NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
3 3433 07954493 2
-U -''a:
W'^.. -■•
-
r •
'
S" ! ' •,'^j /
,
J-
, u -V »."" ^ •■ V
<L
.r..-*-vxt
•'" ^.^ '
r»-. -» ^
>" ' V-
t, .
*"'rr'-- . , '
y
ft'
'^*y
1^' ^
'^'u },/'*,
^.
p**
y V
•
1%-'- ' '■■■
-: -»■
>..-.*;^
MAt
Kj^*,\r
r '
•* :>
mk
»v '
'/-'-ii^'
ZAC
FisKe,
MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS
OLD TALES AND SUPERSTITIONS INTERPRETED
BY COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY
BY
JOHN FISKE
La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait suivre les
croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde jusqu'aux supersti-
tions de nos campagnes. — Edmond Scherer
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
U- '•
_- r— ^-"
Copyright, 1872,
Bt JAMES R, OSGOOD & CO.
Copyright, 1900,
By JOHN FI8KB.
All rights reserved.
TWENTY-SIXTH IMPRESSION.
T?ie Riverside Prett, Cambridge, Mats., U. S. A.
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Comiiany.
TO
MY DEAR FRIEND,
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,
IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT AUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG
WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND NIXIES,
31 lietiicate
THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES,
X
PREFACE
IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystem-
atic series of papers, in which I have endeavoured to
touch briefly upon a great many of the most important
points in the study of mythology, I think it right to ob-
serve that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with
intricate discussions, I have sometimes cut the matter
short, expressingmyself with dogmatic definiteness where
a sceptical vagueness might perhaps have seemed more be-
coming. In treating of popular legends and superstitions,
the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough, and seldom
can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have
travelled all the way around Eobin Hood's barn and back
again. I am sure that the reader would not have thanked
me for obstructing these crooked lanes with the thorns
and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion,
to such an extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever
reaching the high road. I have not attempted to review,
otherwise than incidentally, the works of Grimm, Mtiller,
Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor ; nor can I pretend to
have added anything of consequence, save now and then
some bit of explanatory comment, to the results obtained
by the labour of these scholars ; but it has rather been my
VI PREFACE.
aim to present these results in such a way as to awaken
general interest in them. And accordingly, in dealing
with a subject which depends upon philology almost as
much as astronomy depends upon mathematics, I have
omitted pliilological considerations wherever it has been
po'ssible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that nothing
has been advanced as established which is not now gen-
erally admitted by scholars, and that nothing has been
advanced as probable for which due evidence cannot be
produced. Yet among many points which are proved,
and many others which are probable, there must always
remain many other facts of which we cannot feel sure
that our own explanation is the true one; and the
student who endeavours to fathom the primitive thoughts
of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will do well to
bear in mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm, — him-
self the greatest scholar and thinker who has ever dealt
with this class of subjects, — "I shall indeed interpret all
that I can, but I cannot interpret aU that I should like."
Petersham, September 6, 1872.
CONTENTS.
' Pag«
I. The Origins of Folk-Lore 1
II. The Descent of Fire 37
III. Werewolves and Swan-Maidens .... 69
IV. Light and Darkness 104
Y. Myths of the Barbaric World .... 141
VI. JuvENTus Mundi 174
VII. The Primeval Ghost- World 209
Note 241
Index 243
MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
I.
THE OEIGINS OF FOLK-LOEK
FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William
Tell. His exploits have been celebrated by one of
the greatest poets and one of the most popular musicians
of modern times. They are doubtless familiar to many
who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who
are quite ignorant of the prow^ess of Eoland, and to whom
Arthur and Lancelot, nay, even Charlemagne, are but
empty names.
Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very
likely that no such person as William Tell ever existed,
and it is certain that the story of his shooting the apple
from his son's head has no historical value whatever.
In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss,
especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion
is forced upon us as soon as we begin to study the
legend in accordance with the canons of modern histori-
cal criticism. It is useless to point to Tell's lime-tree,
standing to-day in the centre of the market-place at
Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his crossbow pre-
served in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable wit-
nesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we
are told, " The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it ;
1 A
2 MYTHS AXD MYTU-MAKERS.
therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid
than the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments
of the true cross. For if relics are to be received as
e\'idence, we must needs admit the truth of every miracle
narrated by the BoUandists.
The earliest Avork whicli makes any allusion to the
adventures of William Tell is the chronicle of the
younger Melchior Euss, written in 1482. As the shoot-
ing of the apple was supposed to have taken place in
1296, this leaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-
six years, during which neither a Tell, nor a William,
nor the apple, nor the cruelty of Gessler, received any
mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that
the charters of Kiissenach, when examined, show that
no man by the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The
chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammer-
lin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts by which
the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do
not once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest
acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In
the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded to. But
we have still better negative evidence. John of Winter-
thiir, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was
living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at
which his father was present. He tells us how, on the
evening of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold him-
self in his flight from the fatal field, half dead with fear.
He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contem-
porary, all the incidents of tlie Swiss revolution, l)ut
nowliere does he say a word a])out William Tell. This
is sufficiently conclusive. These mediaeval chroniclers,
who never failed to go out of tlnur way after a ])it of the
epigrammatic and marvellous, who thought far more of a
pointed story than of historical credibility, would never
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 3
have kept silent about the adventures of Tell, if they had
known anything about them.
After this, it is not surprising to find that no two
authors who describe the deeds of William Tell agree in
the details of topography and chronology. Such discrep-
ancies never fail to confront us when we leave the solid
ground of history and begin to deal with floating legends.
Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have been
its origin ? To answer this question we must consider-
ably expand the discussion.
The first author of any celebrity who doubted the
story of William Tell was Guillimann, in his work on
Swiss Antiquities, published in 1598. He calls the story
a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words, concludes
by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is so pop-
ular ! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part ; for, in 1760,
as we are told, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by
the canton of Uri to be burnt alive, for publishing his
opinion that the legend of Tell had a Danish origin.*
The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like
so many other heretics, earlier and later. The Danish
account of Tell is given as follows, by Saxo Grammat-
icus : —
" A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Har-
old's body-guard, had made his bravery odious to very
many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal with which he
surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man
once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that
he was so skilled an archer that he could hit the smallest
apple placed a long way off on a wand at the first shot ;
which talk, caught up at first by the ears of backbiters,
soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark how
the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the
* See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.
4 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
sire to the peril of the son, by commanding tiiat this
dearest pledge of his life should be placed instead of the
Avand, with a threat that, unless the author of this prom-
ise could strike off the apple at the first Hight of the
arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting
by the loss of his head. The king's command forced the
soldier to perform more than he had promised, and what
he had said, reported by tlie tongues of slanderers, bound
him to accomplish what he had not said. Yet did not
liis sterling courage, though caught in the snare of slan-
der, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart ; nay, he
accepted the trial the more readily because it was hard.
So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently wdien he took his
stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with
calm ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his
body, he should defeat the practised skill of the bowman ;
and, taking further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned
away his face, lest he should be scared at the sight of the
weapon. Then, taking three arrow^s from the quiver, he
struck the mark given him with the first he fitted to the
string But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why
he had taken more arrows from the quiver, when it had
been settled that he should only try the fortune of the
bow once, made answer, ' That I might avenge on thee
the swerving of the first by the points of the rest, lest
perchance my innocence might have been punished, while
your violence escapcMl scot-free.' " *
This ruthless king is none other tlian tlie famous Har-
old Blue-tooth, and I lie occurrence is placed ))y Saxo in
the year 950. ]>ut the story appears not oidy in Den-
mark, but in England, in Xoiway, in Fiidand and Russia,
and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that
it was known in India. In Norway we have the adven-
* Saxo Graniniiiticus, I)k. X. p. 166, od. Frankf. 1576.
THE OFdGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 5
tures of Pansa the Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a
vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in
1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil,
brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vidcan. In Eng-
land there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which
supplied Scott with many details of the archery scene
in " Ivanhoe." Here, says the dauntless bowman,
" I have a sonne seven years old ;
Hee is to me full deere ;
I will tye him to a stake —
All shall see him that bee here —
And lay an apple upon his head,
And goe six paces him froe.
And I myself with a broad arrowe
Shall cleave the apple in towe. "
In the Malleus Mcdeficarum a similar story is told of
Puncher, a famous magician on the Upper Ehine. The
great ethnologist Castren dug up the same legend in Fin-
land. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the Turks
and Mongolians ; " and a legend of the wild Samoyeds,
who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives,
relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their marksmen."
Finally, in the Persian poem of Farid-Uddin Attar, born
in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an apple
from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories,
names and motives of course differ ; but all contain the
same essential incidents. It is always an unerring archer
who, at the capricious command of a tyrant, shoots from
the head of some one dear to him a small object, be it an
apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer always pro-
vides himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned
as to the use he intended to make of his extra weapon,
the invariable reply is, " To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain
my son." Now, when a marvellous occurrence is said to
have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that it
6 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
never happened anpvhere. Popular fancies propagate
themselves indefinitely, but historical events, especially
the striking and dmmatic ones, are rarely repeated. The
facts here collected lead inevitably to the conclusion
that the Tell myth was known, in its general features, to
ooi' Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their primitive
. dwelling-place in Central Asia.
It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these won-
derful marksmen may really have existed and have per-
formed the feat recorded in the legend ; and that his true
story, carried about by hearsay tradition from one coun-
try to another and from age to age, may have formed the
theme for all the variations above mentioned, just as the
fables of La Fontaine were patterned after those of ^sop
and Phaedrus, and just as many of Chaucer's tales were
consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt there has
been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the
legends of different peoples, as well as among the words
of different languages ; and possibly even some pictur-
esque fragment of early history may have now and then
been carried about the world in this manner. But as the
philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish
between the native and the imported words in any Aryan
language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so
the student of popular traditions, though working with
far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with refer-
ence to a vast number of legends, that they cannot have
been obtained by any process of conscious borrowing.
The difficulties inseparable from any such hypothesis
will become more and more apparent as we proceed to
examine a few other stories current in different portions
of the Aryan domain.
As the Swiss must give up his TeU, so must the Welsh-
man be deprived of liis brave dog Gellert, over whose
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 7
cruel fate I confess to having shed more tears than I
should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes of
many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how
the dear old brute killed the wolf which had come to
devour Llewellyn's child, and how the prince, returning
home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's mouth
dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry
of the child from behind the cradle and the sight of the
wolf's body had rectified his error. To this day the vis-
itor to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown
the place, called Beth-Gellert,* where the dog's grave is
still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the
fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the
Gellert-form it started in the Panchatantra, a collection
of Sanskrit fables ; and it has even been discovered in a
Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668. Usually the
hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an
insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the following
comical shape : " A Wall once smashed a pot full of herbs
which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook
thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wall within
an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with
his efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken
pot, he discovered amongst the herbs a poisonous snake.""!"
Now this story of the Wall is as manifestly identical
with the legend of Gellert as the English word father is
with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain
* According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived from "St.
Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom the church of Llan-
geller is consecrated," (Words and Places, p. 339.)
t Compare Krilofs story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in Mr. Kals-
ton's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Many parallel
examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp.
126 - 136. See also the story of FoUiculus, — Swan, Gesta Romanorum,
»d. Wright, Vol. I. p. Ixxxii.
8 MYTUS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
that the word father is in any sense derived from ^;a^^,
so it would be impossible to represent either the Welsh
or the Egyptian legend as a copy of tlie other. Obviously
the conclusion is forced upon us that the stories, like the
words, are related collaterally, having descended from a
common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by
one and the same primeval idea.
Closely connected with the Gellert mytli are the stories
of Faithful John and of liama and Luxman. In the
German story, Faithful John accompanies the prince, his
master, on a journey in quest of a beautiful maiden,
whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are caiTy-
inf her home across the seas. Faithful John hears some
crows, whose language he understands, foretelling three
dangers impending over the prince, from wliich his friend
can save him only by sacrificing liis own life. As soon
as they land, a horse will spring toward the king, which,
if he mounts it, will bear him away from his bride for-
ever ; but wlioever shoots the horse, and tells the king
the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee.
Then, before the wedding a bridal garment will lie be-
fore the king, wliich, if he puts it on, will burn liim like
the Nessos-shirt of Herakles ; but wlioever throws the
sliirt into the hre and tells the king the reason, will be
turned into stone from knee to heart. Finally, during
the wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a
swoon, {ind "unless some one takes three drops of blood
from her right breast she will die" ; Itut wlioever does so,
and tells the king the reason, will be turned into stone
from head to foot. Thus forewarned. Faith fid John saves
his master from all these dangers ; but the king misinter-
prets his motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to
be hanged. On the scaffold he tells his story, and while
the king humbles himself in an agony of remorse, liis
noble friend is turned into stone.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 9
In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Eama,
who is carrying home his bride. Luxman overhears two
owls talking about the perils that await his master and
mistress. First he saves tliem from being crushed by
the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them
away from an arch which immediately after gives way.
By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls
asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman
kiUs it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold,
a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead.
As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and,
thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him
with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief
at this unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned
into stone.*
For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale
of the " Giant who had no Heart in his Body," as related
by Dr. Dasent. This burly magician having turned six
brothers with their wives into stone, the seventh brother
— the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of European
folk-lore — sets out to obtain vengeance if not reparation
for the evil done to his kith and kin. On the way he
shows the kindness of his nature by rescuing from de-
struction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful
wolf carries him on his back to the giant's castle, where
the lovely princess wdiom the monster keeps in irksome
bondage promises to act, in behalf of Boots, the part of
Delilah, and to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps
his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finally suc-
cumbs to feminine blandishments. " Far, far away in a
lake lies an island ; on that island stands a church ; in
that church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in
that duck there is an egg ; and in that egg there lies my
* See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp. 145-149.
