";and even now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is wrongto slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it. " [172] Dante'sexperience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished athis weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied by thesweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back in the night tosuckle the baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow presseddown in the bed where she lay. " Almost universally ghosts, howeverimpervious to thrust of sword or shot of pistol, can eat and drink likeSquire Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of soulssufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the case of thenegro widows who, wishing to marry a second time, will go and duckthemselves in the pond, in order to drown the souls of their departedhusbands, which are supposed to cling about their necks; while, according to the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must gothrough a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in which, if hesucceeds, he will enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be killed overagain and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly company. 

From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms, as aboveillustrated, it is not a wide step to the conception of beast-soulswhich, like human souls, survive the death of the tangible body. Thewide-spread superstitions concerning werewolves and swan-maidens, andthe hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that primitiveculture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophybetween the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more directevidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who haskilled an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and, lest theelephant's soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off and burythe trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled to the spirit-land. In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather aboutthe body offering excuses and laying the blame on the Russians; and theAmerican redskin will even put the pipe of peace into the dead animal'smouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed. In Assam it is believed thatthe ghosts of slain animals will become in the next world the propertyof the hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales expressly declarethat all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after death, --a belief, which, in our own day, has been indorsed on philosophical grounds by aneminent living naturalist. [173] The Greenlanders, too, give evidenceof the same belief by supposing that when after an exhausting fever thepatient comes up in unprecedented health and vigour, it is because hehas lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a young childor a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest fancies of primevalsavagery are thinly disguised in a jargon learned from the superficialreading of modern books of science, M. Figuier maintains that humansouls are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; ingeneral, the souls of precocious musical children like Mozart come fromnightingales, while the souls of great architects have passed into themfrom beavers, etc. , etc. [174]

The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is insome parts of the world extended to the case of plants. When theTalein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it isobviously because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghostwhich in the next life may need to be propitiated. And the doctrine oftransmigration distinctly includes plants along with animals among thefuture existences into which the human soul may pass. 

As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a muchless conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible that thesavage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process ofanthropomorphisation does not end here. Not only the horse and dog, the bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such as thehatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possessother selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and othercontemporary savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this istheir belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, awayflies its soul for the service of the gods. " The Algonquins toldCharlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less thanmen and women, it follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) mustpass along with human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land. In thiswe see how simple and consistent is the logic which guides the savage, and how inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to ourminds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaricworld. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have soulsmay seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be heldconsistently by the savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than humanfriends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them followedby shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices, dullor ringing, when they are struck; and who watches their doublesfantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across thestream. [175] To minds, even in civilized countries, which are unused tothe severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be allegedthan what is called "the evidence of the senses"; for it is only longfamiliarity with science which teaches us that the evidence of thesenses is trustworthy only in so far as it is correctly interpreted byreason. For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and beasts, trees and axes, the savage has undeniably the evidence of his senseswhich have so often seen, heard, and handled these other selves. 

The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate this crudephilosophy, and receive fresh illustration from it. On the primitivebelief in the ghostly survival of persons and objects rests the almostuniversal custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs ofthe departed chief of the tribe, as well as of presenting at his shrinesacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons, and money. Among theKayans the slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are enjoined totake great care of their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo it, and tonurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all whom they kill in thisworld shall attend them as slaves after death, " and for this reason thethrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would not allow their young men tomarry until they had acquired some post mortem property by procuring atleast one human head. It is hardly necessary to do more than alludeto the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives of the deceased at hisfuneral, or to the equally well-known Hindu rite of suttee. Though, asWilson has shown, the latter rite is not supported by any genuine Vedicauthority, but only by a shameless Brahmanic corruption of the sacredtext, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite right in arguing that unless thehorrible custom had received the sanction of a public opinion bequeathedfrom pre-Vedic times, the Brahmans would have had no motive forfraudulently reviving it; and this opinion is virtually establishedby the fact of the prevalence of widow sacrifice among Gauls, Scandinavians, Slaves, and other European Aryans. [176] Though underEnglish rule the rite has been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaicsentiments which so long maintained it are not yet extinct. Within thepresent year there has appeared in the newspapers a not improbable storyof a beautiful and accomplished Hindu lady who, having become the wifeof a wealthy Englishman, and after living several years in England amidthe influences of modern society, nevertheless went off and privatelyburned herself to death soon after her husband's decease. 

The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral offerings offood, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory of object-souls, willprobably suggest that such offerings may be mere memorials of affectionor esteem for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to be in manycountries after surviving the phase of culture in which they originated;but there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they werepresented in the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or otherwiseemployed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout club which is buriedwith the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him that he may be able todefend himself against the hostile ghosts which will lie in ambush forhim on the road to Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him. Sometimes theclub is afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use, sinceits ghost is all that the dead man needs. In like manner, "as the Greeksgave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and the old Prussiansfurnished him with spending money, to buy refreshment on his wearyjourney, so to this day German peasants bury a corpse with money inhis mouth or hand, " and this is also said to be one of the regularceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar purport were the funeral feastsand oblations of food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made withghee" destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's kingdom, and the meatand gruel offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his ancestors. "Manytravellers have described the imagination with which the Chinesemake such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume theimpalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse materialsubstance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuousfeasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfytheir appetite, and then fall to themselves. " [177] So in the Homericsacrifice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet savourand consumed the curling steam that rises ghost-like from the roastingviands, "the assembled warriors devour the remains. " [178]

Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have traced out, with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not always obvious to the moderninquirer without considerable concrete illustration. The remainderof the process, resulting in that systematic and completeanthropomorphisation of nature which has given rise to mythology, maybe more succinctly described. Gathering together the conclusions alreadyobtained, we find that daily or frequent experience of the phenomenaof shadows and dreams has combined with less frequent experience of thephenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate in the mind ofuncultured man the notion of a twofold existence appertaining alike toall animate or inanimate objects: as all alike possess materialbodies, so all alike possess ghosts or souls. Now when the theoryof object-souls is expanded into a general doctrine of spirits, thephilosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once habituated to theconception of souls of knives and tobacco-pipes passing to the landof ghosts, the savage cannot avoid carrying the interpretation stillfurther, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited withindwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul which inhabits the humanframe. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose impelling will thetrees are rooted up and the storm-clouds driven across the sky shouldresemble a freed human soul, is a natural inference, since unculturedman has not attained to the conception of physical force acting inaccordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to his mindthe manifestations of capricious volition. If the fire burns down hishut, it is because the fire is a person with a soul, and is angry withhim, and needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of prayer orsacrifice. Thus the savage has a priori no alternative but to regardfire-soul as something akin to human-soul; and in point of fact we findthat savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human ghostand the elemental demon or deity. This is sufficiently proved bythe universal prevalence of the worship of ancestors. The essentialprinciple of manes-worship is that the tribal chief or patriarch, whohas governed the community during life, continues also to govern itafter death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes, rewardingbrave warriors, and punishing traitors and cowards. Thus from theconception of the living king we pass to the notion of what Mr. Spencercalls "the god-king, " and thence to the rudimentary notion of deity. Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the doctrine of divine ancestorshas been developed to the extent of recognizing a first ancestor, theGreat Father, Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But in the stratum ofsavage thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the most partbased, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors of the rudeVeddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres, "fathers"), and the Roman manes have become elemental deities which send rain orsunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, and to which theirliving offspring appeal for guidance amid the vicissitudes of life. [179] The theory of embodiment, already alluded to, shows how thoroughlythe demons which cause disease are identified with human and objectsouls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps up intothe liver of the impious wretch who has ventured to pronounce hisname; while conversely in the well-known European theory of demoniacalpossession, it is a fairy from elf-land, or an imp from hell, whichhas entered the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship, moreover, between disease-possession and oracle-possession, where the body of thePythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under the direct control ofsome great deity, [180] we may see how by insensible transitionsthe conception of the human ghost passes into the conception of thespiritual numen, or divinity. 