I*
lO MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
heart, you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rifles on the
wolf's back to the island ; the raven tlies to tlie top of the
steeple and gets the church-keys ; the salmon dives to
the bottom of the well, and brings up the Qgg from the
place where the duck liad dropped it ; and so Boots
becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the
Qg'g, the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his
life, which Boots promises to spare on condition that his
brothers and their brides should be released from their
enchantment. But when all has been duly effected, the
treacherous youth squeezes the a^^^ in two, and the giant
instantly bursts.
The same story has lately been found in Southern
India, and is published in ]\Iiss Frere's remarkable collec-
tion of tales entitled " Old Deccan Days." In the Hindu
version the seven daughters of a rajah, with their hus-
bands, are transformed into stone by the great magician
Punchkin, — all save the youngest daughter, whom
Punchkin keeps shut up in a tower until by threats
or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marry him. But
the captive princess leaves a son at home in the cradle,
who gTows up to manhood unmolested, and finally under-
takes the rescue of his family. After long and weary
wanderings lie finds his mother shut up in Punchkin's
tower, and persuades her to play the part of the princess
in the Norse legend. The trick is equally successful.
" Hundreds of thousands of miles away there lies a deso-
late country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of
the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in the centre
of the circle stand six jars full of water, piled one above
another ; below the sixtli jar is a small cage which con-
tains a little green parrot; on the life of the parrot de-
pends my life, and if the parrot is killed I must die." *
* The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of Seyf-el-Mulook
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. H
The young prince finds the place guarded by a host of
dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from a
devouring serpent in the course of his journey take him
on their crossed wings and carry him to the place where
the jars are standing. He instantly overturns the jars,
and seizing the parrot, obtains from the terrified magi-
cian full reparation. As soon as his own friends and
a stately procession of other royal or noble victims have
been set at liberty, he proceeds to pull the parrot to
pieces. As the wings and legs come away, so tumble off
the arms and legs of the magician ; and finally as the
prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists liis own
head round and dies.
The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and
some portions of it will be recognized by the reader as
incidents in the Arabian tale of the Princess Parizade.
The union of close correspondence in conception with
manifest independence in the management of the details
of these stories is striking enough, but it is a phenomenon
with which we become quite familiar as we proceed in
the study of Aryan popular literature. The legend of
the Master Tliief is no less remarkable than that of
Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the Thief, wishing
to get possession of a farmer s ox, carefully hangs him-
self to a tree by the roadside. The farmer, passing by
with his ox, is indeed struck by the sight of the dangling
and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is enclosed in the crop of a
sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, and this enclosed
in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes, which are put
into seven chests, contained in a coffer of marble, which is sunk in the
ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raises the coffer by
the aid of Suleyman's seal-ring, and having extricated the sparrow,
strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is converted into a heap of
black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with the maiden Dolct-Kha-
toon. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. HI. p. 316.
12 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
body, but thinks it none of his business, and does not stop
to interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets
himself down, and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs
himself with equal precaution to a second tree. This
time the farmer is astonished and puzzled ; Init wlien for
the third time he meets the same unwonted spectacle,
thinking that three suicides in one morning are too much
for easy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see
whether the otlier two bodies are really where lie thought
he saw them. While he is fmming hypotheses of witch-
craft by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thief gets
away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives
a finer point. " A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice,
went to the market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw
him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They stationed
themselves at intervals on the high road. When the
Brahman, who carried the goat on his back, approached
the first thief, the thief said, ' Brahman, why do you carry
a dog on your back ? ' The Brahman replied, * It is not
a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after he was accosted
by the second thief, who said, ' Brahman, why do you
carry a dog on your back ? ' The Brahman felt per-
plexed, put the goat down, examined it, took it up again,
and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the third
thief, who said, ' Brahman, why do you carry a dog on
your back?' Then the Brahman was frightened, threw
down the goat, and walked home to perform liis aldutions
for having touched an unclean animal. The thieves took
the goat and ate it." The adroitness of tlie Norse King
in " The Three Princesses of Wliiteland " shows but poor-
ly in comparison with the keen psychological insight and
cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. In the course
of his travels this prince met three brothers lighting on
a lonely moor. They had been fighting for a hundred
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 1 3
years about the possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair
of boots, which would make the wearer invisible, and
convey him instantly whithersoever he might wish to
go. The King consents to act as umpire, provided he
may once try the virtue of the magic garments ; but once
clothed in them, of course he disappears, leaving the
combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs. Now in
the "Sea of Streams of Story," written in the twelfth
century by Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King
Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya Mountains, similarly
discomfits two brothers who are quarrelling over a pair
of shoes, which are like the sandals of Hermes, and a
bowl which has the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp.
" Why don't you run a race for tliem ? " suggests Putraka ;
and, as the two blockheads start furiously off, he quietly
picks up the bowl, ties on the shoes, and flies away ! *
It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The
tales here quoted are fair samples of the remarkable cor-
respondence which holds good through aU the various
sections of Aryan folk-lore. The hypothesis of lateral
diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails to explain
coincidences which are maintained on such an immense
scale. It is quite credible that one nation may have
borrowed from another a solitary legend of an archer who
performs the feats of Tell and Palnatoki ; but it is utterly
incredible that ten thousand stories, constituting the en-
tire mass of household mythology throughout a dozen
separate nations, should have been handed from one to
another in this way. No one would venture to suggest
that the old grannies of Iceland and Norway, to whom
we owe such stories as the Master Thief and the Princesses
of Whiteland, had ever read Somadeva or heard of the
* The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of El-Basrah.
See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. Ill p. 452.
14 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS,
treasures of Rhampsinitos. A large proportion of tlie
tales witli which we are dealing were utterly unknown
to literature until they were taken down by Grinnn and
Frere and Castren and Campbell, from the lips of igno-
rant peasants, nurses, or house-servants, in Germany and
Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland. Yet, as Mr. Cox
observes, these old men and women, sitting by the chim-
ney-corner and somewhat timidly recounting to the lit-
erary explorer the stories which they had learned in child-
hood from their own nurses and gi\andnias, " reproduce the
most subtle turns of thought and expression, and an end-
less series of complicated narratives, in which the order
of incidents and the words of the speakers are preserved
with a fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition
of historical events. It may safely be said that no series
of stories introduced in the form of translations from
other languages could ever thus have filtered down into
the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung up
again, like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened
beauty." There is indeed no alternative for us but to
admit that these fireside tales have been handed down
from parent to child for more than a hundred genera-
tions ; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his
evening meal of yava and sipped his fermented mead,
listened with his cliildren to the stories of Boots and
Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days when the
squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-
skinned Sudra was as yet unmolested in the Punjab.
Only such community of origin can explain the commu-
nit}* in character between the stories told by the Aryan's
descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands
of Scotland.
This conclusion essentially modifies our view of tlie
origin and growth of a legend like that of William Tell
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. > 1 5
The case of the Tell legend is radically different from the
case of the blindness of Belisarius or the burning of the
Alexandrian library by order of Omar. The latter are
isolated stories or beliefs ; the former is one of a family
of stories or beliefs. The latter are untrustworthy tradi-
tions of doubtful events ; "but in dealing with the former,
w^e are face to face with a myth.
What, then, is a myth ? The theory of Euhemeros,
which was so fashionable a century ago, in the days of
the Abb^ Banier, has long since been so utterly aban-
doned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. The
peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the
extraordinary features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its
inmost significance, and to the dull and useless residuum
accorded the dignity of primeval history. In this way
the myth was lost without compensation, and the stu-
dent, in seeking good digestible bread, found but the
hardest of pebbles. Considered merely as a pretty story,
the legend of the golden fruit watched by the dragon in
the garden of the Hesperides is not without its value.
But what merit can there be in the gratuitous statement
which, degrading the grand Doric hero to a level with
any vulgar fruit-stealer, makes Herakles break a close
with force and arms, and carry off a crop of oranges
which had been guarded by mastiffs ? It is stiU worse
when we come to the more homely folk-lore with which
the student of mythology now has to deal. The theo-
ries of Banier, which limped and stumbled awkwardly
enough when it was only a question of Hermes and
Minos and Odin, have fallen never to rise again since
the problems of Punchkin and Cinderella and the Blue
Belt have begun to demand solution. The conclusion has
been gradually forced upon the student, that the marvel-
lous portion of these old stories is no illegitimate excres-
1 6 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
cence, but was rather the pith and centre of the whole,*
in days when there was no supernatural, because it had
not yet been discovered that there was sucli a thing as
nature. The religious m}1:hs of antiquity and the fire-
side legends of ancient and modern times have their
common root in the mental habits of primeval humanity.
They are the earliest recorded utterances of men con-
cerning the visible phenomena of the world into wliich
they were born.
That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which
modern men are wont to regard natural phenomena was
in early times unknown. We have come to regard all
events as taking place regularly, in strict conformity to
law : whatever our official theories may be, we instinc-
tively take this view of things. But our primitive ances-
tors knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about
physical forces, notliing about the relations of cause and
effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things.
There was a time in the history of mankind when these
things had never been inquired into, and when no gener-
alizations about them had been framed, tested, or estab-
lished. There was no conception of an order of nature,
and therefore no distinct conception of a supernatural
order of things. There was no belief in miracles as
infractions of natural laws, but there was a belief in the
occurrence of wonderful events too mighty to have been
brought about by ordinary means. There was an unlim-
ited capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy
and belief liad not yet been checked and headed off" in
various directions by established rules of experience.
Physical science is a very late acquisition of the human
mind, but we are already suihciently imbued with it to
♦ " Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le supprimer." —
Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. ly
be jilmost completely disabled from comprehending the
thoughts of our ancestors. " How Finn cosmogonists
could have believed the earth and heaven to be made out
of a severed ^gg, the upper concave shell representing
heaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surround-
ing fluid the circumambient ocean, is to us incomprehen-
sible ; and yet it remains a fact that they did so regard
them. How the Scandinavians could have supposed the
mountains to be the mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun,
and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot con-
ceive ; yet such a theory was solemnly taught and
accepted. How the ancient Indians could regard the
rain-clouds as cows with full udders milked by the winds
of heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet their
Veda contains indisputable testimony to the fact that
they were so regarded." We have only to read Mr.
Baring-Gould's book of " Curious Myths," from which I
have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's treatise on
" Northern Mythology," to realize how vast is the differ-
ence between our stand-point and that from which, in
the later Middle Ages, our immediate forefathers re-
garded things. The frightful superstition of werewolves
is a good instance. In those days it was firmly believed
that men could be, and were in the habit of being, trans-
formed into wolves. It was believed that women might
bring forth snakes or poodle-dogs. It was beKeved that
if a man had his side pierced in battle, you could cure
him by nursing the sword which inflicted the wound.
"As late as 1600 a German writer would illustrate a
thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn by a picture of a
dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flam-
ing tongue and iron teeth."
Now if such was the condition of the human intellect
only three or four centuries ago, what must it have been
B
l8 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
in tliat dark antiquity wlien not even the crudest gener-
alizations of Greek or of Oriental science had been
reached ? The same mighty power of imagination which
now, restrained and guided by scientific principles, leads
us to discoveries and inventions, must then have Mildly
run riot in mythologic fictions whereby to explain the
phenomena of nature. Knowing notliing whatever of
physical forces, of the blind steadiness with which a
given eflect invariably follows its cause, the men of pri-
meval antiquity could interpret the actions of nature
only after the analogy of their omti actions. Tlie only
force they knew was the force of which they were directly
conscious, — the force of will Accordingly, they imag-
ined all the outward world to be endowed with volition,
and to be directed by it. They personified everything,
— sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean, earthquake,
w^hirlwind.* The comparatively enlightened Athenians
of the age of Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and
prayed to it to rain upon their gardens.f And for calling
the moon a mass of dead matter, Anaxagoras came near
losing his life. To the ancients the moon was not a life-
less ball of stones and clods : it was the homed huntress,
Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing
herself in the clear lake ; or it was Aphrodite, protectress
of lovers, bom of the sea-foam in the East near Cypms.
The clouds were no bodies of vaporized water : they were
* "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made in the
lan^ages of the Esquimaux, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the
Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algoncjuin-Lenape have
it, so far as is known, and with tliem it is partial," According to the
Fijians, " vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and
canoes, have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men,
pass on at last to Mhulu, the abode of departed sjnrita." — M'Lennan,
The Worship of Animals and Plants, Fortnightlv Review, Vol. XII. p.
#16.
t Marcus Aurelius, V. 7.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 1 9
COWS with swelling udders, driven to the milking by
Hermes, the summer wind; or great sheep with moist
fleeces, slain by the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the
sun ; or swan-maidens, flitting across the firmament,
Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to receive the
souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty
mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous
recesses the divining- wand of the storm-god Thor revealed
hidden treasures. The yellow-haired sun, Phoibos, drove
westerly all day in his flaming chariot ; or perhaps, as
Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from the sight
of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone,
lole), which he had forsaken in the morning ; sank, as
Herakles, upon a blazing funeral-pyre, or, like Agamem-
non, perished in a blood-stained bath ; or, as the fish-god,
Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters,
to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes
Phaethon, his rash, inexperienced son, would take the
reins and drive the solar chariot too near the earth, caus-
ing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, and the
wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing
divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot
down his scorching arrows, causing pestilence to spread
over the land. Still other conceptions clustered around
the sun. Now it was the wonderful treasure-house, into
which no one could look and live ; and again it was Ixion
himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for vio-
lence offered to Here, the queen of the blue air.
This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful
and plausible, it is, in its essential points, demonstrated.
It stands on as firm a foundation as Grimm's law in
philology, or the undulatory theory in molecular physics.