To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and dryadsand nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the Olympian divinitiesof classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history of religiousbelief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which hasmerely been to show by what mental process the myth-maker can speakof natural objects in language which implies that they are animatedpersons. Brief as our account of this process has been, I believethat enough has been said, not only to reveal the inadequacy of purelyphilological solutions (like those contained in Max Muller's famousEssay) to explain the growth of myths, but also to exhibit the vastimportance for this purpose of the kind of psychological inquiry intothe mental habits of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted. Indeed, however lacking we may still be in points of detail, I think wehave already reached a very satisfactory explanation of the genesis ofmythology. Since the essential characteristic of a myth is that it isan attempt to explain some natural phenomenon by endowing with humanfeelings and capacities the senseless factors in the phenomenon, andsince it has here been shown how uncultured man, by the best use he canmake of his rude common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariablycome, to regard all objects as endowed with souls, and all nature aspeopled with supra-human entities shaped after the general pattern ofthe human soul, I am inclined to suspect that we have got very near tothe root of the whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty inseeing why a water-spout should be described in the "Arabian Nights" asa living demon: "The sea became troubled before them, and there arosefrom it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching themeadow, . . . . And behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature. " We can seewhy the Moslem camel-driver should find it most natural to regard thewhirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may understand how it is thatthe Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as "a blushing maidwith locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red"; and we need not considerit strange that the primeval Aryan should have regarded the sun as avoyager, a climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows driven by thewind-god Hermes to their milking. The identification of William Tellwith the sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor can we be longersurprised at the conception of the howling night-wind as a ravenouswolf. When pots and kettles are thought to have souls that livehereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how the blue sky canhave been regarded as the sire of gods and men. And thus, as the elvesand bogarts of popular lore are in many cases descended from ancientdivinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowledgetheir ancestors in the shadowy denizens of the primeval ghost-world. 

August, 1872. 

NOTE. 

THE following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use tothe reader who is interested in the legend of William Tell. 

HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historiea inauguralis de Oulielmo Tellio, etc. Groningae, 1824. 

IDELER, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Berlin, 1836. 

HAUSSER, L. Die Sage von Tell aufs Neue kritisch untersucht. Heidelberg, 1840. 

HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur l'histoire de Guillaume Tell. Lausanne, 1843. 

LIEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisoh nach neuestenQuellen. Aarau, 1864. 

VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreinng der Waldstatte, etc. Nebst einerBeilage: das alteste Tellensehauspiel. Leipzig, 1867. 

BORDIER, H. L. Le Grutli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense de la traditionvulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869. 

The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant l'origine de laconfederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869. 

RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confederation suisse: histoire etlegende. 2eS ed. , revue et corrigee. Geneve et Bale, 1869. 

The same. Lettre a M. Henri Bordier a propos de sa defense de latradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation suisse. Geneveet Bale, 1869. 

HUNGERBUHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions relatives auxorigines de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869. 

MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien, I. 159-170. Wien, 1872. ]

See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18 Feb. , 1868; by M. Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire, 1868; by M. De Wiss, in theJournal de Geneve, 7 July, 1868; also Revue critique, 17 July, 1869;Journal de Geneve, 24 Oct. , 1868; Gazette de Lausanne, feuilletonlitteraire, 2-5 Nov. , 1868, "Les origines de la confederation suisse, "par M. Secretan; Edinburgh Review, Jan. , 1869, "The Legend of Tell andRutli. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75. ]

[Footnote 2: Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. P. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576. ]

[Footnote 3: According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derivedfrom "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom the churchof Llangeller is consecrated. " (Words and Places, p. 339. )]

[Footnote 4: Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, inMr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Manyparallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. Pp. 126-136. See also the story of Folliculus, --Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ad. Wright, Vol. I. P. Lxxxii]

[Footnote 5: See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. Pp. 145-149. ]

[Footnote 6: The same incident occurs in the Arabian story ofSeyf-el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is enclosedin the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, andthis enclosed in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes, which are put into seven chests, contained in a coffer of marble, whichis sunk in the ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raisesthe coffer by the aid of Suleyman's seal-ring, and having extricated thesparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is converted intoa heap of black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with the maidenDolet-Khatoon. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. P. 316. ]

[Footnote 7: The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan ofEl-Basrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p. 452. ]

[Footnote 8: "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est lesupprimer. "--Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50. ]

[Footnote 9: "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is madein the languages of the Eskimos, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and theCaddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it, sofar as is known, and with them it is partial. " According to the Fijians, "vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass onat last to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits. "--M'Lennan, The Worshipof Animals and Plants, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XII. P, 416. ]

[Footnote 10: Marcus Aurelius, V. 7. ]

[Footnote 11: Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy inhis Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I amstill disposed to follow Max Muller in adopting them, with the possibleexception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52) that manyof the Homeric legends may have clustered around some historical basis, I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my paper on "JuventusMundi. "]

[Footnote 12: Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memesque celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raisonque l'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus richemythologie a cote de la plus profonde metaphysique. "La conception dela multiplicite dans l'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuplesenfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a l'age mur. "--Renan, Hist. Des Langues Semitiques, Tom. I. P. 9. ]

[Footnote 13: Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, inmy paper on "Myths of the Barbaric World. "]

[Footnote 14: A collection of these interesting legends may be found inBaring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, " of which work thispaper was originally a review. ]

[Footnote 15: See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20; Villemarque, Barzas Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instructed by an old nurse thatVas Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits. ]

[Footnote 16: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. P. 197. ]

[Footnote 17: Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to pay thepiper. "]

[Footnote 18: And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelicmusician, who

 "Could harp a fish out o' the water, Or bluid out of a stane, Or milk out of a maiden's breast, That bairns had never nane. "]

[Footnote 19: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. P. 159. ]

[Footnote 20: Perhaps we may trace back to this source the franticterror which Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse. ]

[Footnote 21: In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the personwho is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. Thesame custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123. ]

[Footnote 22: The Devil, who is proverbially "active in a gale of wind, "is none other than Hermes. ]

[Footnote 23: "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneienneschoses, et la plenitude de l'histoire ne se devoile qu'a celui quidescend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeuremoderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foiscientifique. "--LITTRS. ]

[Footnote 24: For an admirable example of scientific self-analysistracing one of these illusions to its psychological sources, seethe account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. Pp. 121-125. ]

[Footnote 25: See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. Pp. 57-77. The learned author attributes the discomfiture tothe uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning muchlike that of my village sorcerer, I fear. ]

[Footnote 26: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177. ]

[Footnote 27: The story of the luck-flower is well told in verse by Mr. Baring Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq. ]

[Footnote 28: 1 Kings vi. 7. ]

[Footnote 29: Compare the Mussulman account of the building of thetemple, in Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, GestaRomanorum, ed. Wright, Vol I. P. Lxiv. See also the pretty story of theknight unjustly imprisoned, id. P. Cii. ]

[Footnote 30: "We have the receipt of fern-seed. We walk invisible. "--Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98]

[Footnote 31: Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 202]

[Footnote 32: Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. Berlin, 1859. ]

[Footnote 33: "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic thesecge, forthon heo locath on helle. --Tell me, why is the sun red ateven? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell. " Thorpe, AnalectaAnglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. P. 63. Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory. ]

[Footnote 34: "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that theyare shaking up the feather beds in heaven. "--Baring-Gould, Book ofWerewolves, p. 172. ]

[Footnote 35: "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at thehorizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or'heaven-bursters, ' as having broken in from another world outside. "--MaxMuller, Chips, II. 268. ]

[Footnote 36: "--And said the gods, let there be a hammered plate in themidst of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters. "Genesis i. 6. ]

[Footnote 37: Genesis vii. 11. ]

[Footnote 38: See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p 120; who states alsothat in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed ontop of the funeral-pile. In their character of cows, also, the cloudswere regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popularsuperstition that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a deathin the family. ]

[Footnote 39: The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir, which is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda: "She is so great, thatall the AEsir, with their weapons and war-gear, may find room on boardher"; but "when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she ismade. . . . With so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like acloth, and keep her in his bag. " This same virtue was possessed by thefairy pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed; the cloud which is nobigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole heaven, and shadethe Sultan's army from the solar rays. ]

[Footnote 40: Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representingit as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinctdodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its truecharacter when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscuresthe sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns. " See Nouveau JournalAsiatique, Tom. XII. P. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "BlueBelt" belongs to the same species. ]

[Footnote 41: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. P. 146. CompareTylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. P. 237, seq. ]

[Footnote 42: "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solarhero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide. "Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to beconstructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has novalidity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothingof the incongruity. ]

[Footnote 43: The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials ina way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (thesun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, butalso cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26. ]

[Footnote 44: Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through whichthe solar ship, having passed successfully once, may henceforth passforever. See the details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I. 315. ]