It is philology which has here enabled us to read the
primitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the
20 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
names of Greek gods and heroes have no meaning in the
Greek language ; but these names occur also in Sanskrit,
with plain pliysical meanings. In the Veda we find
Zeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and
Sarameias or Hermes, meaning the breeze of a summer
morning. We hnd Athene (Ahana), meaning the light
of daybreak ; and we are thus enabled to understand why
the Greek described her as sprung from the forehead of
Zeus. There too we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle
twilight, whom the Paiiis, or night-demons, who serve as
the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive to seduce
from her allegiance to the solar monarch. Even Achilleus
(Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive Briseis (Bri-
saya's ofi'spring) ; and the fierce Kerberos ((Jarvara) barks
on Vedic ground in strict conformity to the laws of pho-
netics.* Now, when the Hindu talked about Father
Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he thought of the per-
sonified sky and clouds ; he had not outgrown the primi-
tive mental habits of the race. But the Greek, in wliose
language these physical meanings were lost, had long
before the Homeric epoch come to regard Zeus and
Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus, as mere
persons, and in most cases tlie originals of his myths were
completely forgotten. In the Vedas the Trojan War is
carried on in the sky, l)etween the bright deities and the
demons of night; but the Greek poet, influenced perhaps
by some dim historical tradition, has located the contest
on the shore of the Hellespont, and in his mind tlie
* Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. MahafTy in his Pro-
lefjomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I am
still disposed to follow Max M tiller in adopting them, with the possible
exception of Achilleus. With Mr. MahatTy's suggestion (p. 52) that
many of the Homeric legends may have "clustered around some his-
torical basis," I fully agree j as will appear, further ou, from my papei
on *' Juventus Mundi."
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 21
actors, though superhuman, are still completely anthro-
pomorphic. Of the true origin of his epic story he knew
as little as Euhemeros, or Lord Bacon, or the Abb^
Banier.
After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being
misunderstood when we define a myth as, in its origin,
an explanation, by the uncivilized mind, of some natural
phenomenon ; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, —
for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in
myths the remnants of a refined primeval science, — but
an explanation. Pruuitive men had no profound science
to perpetuate by means of allegory, nor were they such
sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language
would serve their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure,
worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-
darting sun-god, they meant just what they said, save
that where we propound a scientific theorem, they con-
structed a myth.* A thing is said to be explained when
it is classified with other things with which we are al-
ready acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation
of which the highest science is capable. We explain the
origin, progress, and ending of a thunder-storm, when we
classify the phenomena presented by it along with other
more familiar phenomena of vaporization and condensa-
tion. But the primitive man explained the same thing
to his own satisfaction when he had classified it along
with the well-known phenomena of human volition, by
constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by
* " Les facultes qui etigendrent la mythologie sont les memes que
celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raison que
I'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomena de la plus riclie my-
thologie k cote de la plus profonde metaphysique." " La conception de
la multiplicite dans I'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuples en-
fants ; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a I'age mur." — Eenan,
Hist, des Langues Semitiques, Tom. I. p. 9.
22 MYTUS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer. AVe consider
the nature of the stars to a certain extent explained Avhen
they are classified as suns ; but the Mohammedan com-
piler of the " Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih " was content to ex-
plain them as missiles useful for stoning the Devil ! Now,
as soon as the old Greek, forgetting the source of his
conception, began to talk of a human Oidipous slaying a
leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the Mussulman began, if
he ever did, to tell his children how the Devil once got
a good pelting with golden bullets, then both the one and
the other were talking pure mythology.
We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between
a myth and a legend. Though the words are etymologi-
cally parallel, and though in ordinary discourse we may
use them interchangeably, yet when strict accuracy is
required, it is well to keep them separate. And it is
perhaps needless, save for the sake of completeness, to
say that both are to be distinguished from stories which
have been designedly fabricated. The distinction may
occasionally be subtle, but is usually broad enough.
Thus, the story that Philip II. murdered his wife Eliza-
beth, is a misrepresentation ; but the story that the same
Elizabeth was culpably enamoured of her step-son Don
Carlos, is a legend. The story that Queen Eleanor saved
the life of her husband, Edward I., by sucking a wound
made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a legend ; but
the story that Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus, who
had stolen his cattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is
a myth. While a legend is usually confined to one or
two localities, and is told of not more than one or two
persons, it is characteristic of a myth that it is spread, in
one form or another, over a large part of tlie eartli, tlie
leading incidents remaining constant, while the names
and often tlie motives vary with each locality. This is
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 23
partly due to the immense antiquity of myths, dating as
they do from a period when many nations, now widely
separated, had not yet ceased to form one people. Thus,
many elements of the myth of the Trojan War are to be
found in the Eig-Veda ; and the myth of St. George and
the Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But we
must not always infer that myths have a common descent,
merely because they resemble each other. We must re-
member that the proceedings of the uncultivated mind
are more or less alike in all latitudes, and that the same
phenomenon might in various places independently give
rise to similar stories.* The myth of Jack and the Bean-
stalk is found not only among people of Aryan descent,
but also among the Zulus of South Africa, and again
among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace
a story in this way from one end of the world to the
other, or through a whole family of kindred nations, we
are pretty safe in assuming that we are dealing with a
true myth, and not with a mere legend.
Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at
once obtain a valid explanation of its origin. The con-
ception of infallible skill in archery, which underlies such
a great variety of myths and popular fairy-tales, is origi-
nally derived from the inevitable victory of the sun over
his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest.
Arrows and spears which never miss their mark, swords
from whose blow no armour can protect, are invariably
the weapons of solar divinities or heroes. The shafts of
Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon of the
rain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure
destruction to the serpent of winter. Odysseus, warring
against the impious night-heroes, who have endeavoured
* Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, in my paper
on " Myths of the Barbaric World."
24 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS,
througliout ten lonj:: years or liours of darkness to seduce
from her allegiance his twilight-bride, the weaver of the
never-tinished web of violet clouds, — Odysseus, stripped
of his beggar's raiment and endowed witli fresh youtli
and beauty by the dawn-goddess, Athene, engages in
no doubtful contiict as he raises the bow which none but
himseK can bend. Nor is there less virtue in the spear
of Achilleus, in the swords of Perseus and Sijiurd, in
Pioland's stout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excali-
bur, with which Sir Bedivere was so loath to part. All
these are solar weapons, and so, too, are the arrows of
Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William of
Cloudeslee, wdiose surname proclaims him an inhabitant
of the Phaiakian land. William Tell, whether of Cloud-
land or of Altdorf, is the last reflection of the beneficent
divinity of daytime and summer, constrained for a while
to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness,
as Apollo served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bid-
ding of Eurystheus. His solar character is well pre-
served, even in the sequel of the Swiss legend, in which
he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as an
archer, and in which, after traversing, like Dagon, the
tempestuous sea of night, he leaps at daybreak in re-
gained freedom upon the land, and strikes down tlie
oppressor who has held him in bondage.
Put the sun, though ever victorious in open contest
witli his enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At
times he succumbs to treacliery, is bound l)y tlie frost-
giants, or slain by the demons of darkness. Tlie poisoned
shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to tlie mighty
Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to
save him from tlie craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and
Meleagros we see the unhapi)y solar hero doomed to toil
for the profit of others, and to be cut off by an untimely
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 2$
death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe
old age, and triumphs again and again over all the powers
of darkness, must nevertheless yield to the craving desire
to visit new cities and look upon new works of strange
men, until at last he is swallowed up in the western sea.
That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should
disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as
it is that the horned Venus or Astarte should rise from
the sea in the far east. It is perhaps less obvious that
winter should be so frequently symbolized as a thorn or
sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in
the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's
tusk, while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which
afterwards secures his recognition by his old servant, the
dawn-nymph Eurykleia ; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and
Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe ; and in the myth
of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her
long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spin-
dle. In her cosmic palace, aU is locked in icy repose,
naught thriving save the i\y which defies the cold, until
the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and
activity.
The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumer-
able stories of spell-bound maidens and fair-featured
youths, saints, martyrs, and heroes. Sometimes it is the
sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed to slxmiber.
Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is
said to sleep through the winter months; and at the
time of the falling leaves, by way of composing himself
for his nap, he fiUs his great pipe and divinely smokes ;
the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape, fiU
the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek
myth the shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in
a perennial slumber. The German Siegfried, pierced by
26 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
the thorn of ^^^nte^, is sleeping until he shall be again
called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the Yierwald-
stiittersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their
country shall again need to be delivered from the oppres-
sor. Charlemagne is reposing in the Untersberg, sword
in hand, waiting for the coming of Antichrist; Olger
Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon ; and
in a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor
Frederic Barbarossa slumbers with his knights around
him, until the time comes for him to sally forth and raise
Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of the
world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of
Don Sebastian of Portugal, and of the Moorish King
Boabdil The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, having taken
refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the heathen
Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and
awoke to find a Christian emperor on the throne. The
monk of Hildesheim, in the legend so beautifully ren-
dered by Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand
years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes
entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and
found, on waking from his revery, that a thousand years
had flown. To the same family of legends belong the
notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the last
days of the world ; the myth of the enchanter Merlin,
spell-bound by Vivien ; the story of the Cretan philoso-
pher Epimenides, who dozed away fifty-seven years
in a cave ; and Rip Van AVinkle's nap in the Cats-
kills.*
We might go on almost indefinitely citing household
tales of wonderful sleepers ; but, on the principle of the
* A collection of tlieso interostiiiK 1<'k<'Ii(1.s may ho found in Baring-
Gould's " Curious Mjrths of the Middle Ages," of which work this i)apei
was originally a review.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE, 27
association of opposites, we are here reminded of sundry-
cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated in
the Wandering Jew ; the dancers of Kolbeck ; Joseph of
Arimathsea with the Holy Grail ; the Wild Huntsman,
who to all eternity chases the red deer ; the Captain of
the Phantom Ship ; the classic Tithonos ; and the Man in
the Moon.
The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the
play of human fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on
them, but the myth-makers had been before him.
" Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, " knows that
the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle of
sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for
many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond
the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if
the nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that
* The Man in the Moon
Came down too soon
And asked his way to Norwich ' ;
but whether he ever reached that city the same authority
does not state." Dante calls him Cain ; Chaucer has him
put up there as a punishment for theft, and gives him a
thorn-bush to carry ; Shakespeare also loads him with
the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog
for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is
stated to have been, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking,
— an idea derived from the Old Testament. Like the
man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caught
gathering sticks on the Sabbath ; and, as an example to
mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon,
with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one Ger-
man version places with him a woman, whose crime was
churning butter on Sunday. She carries her butter-tub ;
and this brings us to Mother Goose again : —
28 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
** Jack and Jill went up the hill
To get a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown.
And Jill came tumbling after."
This may read like mere nonsense ; but there is a point
of view from which it may be safely said that there is
very little absolute nonsense in the world. The story of
Jack and Jill is a venerable one. In Icelandic mythology
we read that Jack and JiU were two children whom the
moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They
had been drawing water in a bucket, which they were
carrying by means of a pole placed across their shoulders ;
and in this attitude they have stood to the present day
in the moon. Even now this explanation of the moon-
spots is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants.
They fall away one after the other, as the moon wanes,
and their water-pail symbolizes the supposed connection
of the moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the myth
occur in Sanskrit.
The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Ger-
mans, was called Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in
Christian media3val mythology as a persecuted saint,
attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, who all
suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Co-
logne. The meaning of the myth is obvious. In German
mythology, England is the Phaiakian land of clouds and
phantoms ; the succuhus, leaving her lover before day-
break, excuses herself on the plea that " her mother is
calling her in England." * The companions of Ursula
are the pure stars, who leave the cloudland and suffer
martyrdom as they approach the regions of day. In the
Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis ; but, in
* See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20 ; Villemarque, Barzas
Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instnicted by an old nurse that Vai
Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 29
accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the
sensual Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg ; and this
brings us to the story of Tannhauser.
The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thu-
ringia, between Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its
slope yawns a cavern, the Horselloch, or cave of Venus,
within which is heard a muffled roar, as of subterranean
water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened in-
habitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night
wild moans and cries issuing, mingled with peals of
demon-like laughter. Here it was believed that Venus
held her court ; " and there were not a few who declared
that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning
them from the mouth of the chasm."* Tannhauser was
a Frankish knight and famous minnesinger, who, trav-
elling at twilight past the Horselberg, '* saw a white
glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before
him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he
went up to meet her, whom he knew to be none other
than Venus. He descended to her palace in the heart of
the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless
revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for
another glimpse of the pure light of day, he called in
agony upon the Virgin Mother, who took compassion on
him and released him. He sought a village church, and
to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining
absolution, until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But
the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing,
declared that guilt such as his could never be remitted :
sooner should the staff in his hand grow green and blos-
som. " Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his
soul darkened, went away, and returned to the only
asylum open to him, the Venusberg. But lo ! three days
* Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. p. 197.
30 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered tliat his pas-
toral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower.
Then he sent messengers after Tannhiiuser, and they
reached the Horsel vale to hear that a wayworn man,
with haggard brow and bowed liead, had just entered the
Horselloch. Since then Tannhiiuser has not been seen."
(p. 201.)
As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend,
in its Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the
struggle between the new and the old faiths. The knight-
ly Tannhiiuser, satiated with pagan sensuahty, turns to
Christianity for relief, but, repelled by the hypocrisy,
pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up in
despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old
debauchery.
But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which
recurs in the folk-lore of every people of Aryan descent.
WHio, indeed, can read it without being at once reminded
of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill), entranced by
the sorceress of the Eilden ; of the nightly visits of Numa
to the grove of the nymph Egeria ; of Odysseus held cap-
tive by the Lady Kal}7)so ; and, last but not least, of the
delightful Arabian tale of Prince Ahmed and the Peri
Banou ? On his westward journey, Odysseus is ensnared
and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph
of darkness, Kal\7)S0 {koXv-ttto}, to veil or cover). So the
zone of tlie moon-goddess A])]irodite inveigles all-seeing
Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount Ida; and by a
similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseendy
idleness in Armida's golden ])aradise, at the western verge
of the world. The disa])pearance of Tannliiiuser behind
the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus Ursula, tlie pale goddess
of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance.