[Footnote 45: The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, meansboth "cloud" and "mountain. " "In the Edda, too, the rocks, said to havebeen fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended forclouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock; nay, the Englishword CLOUD itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock. See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. P. 62. " Max Muller, Rig-Veda, Vol. 1. P. 44. ]

[Footnote 46: In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures, "it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must begood for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulousglands; while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specificin leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was asovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage inthe fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder. "Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd. , p. Xiv. See alsoChapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866. ]

[Footnote 47: Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod. ]

[Footnote 48: The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorialused for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word oesc meant, in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree, " or "spear"; and the same is, or has been, true of the French fresne and the Greek melia. The root ofoesc appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance, " whence asa, "abow, " and asana, "an arrow. " See Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, I. 222. ]

[Footnote 49: Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "FaeryQueen, " where, however, the knight fares better than this poor priest. Usually these lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, intowhich none might look and live. This conception is the foundation ofpart of the story of Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the thirdone-eyed Calender]

[Footnote 50: Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. P. 161. ]

[Footnote 51: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193. ]

[Footnote 52: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151. ]

[Footnote 53: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12. ]

[Footnote 54: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; PrimitiveCulture, Vol. II. P. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409. ]

[Footnote 55: The production of fire by the drill is often calledchurning, e. G. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it, and kindled a fire. " Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174. ]

[Footnote 56: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, BhagavataPurana, VIII. 6, 32. ]

[Footnote 57: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149. ]

[Footnote 58: It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the"holy water" of the Roman Catholic. ]

[Footnote 59: In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally thepersonification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts tomen life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. P. 277. ]

[Footnote 60: We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greekfire-god Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite. ]

[Footnote 61: "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leavesplucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for thepurpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similarvirtues. "--Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20. ]

[Footnote 62: In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil, the thunder-god, . . . . "he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from hissling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villagesas fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love. "--Tylor, op. Cit. Vol. II. P. 239]

[Footnote 63: In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a newcomplication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing asa wind-god. "--Tylor, op. Cit. Vol. II. P. 242. ]

[Footnote 64: Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15. ]

[Footnote 65: Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man. " Garou is aGallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautologicalexpression. ]

[Footnote 66: Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. I. P. 151. ]

[Footnote 67: Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5. ]

[Footnote 68: Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393. ]

[Footnote 69: Very similar to this is the etymological confusion uponwhich is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventhchapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate ofGod"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the rootbalal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation, --thatBabel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. P. 149; Renan, Histoire desLangues Semitiques, Vol. I. P. 32; Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note;Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. P. 268. ]

[Footnote 70: Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr. Prath (to spread out), Eng. Flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. P. 31. ]

[Footnote 71: M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants, " FortnightlyReview, N. S. Vol. VI. Pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol. VII. Pp 194-216;Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship, " Id. Vol. VII. Pp. 535-550, reprinted in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc. , pp. 31-56. ]

[Footnote 72: Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, whoslays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater powerof injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja hadbuilt a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of thekind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the wholecountry, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur. Toward theclose of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house aman had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon oneof the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with theprofessed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit, excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and thoseconcerned with him. " Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. P. 103. ]

[Footnote 73: Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary toopen the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not behindered in joining the mystic cavalcade. ]

[Footnote 74: The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in theEnglish version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, whocan tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak wasswallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safeand sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast. " Tylor, PrimitiveCulture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissathe Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by thecow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fishand cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184; and the storyof Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All theseare different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alternateswallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonlypersonified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm'sstory of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. Cit. , and see EarlyHistory of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 501. ]

[Footnote 75: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, SanskritTexts, II. 435. ]

[Footnote 76: In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have beenthought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. Xxi. ]

[Footnote 77: See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. P. Xxii. ; Grettis Saga, byMagnusson and Morris, chap. Xix. ; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselveswith drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselvesinto a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck. ]

[Footnote 78: Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81. ]

[Footnote 79: Baring-Gould, op. Cit. Chap. Xiv. ]

[Footnote 80: Baring-Gould, op. Cit. P. 82. ]

[Footnote 81: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90. ]

[Footnote 82: "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyaitchange en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceuxqu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer delui. Il dit en confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraimentun loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parcequ'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans. --Pour s'assurerdu fait, on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on luiemporta les bras et les jambes. "--Taine, De l'Intelligence, Tom. II. P. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of theRussian People, pp. 404-418. ]

[Footnote 83: Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in historyrather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneerthe subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimoustestimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as theconvictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft. " I havenot the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on thispoint, but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questionsare not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion, unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may, no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but somethingmore than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it. ]

[Footnote 84: Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See aparallel case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26. "Certain witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellowunder the usual form of cats, till one night he put them to flight withhis broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest;taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, andnext morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one legleft. "--Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 283. ]

[Footnote 85: "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph;compare Anglo-Saxon wudurmaere (wood-mare) = echo. "--Tylor, PrimitiveCulture, Vol. II. P. 173. ]

[Footnote 86: See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, IndischeStudien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281Muller, Chips, II. 114-128. ]

[Footnote 87: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207. ]

[Footnote 88: The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden, " as isillustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph and the Latin nubes. ]

[Footnote 89: This is substantially identical with the stories of Beautyand the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc. ]

[Footnote 90: The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssnof El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. SeeLane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. P. 380. Ralston, Songs of the RussianPeople, p. 179. ]

[Footnote 91: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions ofthe Irish Celts, p. 123. ]

[Footnote 92: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168. ]

[Footnote 93: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133. ]

[Footnote 94: Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. P. 12; Muller, Rig-VedaSanhita, Vol. I. Pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der IndogermanischenGrundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga. ]

[Footnote 95: In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyondquestion that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form ofOdin, the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactlyparallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus ofthe pagan Roman. ]

[Footnote 96: See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beitrage, I. 147. Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be found the element ofdiabolism invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the greatgod in heaven (dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by theseweather-beaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with histhunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere withtheir dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortunefalls on them; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it. "Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. P. 248. ]

[Footnote 97: See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939. ]

[Footnote 98: The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformationdegraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancientdevas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants ofBuddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes. " Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. Thisis like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into theDevil. ]

[Footnote 99: Zeus--Dia--Zhna--di on. . . . . . . . . . . . Plato Kratylos, p. 396, A. , with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm. Ad Timaeum, II. P. 226, Schneider; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology. See also Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147. ]

[Footnote 100: Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. PetroniusArbiter, Sat. Xliv. ]

[Footnote 101: "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte. " Tasso, Gerusalemme, XV. 47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28. ]

[Footnote 102: The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off thanthe tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the earlymissionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Okimeant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin ora greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests wereforced to use a circumlocution, --`the great chief of men, ' or 'he wholives in the sky. '" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. Lxxix. "TheAlgonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtlessbecause their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swearby. " Ibid, p. 31. ]

[Footnote 103: Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230. ]

[Footnote 104: Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13. ]

[Footnote 105: It should be borne in mind, however, that one ofthe women who tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess ofdarkness; Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhauser. Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, whom she resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene, the loftiest of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of anenchantress. She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked QueenLabe, whose sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king ofPersia. ]

[Footnote 106: The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but thestory of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much asthe stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. Hisgrandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name beingidentical with that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in theShah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the AryanNations, II. 358. ]

[Footnote 107: In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformedinto the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until theday of judgment. ]

[Footnote 108: Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134. ]

[Footnote 109: In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore ofthe Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingeniousand praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of householdlegends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundantand defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, veryinstructive. ]

[Footnote 110: There is nothing in common between the names Hercules andHerakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; theformer is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose. " IfHerakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta, sequor to epomai, etc. It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition ofhis History, abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechischeHerakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimischund dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheintzunachst als Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichenVermogensvermehrung. " Romische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladlylearn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensibleopinion. ]

[Footnote 111: For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, seePreller, Romische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970. ]

[Footnote 112: Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, III. P. Lxxxvi; Breal, op. Cit. P. 98. ]

[Footnote 113: Max Muller, Science of Language, II 484. ]

[Footnote 114: As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythologicalconsiderations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek. "Op. Cit. P. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu toAchilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answersto the Panis. ]

[Footnote 115: "I create evil, " Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil inthe city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Iliad, xxiv. 527, and contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Chronicles xxi. 1. ]