But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 3 1
only sources of popular mythology. Opposite my writ-
ing-table hangs a quaint German picture, illustrating
Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole
wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme
moment ; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erl-
king, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the
cliild, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father
clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace,
the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little
soul with their weird harps. There can be no better
illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the
magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical
phenomena with the most intense human interest; for
the true significance of the whole picture is contained in
the father's address to his child,
"Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind ;
In diirren Blattern sauselt der Wind."
The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the
version of Eobert Browning, leads to the same conclusion.
In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest,
night or day, by reason of the direful host of rats which
infested their town. One day came a strange man in a
bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid
the town of the vermin. The people agreed : whereupon
the man took out a pipe and piped, and instantly all the
rats in town, in an army which blackened the face of the
earth, came forth from their haunts, and followed the
piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they
all jumped in and were drowned. But as soon as the
torment was gone, the townsfolk refused to pay the piper,
on the ground that he was evidently a wizard. He went
away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reap-
peared, and putting his pipe to his mouth blew a dif-
ferent air. Whereat all the little, plump, rosy-cheeked.
32 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS-
golden-haired children came meiTily running after him,
their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do,
while he led them up a hill in tlie neighbourhood. A door
opened in the mountain-side, tlirougli wliich he led them
in, and they never were seen again ; save one lame boy,
who hobbled not fast enough to get in before the door
shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he
had not been able to share the rare luck of his comrades.
In the street through wliich this procession passed no
music was ever afterwards allowed to be played. For a
long time the tow^n dated its public documents from tliis
fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as
an historical event.* Similar stories are told of other
towns in Germany, and, strange to say, in remote Abys-
sinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England believe that
angels pipe to children who are about to die ; and in
Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away
by the songs of elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by
their magic lay allured voyagers to destruction; and
Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow him.
Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the
wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest. " The
piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held
that in the wind were the souls of the dead." To this day
the Englisli peasantry believe that they hear the wail of
the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps
past their cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted
from the fusion of two deities. He is the sun and also
the wind ; and in the latter capacity he bears away the
souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes
fulfils a double function, is supposed to rush at night
over the tree-tops, " accompanied by the scudding train
of brave men's spirits." And readers of recent French
* Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to j)ay the piper."
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 33
literature cannot fail to remember Erckmann-Chatrian's
terrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he
sped through the forest, carrying away a young girl's
soul.
Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is
Goethe's Erlking none other than the Piper of Hamelin.
And the piper, in turn, is the classic Hermes or Orpheus,
the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the
Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of
Oberon, the lyi'e of Apollo (who, like the piper, was a
rat-killer), the harp stolen by Jack when he climbed
the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle.* And the father, in
Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures
his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but
the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; for from
such a simple class of phenomena arose this entire fam-
ily of charming legends.
But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls {Psy-
chopompos), also draw rats after him ? In answering this
we shall have occasion to note that the ancients by no
means shared that curious prejudice against the brute
creation which is indulged in by modern anti-Darwin-
ians. In many countries, rats and mice have been re-
garded as sacred animals; but in Germany they were
thought to represent the human souL One story out of
a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. " In Thuringia,
at Saalfeld, a servant-girl fell asleep whilst her compan-
ions were sheUing nuts. They observed a little red
mouse creep from her mouth and run out of the window.
* And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic musician,
who
** Could harp a fish out o the water,
Or bluid out of a stane,
Or milk out of a maiden's breast,
That bairns had never nane."
2* O
34
MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could
not wake her, so he moved her to another place. Pres-
ently the mouse ran back to the former place and dashed
about, seeking the girl ; not finding her, it vanished ; at
the same moment the girl died." * This completes the
explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to
the horrible story of Bishop Hatto.
This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine,
in the middle of which stream he possessed a tower, now
pointed out to travellers as the Mouse Tower. In the
year 970 there Avas a dreadful famine, and people came
jfrom far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's
ample and well-filled granaries. Well, he told them all
to go into the barn, and when they had got in there, as
many as could stand, he set fire to the barn and burnt
them all up, and went liome to eat a merry supper. But
when he arose next morning, he heard that an army of
rats had eaten all the corn in his granaries, and was now
advancing to storm tlie palace. Looking from his win-
dow, he saw the roads and fields dark with them, as they
came with fell jjurpose straight toward his mansion. In
frenzied terror he took his boat and rowed out to the
tower in the river. But it was of no use : down into the
water marclied the rats, and swam across, and scaled tlie
walls, and gnawed through the stones, and came swarm-
ing in about the slirieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh,
bones, and all'. Now, bearing in mind what was said
above, there can be no doul)t that these rats were the
souls of those whom the Bishop had murdered. There
are many versions of the story in different Teutonic
countries, and in some of tliem the avenging rats or mice
issue directly, by a strange metamorpliosis, from tlie
corpses of the victims. 8t. Gertrude, moreover, the
* Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 159.
THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE. 35
heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said
to lead an army of mice ; she was the receiver of chil-
dren's souls. Odin, also, in his character of a Psycho-
pompos, was followed by a host of rats.*
As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so
is the psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sara-
meias, the Vedic counterpart of Hermes and Odin, some-
times appears invested with canine attributes ; and count-
less other examples go to show that by the early Aryan
mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or
wolf. As the fearful beast was heard speeding by the
windows or over the house-top, the inmates trembled, for
none knew but his own soul might forthwith be required
of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the
howling of a dog under the window is supposed to por-
tend a death in the family. It is the fleet greyhound of
Hermes, come to escort the soul to the river Styx.f
But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing
can be more transparent than the phraseology of the
Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is described as acquir-
ing the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the cradle,
as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo,
and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then
as crawling through the keyhole, and with a mocking
laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is the Master Thief,
who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under him
and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype
not only of the crafty architect of Ehampsinitos, but even
of the ungrateful slave who robs Sancho of his mule in
the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions
* Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic terror which
Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.
■^ In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person who is
iying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. The
eame custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.
36 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
of Boots and Eeynard ; he is the prototype of Paul Pry
and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his
ability to contmct or expand himself at pleasure, he is
both the Devil in the Norse Tale,* whom the lad per-
suades to enter a wahiut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom
the fisherman releases from the bottle.
The very interesting series of myths and popular super-
stitions suggested by the storm-cloud and tlie lightning
must be reserved for a future occasion. AVhen carefully
examined, they will richly illustrate the conclusion which
is the result of the present inquiry, that the marvellous
tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryan
household have a common origin with the classic legends
of gods and heroes, which formerly were alone thought
worthy of the student's serious attention. These stories
— some of them familiar to us in infancy, others the
delight of our maturer years — constitute the debris, or
alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from
the distant higlilands of ancient mythology.
* The Dovil, who is proverbially " active in a gale of wind," is none
other than Hermes.
September, 1870.
TEE DESCENT OF FIRE. 37
II
THE DESCENT OF FIRE.
IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was
spent at a small inland village, I came upon an un-
expected illustration of the tenacity with which con-
ceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have
now and then kept their hold upon life. While sit-
ting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my
attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a
dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An
elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road,
holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped
like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned up-
ward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such
a way that the shank pointed upward ; but every few
moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would
gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the like-
ness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain
pointing to something in the ground beneath. One by
one the bystanders proceeded to try the experiment, but
with no variation in the result. Something in the ground
seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass
over that spot without bending down and pointing to it.
My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and
Dousterswivel, as I perceived that these men were
engaged in sorcery. During the long drought more than
half the wells in the village had become dry, and here
was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the
38 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
god Thor. These men were seeking water with a divin-
ing-rod. Here, alive before my eyes, was a superstitious
observance, wliich I had supposed long since dead and
forgotten by all men except students interested in my-
thology.
As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a
farmer's boy came up, stoutly athrming liis incredulity,
and offering to show the company how he could carry
the rod motionless across the charmed spot. But when
he came to take the weird twig he trembled with an ill-
defined feeling of insecurity as to the soundness of his
conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet
the rod bent in spite of him, — as was not so very strange.
For, with all liis vague scepticism, the honest lad liad not,
and could not be supposed to have, the/02- scicntifique of
which Littr(3 speaks.*
♦ "II faut que la ccRur devienne ancion parmi les annVnnes choses,
et la pleriitudf de I'hi.stoire ne se devoile qiiW rdui qui descend, ainsi
dispose, dans le jiasse. Mais il faut (jue res|)rit deineure niodcrne, .et
n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foi scientifique.*
— LlTTR^.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE.
39
Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod ; but some-
tliing in my manner seemed at once to excite the suspi-
cion and scorn of the sorcerer. " Yes, take it," said he,
with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it;
there 's water below here, and you can't help its bending,
if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave
me the twig, and awaited, with a smile wliich was meant
to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the sup-
posed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or
five times across the mysterious place, the rod pointing
steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend
became grave and began to philosophize. " Well," said
he, " you see, your temperament is peculiar ; the condi-
tions ain't favourable in your case ; there are some people
who never can work these things. But there 's water
below here, for all that, as you '11 find, if you dig for it ;
there 's nothing like a hazel-rod for finding out water."
Very true : there are some persons who never can make
such things work ; who somehow always encounter " un-
favourable conditions " when they wish to test the mar-
vellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can make
" Planchette " move in conformity to the requirements of
any known alphabet ; who never see ghosts, and never
have " presentiments," save such as are obviously due to
association of ideas. The ill-success of these persons is
commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in the major-
ity of cases, it might be more truly referred to the strength
of their faith, — faith in the constancy of nature, and in
the adequacy of ordinary human experience as inter-
preted by science.* La foi scientifique is an excellent
preventive against that obscure, though not uncommon,
* For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis tracing one of
these illusions to its psychological sources, see the account of Dr. Laza-
rus, in Taine, De 1' Intelligence, Vol. I. pp. 121-125.
40 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to
write and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-
down, without the conscious intervention of the per-
former. It was this kind of faith, no doubt, which caused
tlie discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on liis visit to Paris,*
and which has in late years prevented persons from ob-
taining the handsome prize offered by the French Acad-
emy for the first authentic case of clairvoyance.
But our village friend, though perhaps constructively
right in his philosophizing, was certainly very defective
in his acquaintance with the time-honoured art of rhab-
domancy. Had he extended his inquiries so as to cover
tlie field of Indo-European tradition, he would have
learned that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white
and black thorn, the Hindu asvattha, and several other
woods, are quite as efficient as the hazel for the purpose
of detecting water in times of drought ; and in due course
of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod
itself is but one among a large class of things to which
popular belief has ascribed, along with other talismanic
properties, the power of opening the ground or cleaving
rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures. Leaving him
in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for
cooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us en-
deavour to elucidate the origin of this curious supersti-
tion.
The detection of subterranean water is by no means
the only use to which the divining-rod has been put.
Among the ancient Frisians it was regularly used for the
detection of criminals; and the reputation of Jacques
* See the story of Aymar in Rarlnfr-Oould, Cnrious Myths, Vol. I.
pp. 57-77. The leanipd author atlri))Utc.s tlic (lisconifiturc! to tlic nn-
congpnial Parisian environment ; which is a style of reasoning much like
that of my village sorcerer, I fear.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 4 1
Avmar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a
horrible murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has
been used from time immemorial by miners for ascertain-
izig the position of veins of metal ; and in the days when
talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field,
instead of being exposed to the risks of financial specula-
tion, the divining-rod was employed by persons covetous
of their neighbours' wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived
in the sixteenth century, he would have taken a forked
stick of hazel when he went to search for the buried
treasm-es of Jean Valjean. It has also been apphed to
the cure of disease, and has been kept in households, like
a wizard's charm, to insure general good-fortune and im-
munity from disaster.
As we follow the conception further into the elf-land
of popular tradition, we come upon a rod which not only
points out the situation of hidden treasure, but even splits
open the ground and reveals the mineral wealth contained
therein. In German legend, " a shepherd, who was driv-
ing his flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped to rest,
leaning on his staff, the mountain suddenly opened, for
there was a springwort in his staff without his knowing
it, and the princess [Use] stood before him. She bade
him follow her, and when he was inside the mountain
she told him to take as much gold as he pleased. The
shepherd fiUed all his pockets, and was going away, when
the princess called after him, ^ Forget not the best.' So,
thinking she meant that he had not taken enough, he
filled his hat also ; but what she meant was his staff with
the springwort, which he had laid against the waU as
soon as he stepped in. But now, just as he was going
out at the opening, the rock suddenly slammed together
and cut him in two." *
* Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177.
42 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the
enclosed springAvort, but in many cases a leaf or flower
is itself competent to open the hillside. The little blue
flower, forget-me-not, about wdiich so many sentimental
associations have clustered, owes its name to tlie legends
told of its talismanic virtues.-(- A man, travelling on a
lonely mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks
it in his liat. Forthwith an iron door opens, showing up
a lighted passage-way, through which tlie man advances
into a magnificent hall, where rubies and diamonds and
aU other kinds of gems are lying piled in great heaps on
the floor. As he eagerly fills liis pockets his hat drops
from liis head, and when he turns to go out the little
flower calls after him, " Forget me not ! " He turns back
and looks around, but is too bewildered with liis good
fortune to think of his bare head or of tlie luck-flower
which he has let fall He selects several more of the
finest jewels he can find, and again starts to go out ; but
as he passes through the door the mountain closes amid
the crashing of thunder, and cuts off one of liis heels.
Alone, in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain for
the mysterious door : it has disappeared forever, and the
traveller goes on his way, thankful, let us hope, that he
has fared no worse.
Sometimes it is a wliite lady, like the Princess Use,
who invites the finder of tlie luck-flower to help lumself
to her treasures, and who utters the enigmatical warning.
The mountain where the event occurred may be found
almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it stood
In Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun Airaschid. In
the story of the Forty Tliieves, the mere name of the
plant sesame serves as a talisman to open and shut Uie
t The story of the luck-flower is wtll told ill verse by Mr, Baring.
Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.
TEE DESCENT OF FIRE. 43
secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and
when the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the con-
templation of the bags of gold and bales of rich merchan-
dise, forgets the magic formula, he meets no better fate^
than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In the story of
Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow which guides
the young adventurer through the hillside to the grotto
of the Peri Banou. In the tale of Baba Abdallah, it is an
ointment rubbed on the eyelid which reveals at a single
glance all the treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth.