[Footnote 116: Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent inthe Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely thework of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to thehabit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning aboutthe Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection ofwritings of different ages and of very different degrees of historicauthenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo, " I hope toexamine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden ofEden. ]

[Footnote 117: For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the AryanNations, Vol. II. Pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of thedetails here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, seq. ]

[Footnote 118: Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are citedin Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. P. 368. The same beliefis implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller'sHorse. " See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134. ]

[Footnote 119: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. P. 258. ]

[Footnote 120: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. P. 259. In the Norsestory of "Not a Pin to choose between them, " the old woman is in doubtas to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her ina tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barksat her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by theFrenschutz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199. ]

[Footnote 121: See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29. ]

[Footnote 122: Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. And No. XLII. ]

[Footnote 123: See Dasent's Introduction, p. Cxxxix; Campbell, Tales ofthe West Highlands, Vol. IV. P. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 10. ]

[Footnote 124: "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on oneoccasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard hadnever seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, hesaid, 'Good day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruffvoice, and striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram;who are you?' 'A Leopard, ' answered the other, more dead than alive; andthen, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could. " Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24. ]

[Footnote 125: I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks, Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69. ]

[Footnote 126: Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives aboutthe countries within the arctic circle where during part of the year thesun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that mustbe another sun, not the same as the one we see here, ' said an old man;and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adoptedthis opinion. " Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History ofMankind, p. 301. ]

[Footnote 127: Max Muller, Chips, II. 96. ]

[Footnote 128: Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270. ]

[Footnote 129: A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of thehouse. "]

[Footnote 130: For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesisof Language, " North American Review, October 1869, p. 320. ]

[Footnote 131: Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. P. 246. ]

[Footnote 132: For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106. ]

[Footnote 133: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160. ]

[Footnote 134: Brinton, op. Cit. P. 163. ]

[Footnote 135: Brinton, op. Cit. P. 167. ]

[Footnote 136: Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, theDioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology. ]

[Footnote 137: See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. Pp. 469-476. Afetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been absentfrom the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness awell-known passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universalin Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west. ]

[Footnote 138: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare theFiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 321. ]

[Footnote 139: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327. ]

[Footnote 140: Tylor, op. Cit. , p. 346. ]

[Footnote 141: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302. ]

[Footnote 142: Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallacesays: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have thepower to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sakeof devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of suchtransformations. " Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. P. 251. ]

[Footnote 143: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58. ]

[Footnote 144: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30. ]

[Footnote 145: Callaway, op. Cit. Pp. 142-152; cf. A similar story inwhich the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. Cit. P. 7. I omit thesequel of the tale. ]

[Footnote 146: Brinton, op. Cit. P. 104. ]

[Footnote 147: Tylor, op. Cit. P. 320. ]

[Footnote 148: Tylor, op. Cit. Pp. 338-343. ]

[Footnote 149: Tylor, op. Cit. P. 336. November, 1870]

[Footnote 150: Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1869. ]

[Footnote 151: Hist. Greece, Vol. II. P. 208. ]

[Footnote 152: Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. P. 198. ]

[Footnote 153: For the precise extent to which I would indorse thetheory that the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of light overdarkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do notsuppose that the struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subjectin the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet. "Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare'ssubject was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the storyof Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is unmistakably thestory of the quarrel between summer and winter; and the moody princeis as much a solar hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen desShakespeare, I. 127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories, therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their present form. They are the offspring of other stories which were sun-myths; theyare stories which conform to the sun-myth type after the manner aboveillustrated in the paper on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothingunintelligible in the inconsistency--which seems to puzzle Max Muller(Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. P. 516, note 20)--of investingParis with many of the characteristics of the children of light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the Iliad-myth had asentirely disappeared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of theHamlet-myth had disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit groundfor wonder is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous. ] Thephysical theory of myths will be properly presented and comprehended, only when it is understood that we accept the physical derivation ofsuch stories as the Iliad-myth in much the same way that we are bound toaccept the physical etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince, deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, in his "Philological Studies, "--a little book which I used to read withdelight when a boy, --describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors. "In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or thetragedy of Hamlet--any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant bySue, or La Maison Forestiere by Erckmann-Chatrian--as nature-myths, Iwould at the same time consider these poems well described as embodying"faded nature-myths. "]