The ancient Eomans also had their rock-breaking plant,
called Saxifraga, or "sassafras." And the further we
penetrate into this charmed circle of traditions the more
evident does it appear that the power of cleaving rocks
or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive ele-
ment, into the conception of these treasure-showing talis-
mans. Mr. Baring-Gould has given an excellent account
of the rabbinical legends concerning the wonderful scha-
mir, by the aid of which Solomon was said to have built
his temple. From Asmodeus, prince of the Jann, Bena-
iah, the son of Jehoiada, wrested the secret of a worm no
bigger than a barley-corn, which could split the hardest
substance. This worm was called schamir. " If Solomon
desired to possess himself of the worm, he must find the
nest of the moor-hen, and cover it with a plate of glass,
so that the mother bird could not get at her young with-
out breaking the glass. She would seek schamir for the
purpose, and the worm must be obtained from her." As
the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the
stones for that temple which was to be built without
sound of hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron,* he sent
Benaiah to obtain it According to another account,
schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to
* 1 Kings vi. 7.
44 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Di-
rected by a Jinni, the wise king covered a raven's Q^g^
with a plate of crystal, and thus obtained schamir which
the bird brought in order to break the plate.*
In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan
descent, due to the prolonged intercourse between the
Jews and the Persians, a new feature is added to those
before enumerated : the rock-splitting talisman is always
found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in
the myth reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort,
whose marvellous powers we have noticed in the case of
the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according to Pliny,
by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker
keeps its young. The bird flies away, and presently re-
turns wdth the springwort, which it applies to the plug,
causing it to shoot out with a loud explosion. The same
account is given in German folk-lore. Elsewhere, as in
Iceland, Normandy, and ancient Greece, the bird is an
eagle, a swallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe.
In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir,
or " raven -stone," also renders its possessor invisible, —
a property which it shares with one of the treasure-find-
ing plants, the fern.-f* In tliis respect it resembles the
ring of Gyges, as in its di\ining and rock-splitting quali-
ties it resembles that other ring which the African magi-
* Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the temple, in
Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Proi)h('ts, pp. 337, 338.
And see the story of Diocletian's cstrich, Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ed.
Wright, Vol. I. p. Ixiv. See also the pretty story of the knight un-
justly imprisoned, id. p. cii.
+ "We have the receipt of ft-m-seed. We walk invisible." —
Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian People,
p. 98.
According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower also wil?
make its finder invisible at pleasure. Hut, a,s the myth .shrewdly adds,
it is absolutely essential that the flower be found by accident : he who
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 45
cian gave to Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the
cavern where stood the wonderful lamp.
In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and
grotesquely metamorphosed. The hand of a man Jhat
has been hanged, when dried and prepared with certain
weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the Hand
of Glory ; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks,
but also lulls to sleep all persons witliin the circle of its
influence, it is of course invaluable to tliieves and burg-
lars. I quote the following story from Thorpe's " North-
ern Mythology " : " Two fellows once came to Huy, who
pretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when they had
supped would not retire to a sleeping-room, but begged
their host would allow them to take a nap on the hearth.
But the maid-servant, who did not like the looks of the
two guests, remained by the kitchen door and peeped
through a chuik, when she saw that one of them drew a
thief's hand from his pocket, the fingers of which, after
having rubbed them with an ointment, he lighted, and
they all burned except one. Again they held this finger
to the fire, but still it would not burn, at which they
appeared much surprised, and one said, 'There must
surely be some one in the house who is not yet asleep.*
They then hung the hand with its four burning fingers by
the chimney, and went out to call their associates. But
the maid followed them instantly and made the door
fast, then ran up stairs, where the landlord slept, that
she might wake him, but was unable, notwithstanding
all her shaking and calling. In the mean time the
thieves had returned and were endeavouring to enter the
seeks for it never finds it ! Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled, even
if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of reasoning is favoured
by our modern dealers in mystery : somehow the " conditions " always
are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to test their pretensions.
46 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
house by a window, but the maid cast them down from
the ladder. They then took a different course, and would
have forced an entrance, had it not occurred to the maid
that the burning tiugers might probably be the cause of
her master's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea
she ran to the kitchen and blew them out, when the
master and his men-servants instantly awoke, and soon
drove away the robbers." The same event is said to have
occurred at Stainmore in England ; and Torquemada re-
lates of Mexican thieves that they carry with them the
left hand of a woman who has died in her first childbed,
before which talisman all bolts yield and all opposition
is benumbed. In 1831 " some Irish thieves attempted to
commit a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Lough-
crew, county Meath. They entered the house armed
with a dead man's hand with a lighted candle in it,
believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed
in a dead man's hand will not be seen by any but those
by whom it is used ; and also that if a candle in a dead
hand be introduced into a house, it will prevent those
who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, how-
ever, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand
behind them." *
In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just
like the divining-rod, for the detection of buried treasures.
Here, then, we have a large and motley group of
objects — tlie forked rod of ash or hazel, the springwort
and the luck-flower, leaves, worms, stones, rings, and
dead men's hands — which are for the most part compe-
tent to open the way into cavernous rocks, and wliich
aU agree in pointing out liidden wealtli. "VVe find, more-
over, that many of tliese charmed objects are carried
about by birds, and that some of them possess, in addi-
♦ Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of Enf,'land, p. 202.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 47
tion to their generic properties, the specific power of
benumbing people's senses. What, now, is the common
origin of tliis whole group of superstitions ? And since
mythology has been shown to be the result of primeval
attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, what natu-
ral phenomenon could ever have given rise to so many
seemingly wanton conceptions ? Hopeless as the prob-
lem may at first sight seem, it has nevertheless been
solved. In liis great treatise on " The Descent of Fire,"
Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and traditions
are descended from primitive myths explanatory of the
lightning and the storm-cloud.*
To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths
revealed by science, the sky is known to be merely an
optical appearance due to the partial absorption of the
solar rays in passing through a thick stratum of atmos-
pheric air ; the clouds are known to be large masses of
watery vapour, wliich descend in rain-drops when suffi-
ciently condensed ; and the lightning is known to be a
flash of light accompanying an electric discharge. But
these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been
attained only through centuries of philosophizing and
after careful observation and laborious experiment. To
the untaught mind of a child or of an uncivilized man, it
seems far more natural and plausible to regard the sky as
a solid dome of blue crystal, the clouds as snowy moun-
tains, or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning
as a flashing dart or a fiery serpent. In point of fact,
we find that the conceptions actually entertained are
often far more grotesque than these. I can recollect once
framing the hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset
were transient apparitions, vouchsafed us by way of warn-
* Kulm, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. Berlin,
1859.
48 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKEES.
ing, of that burning Calvinistic hell \\'ith wliich my
childish imagination had been unwisely terrified ; * and I
have kno^^'n of a four-year-old boy who thought that the
snowy clouds of noonday were the white robes of the
angels hung out to dry in the sun.-f My little daughter
is anxious to know whether it is necessary to take a bal-
loon in order to get to the place where God lives, or
whether the same end can be accomplished by going to
the horizon and crawling up the sky ; J the Mohamme-
dan of old was working at the same problem when he
called the rainbow the bridge Es-Sirat, over which souls
must pass on their way to heaven. According to the
ancient Jew, the sky was a soUd plate, hammered out by
the gods, and spread over the earth in order to keep up
the ocean overhead ; § but the plate was full of little
windows, w^hich were opened wdienever it became neces-
sary to let the rain come through. || With equal plausi-
bility the Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve in
which the daughters of Danaos w^ere vainly trying to draw
* ** Saga me fonvhan byth seo sunne read on ajfen ? Ic the secge,
forthon heo locath on helle. — Tell me, why is the sun red at even ?
I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta Anglo-
Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. Bar-
baric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.
t "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the
angels are playing .skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they are shaking
up the feather-beds in heaven." — Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves,
p. 172.
X "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon
and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners jxzpahnigi, or ' heav-
en-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside." — Max
Muller, Chips, II. 268.
§ " Way-yo'hmer 'helohim y«hi rafiuia°h b«-thok ham-mayim wihi
mavdil beyn mayim la-mayim. — And said the gods, let there be a ham-
mered plate in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between
waters and waters." Genesis i. 6.
11 Genesis vii. 11.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 49
water ; while to the Hindu the rain-clouds were celestial
cattle milked by the wind-god. In primitive Aryan lore,
the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were sliips sail-
ing over it ; and an English legend tells how one of these
ships once caught its anchor on a gravestone in the
churchyard, to the great astonishment of the people who
were coming out of church. Charon's ferry-boat was one
of these vessels, and another was Odin's golden ship, in
which the souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Val-
halla. Hence it was once the Scandinavian practice to
bury the dead in boats ; and in Altmark a penny is still
placed in the mouth of the corpse, that it may have the
means of paying its fare to the ghostly ferryman.* In
such a vessel drifted the Lady of Shalott on her fatal
voyage; and of similar nature was the dusky barge,
" dark as a funeral-scarf from stem to stern," in which
Arthur was received by the black-hooded queens.i*
But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained
in one way did not hinder it from being explained in a
dozen other ways. The fact that the sun was generally
regarded as an aU-conquering hero did not prevent its
* See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 120 ; who states also that
in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed on top of
the funeral-pile.
In their character of cows, also, the clouds were regarded as psycho-
pomps ; and hence it is still a popular superstition that a cow breaking
into the yard foretokens a death in the family,
+ The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir, which
is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda : "She is so great, that all the
^sir, with their weapons and war-gear, may find room on board her " ;
but " when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is made ....
with so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth, and
keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by the fairy
pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed ; the cloud which is no
bigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole heaven, and
shade the Sultan' s army from the solar rays.
3 D
50 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on tlie
waters, or Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or
the stone of Sisyphos, which was no sooner pushed up to
the zenith than it rolled down to the horizon. So the
sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but
it was also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon
wandered, the country of the Lotos-eaters, or again the
realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight ; and finally it
was personified and worsliipped as Dyaus or Yaruiia,
the Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos.
The clouds, too, had many other representatives besides
ships and cows. In a future paper it will be shown that
they were sometimes regarded as angels or liouris ; at
present it more nearly concerns us to know that they
appear, throughout all Aryan mythology, under the form
of birds. It used to be a matter of hopeless wonder to
me that Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's Q^g to
hang in the dome of his palace should have been re-
garded as a crime worthy of punishment by the loss of
the wonderful lamp ; the obscurest part of the whole
affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusion to the
^gg as his master : " Wretch ! dost thou command me to
bring thee my master, and hang him up in the midst of
this vaulted dome ? *' But the incident is to some extent
cleared of its mystery when we learn that the roc's ^gg is
the bright sun, and that the roc itself is the rushing storm-
cloud which, in the tale of Sind])ad, haunts the sparkling
starry firmament, symbolized as a valley of diamonds.*
* Euhemprism has done its best witli tliis bird, reprpsentinj; it as an
imincnsf; vulture or condor or as a rcniinisc^pnoe of the extinct dodo.
But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaprotli, well preserves its triie character
when it describes it as " a bird which in flying nhscurcs Hia sun, and of
whose quills are mai\evMter-tu7is." See Nouvcau .biunial Asi;ifi<|ue,
Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the " Blue Belt "
belongs to the same species.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 5 1
According to one Arabic authority, the length of its wings
is ten thousand fathoms. But in European tradition it
dwindles from these huge dimensions to the size of an ea-
gle, a raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumera-
ted by Kuhn and others as representing the storm-cloud
are likewise the wren or " kinglet " (French roitelet) ; the
owl, sacred to Athene ; the cuckoo, stork, and sparrow ;
and the red-breasted robin, whose name Eobert was
originally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In cer-
tain parts of France it is still believed that the robbing
of a wren's nest will render the culprit liable to be struck
by lightning. The same belief was formerly entertained
in Teutonic countries with respect to the robin ; and I
suppose that from this superstition is descended the prev-
alent notion, which I often encountered in cliildhood,
that there is something pecuHarly wicked in killing
robins.
Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths
of schamir, is the dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting
worm or plant or pebble which the bird carries in its
beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing more or less
than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the
cloud. " If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird,
the hghtnings were regarded as writhing worms or ser-
pents in its beak. These fiery serpents, eXiKlai ^ypa^
fioeLSco<i (pepofievoc, are believed in to this day by the
Canadian Indians, who caU the thunder their hissing."*
But these are not the only mythical conceptions which
are to be found wrapped up in the various myths of
schamir and the divining-rod. The persons who told
these stories were not weaving ingenious allegories about
thunder-storms ; they were telling stories, or giving utter-
* Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare Tyler,
Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.
52 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
ance to superstitions, of wliicli tlie original meaning was
forgotten. The old grannies who, along with a stoical
indifference to tlie fate of quails and partridges, used to
impress upon me the wickedness of killing robins, did
not add that I should be struck by lightning if I failed
to heed their achnonitions. They had never heard that
the robin was the bird of Thor ; they merely rehearsed
the renmant of the superstition wliich had survived to
their own times, while the essential part of it had long
since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding
a robin's life as more sacred than a partridge's had been
forgotten; but it left behind, as was natural, a vague
recognition of that mythical sanctity. The primitive
meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as the
primitive meaning of a word or phrase ; and the rabbins
who told of a worm which shatters rocks no more
thought of the writhing thunderbolts than the modern
reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees the word
ostracisiri, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes
the phrase good hye. It is only in its callow infancy that
the full force of a myth is felt, and its period of luxuriant
development dates from the time when its physical sig-
nificance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek
had forgotten that Zeus meant the briglit sky, that he
could make him king over an antliropomorpliic Olympos.
The Hindu Dyaus, who carried liis significance in his
name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained such
an exalted position ; he yielded to deities of less obvious
pedigree, such as Bralima and Vishnu.
Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted merely the
wonderful stories which their own nurses and grandmas
had told them, and had no intention of weaving subtle
allegories or wrapping up a physical truth in mystic
emblems, it follows that they were not bound to avoid
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 53
incongruities or to preserve a philosophical symmetry in
their narratives. In the great majority of complex
myths, no such symmetry is to be found. A score of
different mythical conceptions would get wrought into
the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and
construct a single harmonious system of conceptions out
of the pieces must often end in ingenious absurdity. If
Odysseus is unquestionably the sun, so is the eye of
Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out.* But the Greek
poet knew nothing of the incongruity, for he was think-
ing only of a superhuman hero freeing himself from a
giant cannibal ; he knew nothing of Sanskrit, or of
comparative mythology, and the sources of his myths
were as completely hidden from his view as the sources
of the Nile.
We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one
version of the schamir-myth the cloud is the bird which
carries the worm, while in another version the cloud is
the rock or mountain which the talisman cleaves open ;
nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which the
two conceptions are mingled together without regard to
an incongruity which in the mind of the myth-teller no
longer exists.f
In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which
* "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar hero,
extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide." Mahaffy,
Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This
objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be
constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has
no validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known
nothing of the incongruity.
t The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in a way
which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (the
sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, but
also cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Bumouf,
Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.
54 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
the clouds are more frequently represented than by rocks
or mountains. Such were the Symplegades, which,
charmed by the harp of the wind-god Orpheus, parted to
make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of
solar heroes.* Such, too, were the mountains Ossa and
Pelion, which the giants piled up one upon another in
their impious assault upon Zeus, the lord of the bright
sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould observes : " The ancient Aryan
had the same name for cloud and mountain. To him the
piles of vapour on the horizon were so like Alpine ranges,
that he had but one word whereby to designate both.-f
These great mountains of heaven were opened by the
lightning. In the sudden flash he beheld the dazzling
splendour within, but only for a moment, and then, with
a crash, the celestial rocks closed again. Believing these
vaporous piles to contain resplendent treasures of which
partial glimpse was obtained by mortals in a momentary
gleam, tales were speedily formed, relating the adventures
of some who had succeeded in entering these treasure-
mountains."
This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by
the arrow of Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the
spear of Odin, the trident of Poseidon, or the rod of
Hermes. The forked streak of light is the archetype of
the divining-rod in its oldest form, — that in which it
* Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation of
the Synii)lef<ades as the gates of Night through wliich the solar ship,
having passed successfully once, may henceforth i)ass forever. See the
details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I. 315.
t The Sanskrit jxirvata, a bulging or inflated body, means both
"cloud" and "mountain." "In the ?:dda, too, the rocks, said to
have been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended
for clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock ; nay, the
English word chmd itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon
clM, rock. See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. 11. p. 62." Max
Miiller, Kig-Veda, Vol. I. p. 44.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 55
Yiot only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the stafif
of the Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted
crypt and reveals them to the astonished wayfarer. Hence
the one thing essential to the divining-rod, from whatever
tree it be chosen, is that it shall be forked.
It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led
the ancients to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent,
trident, arrow, or forked wand; but when we inquire
why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower or leaf, or
when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the
ash, hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to
be in a certain sense embodiments of it, we are entering
upon a subject too complicated to be satisfactorily treated
within the limits of the present paper. It has been said
that the point of resemblance between a cow and a
comet, that both have tails, was quite enough for the
primitive word-maker : it was certainly enough for the
primitive myth-teller.* Sometimes the pinnate shape
of a leaf, the forking of a branch, the tri-cleft corolla, or
even the red colour of a flower, seems to have been
sufficient to determine the association of ideas. The
Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay great
stress on the fact that the palasa, one of their lightning-
trees, is trident-leaved. The mistletoe branch is forked,
Hke a wish-bone,-|* and so is the stem which bears the
* In accordance with the mediaeval ** doctrine of signatures," it was
maintained " that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must be good
for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous glands ;
while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous
diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a sovereign remedy
for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the fissures of
rocks that it would disintegi-ate stone in the bladder." Prior, Popular
Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also Chapiel, La Doctrine
des Signatures. Paris, 1866.
+ Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, itself belongs
to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod.
56 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
forget-me-not or wild scoq^ion grass. So too the leaves
of the Hindu Jicus reliyiosa resemble long spear-heads.*
But in many cases it is impossible for us to determine
with confidence the reasons wliich may have guided
primitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In
the case of some of these stories, it would no doubt be
wasting ingenuity to attempt to assign a mythical origin
for each point of detail. The ointment of tlie dervise,
for instance, in the Arabian tale, has probably no special
mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the
exigencies of the story, in an age when the old mythol-
ogies w^ere so far disintegrated and mingled together that
any one talisman would serve as well as another the
purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of
Indo-European folk-lore cannot be thus summarily dis-
posed of ; for however difi&cult it may be foi* us to per-
ceive any connection between them and the celestial
phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning
them are so numerous and explicit as to render it certain
that some such connection was imagined by the myth-
makers. The superstition concerning the hand of glory
is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of the
Finns, the storm-cloud is a black man with a bright
copper hand ; and in Hindustan, Indra Savitar, the deity
who slays the demon of the cloud, is golden-handed.
The selection of the hand of a man who has been hanged
is probably due to the superstition which regarded the
storm-god Odin as peculiarly the lord of the gallows.
* The ash, on th*^ other hand, has been from time immemorial used
fo» spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word case meant,
in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree," or ** spear" ; and the same is,
or has been, true of the French frcm,c and the Greek /iteX/a. The root
of cesc appears in the Sanskrit o-s-, " to throw " or " lanee," whence daa^
"a bow," and nsand, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Eura
peennes, I. 222.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 57
The man who is raised upon the gallows is placed directly
in the track of the wild huntsman, who comes with his
hounds to carry off the victim ; and hence the notion,
which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in
Germany and not extinct in England," that every suicide
by hanging is followed by a storm.
The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but
we have now pursued them long enough, I believe, to
have arrived at a tolerably clear understanding of the
original nature of the divining-rod. Its power of reveal-
ing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its
affinity for water results so obviously from the character
of tJie lightning-myth as to need no further comment.
But its power of detecting criminals still remains to be
accounted for.
In Greek mythology, the being which detects and pun-
ishes crime is the Erinys, the prototype of the Latin
Fury, figured by late writers as a horrible monster with
serpent locks. But this is a degradation of the original
conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean
Fury, and it cannot be explained from Greek sources
alone. It appears in Sanskrit as Saranyu, a word which
signifies the light of morning creeping over the sky.
And thus we are led to the startHng conclusion that, as
the light of morning reveals the evil deeds done under
the cover of night, so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came
to be regarded under one aspect as the terrible detector
and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling as the conclusion
is, it is based on established laws of phonetic change, and
cannot be gainsaid.
But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the
lightning and the divining-rod ? To the modern mind
the association is not an obvious one: in antiquity it
was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths of the
58 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
lightning often resemble each other so closely that, ex-
cept by a delicate philological analysis, it is difficult to
distinguish the one from the other. The reason is obvi-
ous. In each case the phenomenon to be explained is
the struggle between the day-god and one of the demons
of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the
mind of -the primitive man between the Panis, who steal
Indra's bright cows and keep them in a dark cavern all
night, and the throttUng snake Ahi or Echidna, who im-
prisons the waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloud
and covers the earth with a short-lived darkness. And
so the poisoned arrows of Bellerophon, which slay the
storm-dragon, differ in no essential respect from • the
shafts with which Odysseus slaughters the night-demons
who have for ten long hours beset his mansion. Thus
the divining-rod, representing as it does the weapon of
the god of day, comes legitimately enough by its + unc-
tion of detecting and avenging crime.
But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures
and gives water to the thirsty land and makes plain what
is doing under cover of darkness ; it also sometimes kills,
benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of the Gorgon
Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus
the ointment of the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdullah,
not only reveals all the treasures of the earth, but in-
stantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man who tests its
powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open
bars and bolts, benumbs also those who happen to be
near it. Indeed, few of the favoured mortals who were
allowed to visit the caverns opened by sesame or the
luck-flower, escaped without disaster. The monkish tale
of "The Clerk and the Image," in which the ])rimeval
mythical features are curiously distorted, well illustrates
this point.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE.
59
In the city of Eome there formerly stood an image
with its right hand extended and on its forefinger the
words "strike here." Many wise men puzzled in vain
over the meaning of the inscription ; but at last a cer-
tain priest observed that w^henever the sun shone on the
figure, the shadow of the finger was discernible on the
ground at a little distance from the statue. Having
marked the spot, he waited until midnight, and then
began to dig. At last his spade struck upon something
hard. It w^as a trap-door, below which a flight of marble
steps descended into a spacious hall, where many men
w^ere sitting in solemn silence amid piles of gold and
diamonds and long rows of enamelled vases. Beyond
this he found another room, a gyncecium filled with beau-
tiful women reclining on richly embroidered sofas ; yet
here, too, all was profound silence. A superb banqueting-
hall next met his astonished gaze ; then a silent kitchen ;
then granaries loaded wdth forage ; then a stable crowded
wdth motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly
lighted by a carbuncle which was suspended in one cor-
ner of the reception-room ; and opposite stood an archer,
with his bow and arrow raised, in the act of taking aim
at the jewel As the priest passed back through this
hall, he saw a diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble
table ; and wishing to carry away something wherewith
to accredit his story, he reached out his hand to take it ;
but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The
archer had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was
shivered into a thousand pieces, the staircase had fled,
and the priest found himself buried alive.*
* Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, m the "Faery Queen," where,
however, the knight fares better than this poor priest. Usually these
lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, into which none
might look and live. This conception is the foundation of part of the
6o MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to
strike dead, with its basilisk glance, those who rashly
enter its mysterious caverns, it is regarded rather as a
benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings with which
the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower
as it revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are
sliown in the myth of Oidipous. The Spliinx, whose
name signifies " the one who binds," is the demon who
sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering
dark sayings which none but tlie all-knowing sun may
understand. The flash of solar light which causes the
monster to fling herself down from the cliff with a fear-
ful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides
this, the association of the thunder-storm with the ap-
proach of summer has produced many myths in wliich
the Hghtniiig is symbolized as the life-renewing wand of
the victorious sun-god. Hence the use of the divining-
rod in the cure of disease ; and hence the large family of
schamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life by
leaves or herbs. In Grimm's tale of the Three Snake
Leaves, " a prince is buried alive (like Sindbad) with his
dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching her body, he
cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, crawl-
ing from the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going
away soon returned with tliree green leaves in its mouth ;
then laying the parts of the body together so as to join,
it put one leaf on each wound, and the dead snake was
alive again. The prince, applying the leaves to his wife's
body, restores her also to Hfe." * In the Greek story,
told by ^lian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with
the corpse of Glaukos, wliich he is ordered to restore to
stor}' of Blue-Beard and of tlie Arabian tale of the third one-eyed Cal*
ender.
* Cox, Mythology of tLe Ar>-an Nations, Vol. I. p. 161.
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 6 1
life. He kills a dragon which is approaching the body,
but is presently astonished at seeing another dragon come
with a blade of grass and place it upon its dead compan-
ion, which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos
takes the same blade of grass, and with it resuscitates
Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the Hindu story
of Panch Phul Eanee, and in Fouqu^'s "Sir Elidoc,"
which is founded on a Breton legend.
We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary thera^
peutic properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore as-
cribed to the various lightning-plants. In Sweden sani-
tary amulets are made of mistletoe-twigs, and the plant
is supposed to be a specific against epilepsy and an anti-
dote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed through
holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash
rods are used in some parts of England for the cure of
diseased sheep, cows, and horses ; and in particular they
are supposed to neutrahze the venom of serpents. The
notion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is not extinct
even in the United States. The other day I was told,
not by an old granny, but by a man fairly educated and
endowed with a very unusual amount of good common-
sense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go through fire than
creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an ash-tree.
Exactly the same statement is made by Phny, who adds
that if you draw a circle with an ash rod around the spot
of ground on which a snake is lying, the animal must die
of starvation, being as effectually imprisoned as Ugohno
in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is beheved that
a blow from an ash stick wiU instantly kill any serpent.
The ash shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A
Swedish peasant will tell you that snakes may be de-
prived of their venom by a touch with a hazel wand;
and when an ancient Greek had occasion to make his
62 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
bed in the woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in
the belief that the smell of them would drive away poi-
sonous animals.*
But the beneficent character of the lightning appears
still more clearly in another class of myths. To the prim-
itive man the shaft of light coming down from heaven was
typical of the original descent of fire for the benefit and
improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians ac-
count for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kin-
ship ; they say that " their first ancestor obtained his fire
from the sparks which a friendly panther struck from the
rocks as he scampered up a stony liilL" -f This panther
is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird which
drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a
far more remarkable conception. The ancient Hindus
obtained fire by a process similar to that employed by
Count Eumford in his experiments on the generation of
heat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords
around a pointed stick in such a way that the unwinding
of the one would wind up the other, and then, placing
the point of the stick against a circular disk of wood,
twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings.
This instrument is called a cliarh, and is still used in
South Africa, \ in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the
Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians found it in Kamt-
chatka ; and it was formerly employed in America, from
Labrador to the Straits of Magellan. § The Hindus
* Kelly, Indo-European Folk-T.orp, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.
t Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.
X Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.
§ Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238 ; Primitive Culture, Vol.