[Footnote 154: I have no opinion as to the nationality of theEarth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we canhardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be doubted, however, whether much good is likely to comeof comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or ofdistinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. SeeBrown's Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872, --a book which is open to several of the criticisms here directedagainst Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing. ]

[Footnote 155: "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, findsout the criminal, was originally quite free from mythology; IT MEANTNO MORE THAN THAT CRIME WOULD BE BROUGHT TO LIGHT SOME DAY OR OTHER. It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaningof Erinys was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the rank of a personal being. "--Science of Language, 6thedition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine, contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly atvariance with the facts of history. The facts concerning primitiveculture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the caseis just the other way. Instead of the expression "Erinys finds thecriminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literalstatement of what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion oftime, "(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally regardedas a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk inmetaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their similes andpersonifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poeticmetaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone asessumenos or "yearning" (to keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurativeexpression; but to the savage it is the description of a fact. ]

[Footnote 156: Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development ofMythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B. Tylor. 2vols. 8vo. London. 1871. ]

[Footnote 157: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 107. ]

[Footnote 158: Rousseau, Confessions, I. Vi. For further illustration, see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures, " supra, p. 55. ]

[Footnote 159: Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc. , p. 36, "TheOrigin of Animal Worship. "]

[Footnote 160: See Nature, Vol. VI. P. 262, August 1, 1872. Thecircumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that thesitting up is intended to attract the master's attention. The dog hasfrequently been seen trying to soften the heart of the ball, whileobserved unawares by his master. ]

[Footnote 161: "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attentionMr. Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a specialprovidence, ' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life thanis the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, towhose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a fewfetichistic notions, ' because he was found standing up on his hind legsin front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball withwhich he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which, saysthe letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and playwith him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who hadbeen drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was verypleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself tostand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual wayof getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, mayhave stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habitand eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, orexpected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit, however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion thedog is capable of anything. " The Nation, Vol. XV. P. 284, October 1, 1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in thedog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only addanother fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imaginethat natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or livingessences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed:my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawnduring a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breezeoccasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been whollydisregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every timethat the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconsciousmanner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presenceof some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on histerritory. " Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. P. 64. Without insistingupon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, Ithink, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbedassociation between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of amultitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with hisgreater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception. ]

[Footnote 162: Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of theseGreek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body by some spiritor demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, ekstasis, a displacement orremoval of the soul from the body, into which the demon enters andcauses strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, butthe literal belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to suchwords as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself ortransported. "]

[Footnote 163: Something akin to the savage's belief in the animationof pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been asked by mythree-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite himif he were to go near it; and I can remember that, in my own childhood, when reading a book about insects, which had the formidable likeness ofa spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lestmy finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held thebook. ]

[Footnote 164: Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that adead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed fromit at the close of life. " Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, andFolk-Lore, p. 123. ]

[Footnote 165: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 391. ]

[Footnote 166: Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p. 210. ]

[Footnote 167: Tylor, op. Cit. II. 139. ]

[Footnote 168: In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to beembodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and histhree schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. InVolhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to theirnative village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowingparents. " Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118. ]

[Footnote 169: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 404. ]

[Footnote 171: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 407. ]

[Footnote 172: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survivalthis belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, noreason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child askswhy it is naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is anevidence of bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before theinroads of the practical sense. ]

[Footnote 173: Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99. ]

[Footnote 174: Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247. ]

[Footnote 175: Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comesin to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in KeelingIsland, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; thisspoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspiredat full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a tableor a hat at a modern spirit-seance. " Tylor, op. Cit. II. 139. ]

[Footnote 176: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 414-422. ]

[Footnote 177: Tylor, op. Cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36. ]

[Footnote 178: According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOULOF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id. , II. 353. ]

[Footnote 179: The following citation is interesting as an illustrationof the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christiansaint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his ownadventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to thehealth and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers wouldcarry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple atthe foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced bythe church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drewpublic attention to its curious history, used to look in and see tenor a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silentreverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessingchildren, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there onThursday mornings. " Op. Cit. II. 111. ]

[Footnote 180: Want of space prevents me from remarking at lengthupon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracularinspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliantexplanation of the importance accorded by all religions to the rite offasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mentalstate which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-manqualifies himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, andwhere this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whencethe sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. Thepractice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of survival. ]