II. p. 254 ; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.
" Jacky's next proceeding was to p,f'i some dry sticks and wood, and
prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He
got a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole ; then ha
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 63
churned milk by a similar process ; * and in order to
explain the thunder-storm, a Sanskrit poem tells how
" once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their oppo-
nents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in
churning the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of im-
mortality. They took Mount Mandara for a churning-
stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for
a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro,
the Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at
its head."*!" In this myth the churning-stick, with its
flying serpent-cords, is the lightning, and the amrita, or
drink of immortality, is simply the rain-water, which in
Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues as the
lightning. " In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life
which restores the dead earth, a water brought by a bird
from the depths of a gloomy cave." J It is the celestial
soma or mead which Indra loves to drink ; it is the am-
brosial nectar of the Olympian gods ; it is the charmed
water wliich in the Arabian Nights restores tu human
shape the victims of wicked sorcerers ; and it is the eUxir
of Hfe which mediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and
in quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the wilds of
riorida.§
cut and pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the "block,
worked it round between his palms for some time and with increasing
rapidity. Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after
it burst into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark
and roasted them." — Eeade, Never too Late to Mend, chap, xxxviii.
* The production of fire hy the drill is often called churning, e. g.
"He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it, and kindled
a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174.
+ Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata Pu-
rana, VIII. 6, 32.
X Baring-Gould, Curious M5i;hs, p. 149,
§ It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the ** holy water *
of the Roman Catholic.
64 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKEES.
The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the
name of the peaked mountain Mandara, or Manthara,
which the gods and devils took for their churning-stick.
The word means " a churning-stick," and it appears also,
with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill,
liramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pm-
mantha, is etymologically identical with Prometheus, the
name of the beneficent Titan, who stole fire from heaven
and bestowed it upon mankind as the ricliest of boons.
This sublime personage was originally nothing but the
celestial drill wliich churns fire out of the clouds ; but
the Greeks had so entirely forgotten his origin that they
interpreted his name as meaning "the one who thinks
beforehand," and accredited him with a brother, Epime-
theus, or " the one who thinks too late." The Greeks had
adopted another name, trypanon, for their fire-drill, and
thus the primitive character of Prometheus became ob-
scured.
I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely
essential that the divining-rod should be forked. To
this rule, however, there was one exception, and if any
further evidence be needed to convince the most scepti-
cal that the divining-rod is nothing but a symbol of the
lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For
this exceptional kind of divining-rod was made of a
pointed stick rotating in a block of wood, and it was the
presence of hidden water or treasure which was supposed
to excite the rotatory motion.
In the mytlis relating to Prometheus, the liglitning-god
appears as the originator of civilization, sometimes as the
creator of the human race, and always as its friend,* suf-
* In the Vedaa the rain-god Soma, originally the personification of
the sat.Tifinial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to men life, knowledge,
and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. Tyler, Primitive
Culture, Vol. II. p. 277-
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. 6$
fering in its behalf the most fearful tortures at the hands
of the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates man by
making a clay image and infusing into it a spark of the
fire which he had brought from heaven ; in another story
he is himself the first man. In the Peloponnesian myth
Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under another name, is the
first man, and his mother was an ash-tree. In Norse
mythology, also, the gods were said to have made the
first man out of the ash-tree Yggdrasil. The association
of the heavenly fire with the life-giving forces of nature
is very common in the myths of both hemispheres, and
in view of the facts already cited it need not surprise us.
Hence the Hindu Agni and the Norse Thor were patrons
of marriage, and in Norway, the most lucky day on which
to be married is still supposed to be Thursday, which in
old times was the day of the fire-god.* Hence the light-
ning-plants have divers virtues in matters pertaining to
marriage. The Eomans made their wedding torches of
whitethorn ; hazel-nuts are stiU used aU over Europe in
divinations relating to the future lover or sweetheart ; "^
and under a mistletoe bough it is allowable for a gentle-
man to kiss a lady. A vast number of kindred supersti-
tions are described by Mr. KeUy, to whom I am indebted
for many of these examples. %
* "We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek fire-god
Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.
+ "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves plucked at
hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for the purpose of
causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the
yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar virtues." — Harland and
Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.
J " In Peru, a mighty and far- worshipped deity was Catequil, the
thunder-god, .... he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from his
sling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villages
as fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love." — Tylor, op. cit.
Vol. 11. p. 239.
^ MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the
divining-rod, or as it is called in this sense the wish-rod,
with its kindred talismans, from Aladdin's lamp and the
purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to the Sangreal, the philoso-
pher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram.
These symbols of the reproductive energies of nature,
which give to the possessor every good and perfect gift,
illustrate the uncurbed belief in the power of wish which
the ancient man shared with modern children. In the
Norse story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes a w^him-
sical shape. The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of
gold, when everybody had whatever he wanted. This
was because the giant Frodi had a mill which ground out
peace and plenty and abundance of gold withal, so that
it lay about the roads like pebbles. Through the inex-
cusable avarice of Frodi, this wonderful implement was
lost to the world. For he kept his maid-servants work-
ing at the mill until they got out of patience, and began
to make it grind out hatred and war. Then came a
mighty sea-rover by night and slew Frodi and carried
away the maids and the quern. When he got well out
to sea, he told them to grind out salt, and so they did
with a vengeance. They ground the ship full of salt and
sank it, and so the quern was lost forever, but the sea
remains salt unto tliis day.
Mr. Kelly riglitly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro
or Freyr, and observes that the magic mill is only an-
other form of the fire-churn, or chark. According to
another version the quern is still grinding away and
keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it lies
there is a prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which suCks
down ships.
In its completed shape, the liglitning-wand is the ca-
duceus, or rod of Hermes. I observed, in the preceding
THE DESCENT OF FIRE. fj
paper, that in the Greek conception of Hermes there
have been fused together the attributes of two deities
who were originally distinct. The Hermes of the Ho-
meric Hymn is a wind-god ; but the later Hermes Ago-
raios, the patron of gymnasia, the mutilation of whose
statues caused such terrible excitement in Athens durincy
the Peloponnesian War, is a very different personage.
He is a fire-god, invested with many solar attributes, and
represents the quickening forces of nature. In this ca-
pacity the invention of fire was ascribed to him as well
as to Prometheus ; he was said to be the friend of man-
kind, and was surnamed Ploutodotes, or " the giver of
wealth."
The Norse wind-god Odin has in like manner acquired
several of the attributes of Preyr and Thor.* His light-
ning-spear, which is borrowed from Thor, appears by a
comical metamorphosis as a wish-rod which will admin-
ister a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor.
Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an
old coat, name your intended victim, wish he was there,
and whack away : he will howl with pain at every blow.
This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale of " The
Lad who went to the North Wind," with which we may
conclude this discussion. The story is told, with little
variation, in Hindustan, Germany, and Scandinavia.
The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes,
once blew away a poor woman's meal. So her boy went
to the North Wind and demanded his rights for the meal
his mother had lost. " I have n't got your meal," said
the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which wiU cover
itself with an excellent dinner whenever you tell it to."
* In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new complication to his
enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as a wind-god." — Tylor,
op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242.
6S MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
So the lad took the cloth and started for home. At night-
fall he stopped at an inn, spread his cloth on the table,
and ordered it to cover itself with good things, and so it
did. But the landlord, who thought it would be money
in his pocket to have such a cloth, stole it after the boy-
had gone to bed, and substituted anotlier just like it in
appearance. Next day the boy went home in great glee
to show off for his mother's astonishment what the North
Wind had given him, but all the dinner he got that day
was what the old woman cooked for him. In his despair
he went back to the North Wind and called him a liar,
and again demanded his rights for the meal he had lost.
" I have n't got your meal," said the Wind, " but here 's a
ram which will drop money out of its fleece whenever
you tell it to." So the lad travelled home, stopping over
night at the same inn, and when he got home he found
himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of its
fleece. A third time he visited the North Wind, and
obtained a bag with a stick in it which, at the word of
command, would jump out of the bag and lay on until
told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his cloth
and ram, he turned in at the same tavern, and going to
a bench lay down as if to sleep. The landlord thought
that a stick carried about in a bag must be worth some-
thing, and so he stole quietly up to the bag, meaning to
get the stick out and change it. But just as he got
within whacking distance, the boy gave the word, and
out jumped the stick and beat the thief until he prom-
ised to give back the ram and the ta])lecloth. And so
the boy got his rights for the meal which the North
Wind had 1)1 own away.
October, 1870.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS, 69
III
WEEEWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS.
IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia,
once invited Zeus to dinner, and served np for him
a dish of human flesh, in order to test the god's omni-
science. But the trick miserably failed, and the impious
monarch received the punishment which his crime had
merited. He was transformed into a wolf, that he might
henceforth feed upon the viands with which he had dared
to pollute the table of the king of Olympos. From that
time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each
year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin
of a certain lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he
then plunged into the water and became a wolf. For the
space of nine years he roamed about the adjacent woods,
and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during aU this
time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where
his clothes were hanging, put them on, and return to his
natural form. It is further related of a certain Demai-
netos, that, having once been present at a human sacrifice
to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was transformed
into a wolf for a term of ten years.*
These and other similar mythical germs were devel-
oped by the mediaeval imagination into the horrible
superstition of werewolves.
A werewolf, or loup-garou,f was a person who had the
* Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.
f Were-irolf=man-ivolf, wer meaning " man." Garou is a Gallic
corruption of loerewolf, so that luup-garuu is a tautological expression.
70 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
power of transforming himself into a wolf, being en-
dowed, while in the lupine state, with the intelligence
of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and the irresistible
strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the exist-
ence of such persons ; but in the IMiddle Ages the meta-
morphosis was supposed to be a phenomenon of daily
occurrence, and even at the present day, in secluded por-
tions of Europe, the superstition is still cherished by
peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast
amount of evidence, which can neither be argued nor
pooh-poohed iato insignificance. It is the business of
the comparative mythologist to trace the pedigree of the
ideas from which such a conception may have sprung ;
while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascer-
taining and classifying the actual facts which this par-
ticular conception was used to interpret.
The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted
to illustrate the complicated manner in wliich divers
mythical conceptions and misunderstood natural occur-
rences will combine to generate a long-enduring su])er-
stition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that the
whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon
words; but the careful survey of the field, which has
been taken by Hertz and Baring-Gould, leads to the con-
clusion that many other circumstances have been at work.
The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in its
origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curi-
ous mixture of mythical and historical elements.
With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself,
Mr. Cox is probably rig] it. The story seems to belong
to that large class of myths which have been devised in
order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whose
true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios,
as applied to Zeus, had originally no reference to wolves :
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 71
it means " the bright one," and gave rise to lycanthropic
legends only because of the similarity in sound between
the names for " wolf " and " brightness." Aryan mythol-
ogy furnishes numerous other instances of this confu-
sion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally
the " offspring of light " ; but popular etymology made a
kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as the
"wolf-born." The name of the hero Autolykos means
simply the " self-limiinous " ; but it was more frequently
interpreted as meaning " a very wolf," in allusion to the
supposed character of its possessor. Bazra, the name of
the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for "for-
tress " ; but the Greeks confounded it with hyrsa, " a hide,"
and hence the story of the ox-hides cut into strips by
Dido in order to measure the area of the place to be forti-
fied. The old theory that the Irish were Phoenicians had
a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate the
old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, " fair," seen in
the name of the hero Fion Gall, or " Fingal " ; but the
monkish chroniclers identified Fena with Phoinix, whence
arose the myth ; and by a like misunderstanding of the
epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by the
Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero. Mile-
sms, and the soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed
in speaking of the Irish.* So the Franks explained the
name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the story
that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief mag-
istrate with the exclamation, daras, " thou shalt give " : f
the Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras,
informs us with equal complacency that it was the place
where Alexander overcame Codomannus with ^6pv, " the
spear." A certain passage in the Alps is called Scaletta,
* Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. I. p. 151.
t Almoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.
72 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
from its resemblance to a staircase ; but according to a
local tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons
of a company of floors who were destroyed there in the
eighth century, while attempting to penetrate into North-
ern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes the town built
at a " wharf" ; but it sounds very much like the Flemish
luindt werpen, " hand-tln-owing " : " hence arose the legend
of the giant who cut off the hands of those who passed
his castle without paying him black-mail, and threw them
into the Scheldt." * In the myth of Bishoj) Hatto, related
in a previous paper, the IMause-thurm is a corruption of
mavi-thurm ; it means " customs-tower," and has nothing
to do with mice or rats. Doubtless this etymology was
the cause of the floating myth getting fastened to this
particular place ; that it did not give rise to the myth
itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in other
places. Somewhere in England there is a place called
Chateau Vert ; the peasantry have corrupted it into Shot-
over, and say that it has borne that name ever since
Little John sliot over a high hiU in the neighbourhood.-f
Latium means " the flat land " ; but, according to Virgil,
it is the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the
wrath of his usurping son Jupiter. J
* Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.
t Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon which is
based the myth of the " confusion of tongues" in the eleventh cha])ter
of Genesis. The name " Babel " is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of (Jod " ;
but the Hebrew wiiter erroneously derives the word from the root SSs
balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation, —
that Babel was a place where human S[)eech became confused. See Kaw-
linson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149 ; Renan, His-
toire des Langues Semiti^ues, Vol. I. p. 32 ; Donaldson, New Cratylus,
p. 74, note ; Colen.so on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 2G8.
X Virg. JEn. VIII. 322. With Latium conijiare TrXarm, Skr. prath
(to sjiread out), Eng. flat, f'crrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek,
Ijatin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 73
It was in this way that the constellation of the Great
Bear received its name. The Greek word arktos, answer-
ing to the Sanskrit riksha, meant originally any bright
object, and was applied to the bear — for what reason it
would not be easy to state — and to that constellation
which was most conspicuous in the latitude of the early
home of the Aryans. When the Greeks had long forgot-
ten why these stars were called arktoi, they symbolized
them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as Max
Mllller observes, " the name of the Arctic regions rests
on a misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of
years ago in Central Asia, and the surprise with which
many a thoughtful observer has looked at these seven
bright stars, wondering why they were ever called the
Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of
human speech." Anaong the Algonquins the sun-god
Michabo was represented as a hare, his name being com-
pounded of michi, " great," and wabos, " a hare " ; yet
wahos also meant " white," so that the god was doubtless
originally called simply "the Great White One." The
same naive process has made bears of the Arkadians,
whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely signified
that they were " children of light " ; and the metamor-
phosis of Kallisto, mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of
Lykaon into a wolf, rests apparently upon no other foun-
dation than an erroneous etymology. Originally Lykaon
was neither man nor wolf ; he was but another form of
Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox
has shown, his legend is but a variation of that of Tanta-
los, who in time of drought offers to Zeus the flesh of his
own offspring, the withered fruits, and is punished for
his impiety.
It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though
valid as far as it goes, is inadequate to explain aU the
74 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
features of the werewolf superstition, or to account for its
presence in all Aryan countries and among many peoples
who are not of Aiyan origin. There can be no doubt
that the myth-makers transformed Lykaon into a wolf
because of his unlucky name ; because what really meant
" bright man " seemed to them to mean " wolf-man " ; but
it has by no means been proved that a similar equivoca-
tion occurred in the case of all the primitive Aryan were-
wolves, nor has it been shown to be probable that among
each people the being with the uncanny name got thus
accidentally confounded with the particular beast most
dreaded by that people. Etymology alone does not ex-
plain the fact that while Gaul has been the favourite
haunt of the man-wolf, Scandinavia has been preferred
by the man-bear, and Hindustan by the man-tiger. To
account for such a widespread phenomenon we must seek
a more general cause.
Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive
tliinking than the close community of nature which it
assumes between man and brute. The doctrine of me-
tempsychosis, Avhich is found in some sliape or other all
over the world, implies a fundamental identity between
the two ; the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks brows-
ing in the meadow, and will on no account lift his liand
against a cow, for who knows but it may be his own
grandmother ? The recent researches of Mr. M'Lennan
and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this
feeling with the primeval worsliip of ancestors and with
the savage customs of totemism.*
The worship of ancestors seems to have been every-
* M'Lennan, "The Worship of Animals ami T'lants," Fortnightly
Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, r>r.2-.582, Vol. VII. pp. 194-216,-
Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. j.p. 535-550,
reprinted in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc., pj). 31 -56.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 75
where the oldest systematized form of fetichistic rehgion.
The reverence paid to the chieftain of the tribe while
living was continued and exaggerated after his death.
The nncivihzed man is everywhere incapable of grasping
the idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized peo-
ple. He cannot understand that a man should pass away
so as to be no longer capable of communicating with his
fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade remains
in his mind, and the savage's philosophic realism far sur-
passes that of the most extravagant mediaeval schoolmen ;
to him the persistence of the idea implies the persistence
of the reality. The dead man, accordingly, is not really
dead ; he has tlirown off' his body like a husk, yet still
retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to
his old friends, especially after nightfall. He is no doubt
possessed of more extensive powers than before his trans-
formation,* and may very hkely have a share in regulat-
ing the weather, gTanting or withholding rain. There-
fore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled and
propitiated more sedulously now than before his strange
transformation.
This kind of worship still maintains a languid exist-
ence as the state religion of China, and it still exists as a
* Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, who slays
himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power of
injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja
had built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of
the kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the
whole country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur.
Toward the close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of
whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees ;
whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's
head, with the professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that
her spirit, excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days,
might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and
those concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.
^6 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
portion of Bralimanism ; but in the Yedic religion it is
to be seen in all its vigour and in all its naive simplicity.
According to the ancient Aryan, the Pitris, or " Fathers "
(Lat. 2^(itrcs), live in the sky along with Yama, the great
original Pitri of mankind. This first man came down
from heaven in the lightning, and back to heaven both
himself and all his offspring must have gone. There
they distribute light unto men below, and they sliine
themselves as stars ; and hence the Christianized Ger-
man peasant, fifty centuries later, tells his children that
tlie stars are angels' eyes, and the English cottager im-
presses it on the youthful mind that it is wicked to
point at the stars, though why he cannot tell. But
the Pitris are not stars only, nor do they content tliem-
selves with idly looking down on the affairs of men, after
the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities of Lucretius.
They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather ;
they send rain, thunder, and lightning ; and they espe-
cially delight in rushing over the housetops in a great
gale of wind, led on Ijy their chief, the mysterious hunts-
man, Hermes or Odin.
It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or
-wash-hound of Hermes, whose appearance under the win-
dows of a sick person is such an alarming portent, is
merely the tempest personified. Throughout all Aryan
mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on
the night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into
their throng the souls of those just dying as tliey pass by
their houses.* Sometimes the whole complex conception
is wrapped up in the notion of a single dog, the messen-
ger of the god of shades, who comes to summon the de-
* Hfnoe, in many parts of P^uropf, it is still customary to oy)on the
windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be hindered
in joining the mystic cavalcade.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. yy
parting soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a
great ravening wolf who comes to devour its victim arid
extinguish the sunlight of life, as that old wolf of the
tribe of Fenrir devoured little Eed Eiding-Hood with her
robe of scarlet twilight.* Thus we arrive at a true were-
wolf myth. The storm-wind, or howling Eakshasa
of Hindu folk-lore, is " a great misshapen giant with red
beard and red hair, with pointed protruding teeth, ready to
lacerate and devour human flesh ; his body is covered with
coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he looks
from side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh and
blood of men, to satisfy his raging hunger and quench
his consuming thirst. Towards nightfall his strength in-
creases manifold ; he can change his shape at will ; he
haunts the woods, and roams howling through the
jungle." t
Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great
Pitri who appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of
wolves or wish-hounds, or a single savage dog or wolf,
the inference is obvious to the my thopceic mind that men
* The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the English
version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can
tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swal-
lowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe
and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primi-
tive Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasi-
lissa the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swal-
lowed by the cow and came out unhurt " ; the story of Saktideva swal-
lowed by the fish and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184;
and the story of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament.'
All these are different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alter-
nate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is com-
monly personified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish Com-
pare Grimm's story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit. and
see Early History of Mankind, p. 337 ; Hardy, Manual of Budhism.
p. 501.
t Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts,
II. 435.
yS MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
may become wolves, at least after death. And to the
uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr.
Spencer lias shown, hy evidence registered on his own
tribal totem or lieraldic emblem. The bears and lions
and leopards of heraldry are tlie degenerate descendants
of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a
beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is every-
thing in a name ; and the descendant of Brown Bear or
Yellow Tiger or Silver Hycena cannot be pronounced un-
faithful to his own style of philosophizing, if he regards
his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness
of night, as belonging to w^hatever order of beasts his
totem associations may suggest.
Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the sub-
ject of metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the
curious process by which the intensely realistic mind of
antiquity arrived at the notion that men could be trans-
formed into beasts. For the behef that the soul can
temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been uni-
versally entertained ; and from the conception of wolf-
like ghosts it was but a short step to the conception of
corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Ages the phe-
nomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the
theory tliat the soul can leave the body and afterwards
return to it. Hence it was very difficult for a person
accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi; for to any
amount of evidence sliowing that the body was inno-
cently reposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was
obvious that the soul may nevertheless have been in at-
tendance at the witches' Sab])ath or Ijusied in maiming a
neighbour's cattle. According to one mediaeval notion,
the soul of the werewolf quit its liuman body, which re-
mained in a trance until its return.*
* In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to liavc been tliou^'lit
uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 79
The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is
now, I believe, sufficiently indicated. The belief, how-
ever, did not reach its complete development, or acquire
its most horrible features, until the pagan habits of
thought which had originated it were modified by con-
tact with Christian theology. To the ancient there was
nothing necessarily diabolical in the transformation of a
man into a beast. But Christianity, which retained such
a host of pagan conceptions under such strange disguises,
which degraded the " All-father " Odin into the ogre of
the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and
which blended the beneficent lightning-god Thor and the
mischievous Hermes and the faun-like Pan into the gro-
tesque Teutonic Devil, did not fail to impart a new and
fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycan-
thropy became regarded as a species of witchcraft ; the
werewolf was supposed to have obtained his peculiar
powers through the favour or connivance of the Devil ;
and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken on
the wheel for having availed themselves of the privilege
of beast-metamorphosis. The superstition, thus widely
extended and greatly intensified, was confirmed by many
singular phenomena which cannot be omitted from any
thorough discussion of the nature and causes of lycan-
thropy.
The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity,
characteristic of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other
countries. In times when killing one's enemies often
formed a part of the necessary business of life, persons
were frequently found who killed for the mere love of
the thing ; with whom slaughter was an end desirable in
itself, not merely a means to a desirable end. Wliat the
miser is in an age which worships mammon, such was
the Berserker in an age when the current idea of heaven
So MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
was that of a place where people coiild hack each other to
pieces through all eternity, and when the man who refused
a challenge was punished with confiscation of his estates.
With these Northmen, in the nintli century, the chief
business and amusement in life was to set sail for some
pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the
coasts and navigable rivers hideous with rapine and mas-
sacre. When at home, in the intervals between their
freebooting expeditions, they were liable to become pos-
sessed by a strange homicidal madness, during which they
would array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears,
and sally forth by night to crack the backbones, smash
the skulls, and sometimes to drink with fiendish glee the
blood of imwary travellers or loiterers. These fits of
madness were usually followed by periods of utter ex-
haustion and nervous depression.*
Such, according to the unanimous testimony of histo-
rians, was the celebrated " Berserker rage," not peculiar
to the Northland, although there most conspicuously
manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we find that
in comparatively civilized countries there have been
many cases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two
most celebrated cases, among those collected by Mr. Bar-
ing-Gould, are those of the Mar^'chal de Retz, in 1440,
and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the seven-
teenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young
girls into her palace on divers pretexts, and tlien coolly
murdered them, for the purpose of bathing in their blood.
The spectacle of human suffering became at last such
* See Dasfint, Burnt Xjal, Vol. I. p. xxii. ; Grcttis Sa^a, by Mag-
niisson and Morris, chap. xix. ; Viga Gluin's Saga, by Sir Edmund
Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are .said to have Triachlened
themselves with drugs. Da.sent conij)ares them with tin; Malays, who
work themselveg into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run
amuck.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 8 1
a delight to her, that she would apply with her own
hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the
shrieks of her victims as the epicure relishes each sip
of his old Chateau Margaux. In this way she is
said to have murdered six hundred and fifty persons
before her evil career was brought to an end; though,
when one recollects the famous men in buckram and the
notorious trio of crows, one is inclined to strike off a
cipher, and regard sixty-five as a sufficiently imposing
and far less improbable number. But the case of the
Mar^chal de Eetz is still more frightful. A marshal of
France, a scholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life,
he became suddenly possessed by an uncontrollable desire
to murder children. During seven years he continued to
inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, at the rate
of about two each week, (?) and then put them to death in
various ways, that he might witness their agonies and
bathe in their blood ; experiencing after each occasion
the most dreadful remorse, but led on by an irresistible
craving to repeat the crime. When this unparalleled ini-
quity was finally brought to light, the castle was found
to contain bins full of children's bones. The horrible
details of the trial are to be found in the histories of
France by Michelet and Martin.
Going a step further, we find cases in which the pro-
pensity to murder has been accompanied by cannibalism.
In 1598 a tailor of Chalons was sentenced by the par-
liament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy.
" Tins wretched man had decoyed children into his shop,
or attacked them in the gloaming when they strayed in
the woods, had torn them with his teeth and killed them,
after which he seems calmly to have dressed their flesh
as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great relish.
The number of little innocents whom he destroyed is un-
82 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
known. A ^\hole caskful of bones was discovered in his
house." * About 1850 a beggar in the village of Poloniyia,
in Galicia, was proved to have killed and eaten fourteen
children. A house had one day caught fire and burnt to
the ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable
to escape. The beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was
suffering from excessive hunger, could not resist the temp-
tation of making a meal off the charred body. From that
moment he was tormented by a craving for human flesh.
He met a little orphan girl, about nine years old, and giv-
ing her a pinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like
it under a tree in the neighbouring wood. She was slain,
carried to the beggar's hovel, and eaten. In the course
of three years thirteen other children mysteriously dis-
appeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an
innkeeper missed a pair of ducks, and having no good
opinion of this beggar's honesty, went unexpectedly to
his cabin, burst suddenly in at the door, and to his hor-
ror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak a
severed head ; a bowl of fresh blood stood under the
oven, and pieces of a thigh were cooking over the fire.*f
This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the
criminal, though ruled by an insane appetite, is not
known to have been subject to any mental delusion.
But there have been a great many similar cases, in which
the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied
by genuine hallucination. Forms of insanity in which
the alHicted persons imagine themselves to ))e l)rnte ani-
mals are not perliaps very common, but they are not un-
known. I once knew a poor demented old man who
believed himself to be a liorse, and would stand by the
hour together before a manger, nibbling hay, or deluding
* Bfirin^-Gonld, Werfwolvfs, p. 81.
t Baiing-Gould, op. cit. cliap. xiv.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN MAIDENS. 83
himself with the pretence of so doing. Many of the
cannibals whose cases are related by Mr. Baring-Gould,
in his chapter of horrors, actually beUeved themselves
to have been transformed into wolves or other wild ani-
mals. Jean Grenier was a boy of thirteen, partially
idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy ; liis
jaws were large and projected forward, and his canine
teeth were unnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the
lower lip. He believed himself to be a werewoE One
evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, he scared
them out of their wits by telling them that as soon as
the sun had set he would turn into a wolf and eat them
for supper. A few days later, one little girl, having gone
out at nightfall to look after the sheep, was attacked by
some creature which in her terror she mistook for a wolf,
but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean
Grenier. She beat him off with her sheep-staff, and fled
home. As several children had mysteriously disappeared
from the neighbourhood, Grenier was at once suspected.
Being brought before the parliament of Bordeaux, he
stated that two years ago he had met the Devil one night
in the woods and had signed a compact with him and
received from him a wolf-skin. Since then he had
roamed about as a wolf after dark, resuming his human
shape by dayhght. He had killed and eaten several
children whom he had found alone in the fields, and on
one occasion he had entered a house while the family
were out and taken the baby from its cradle. A careful
investigation proved the truth of these statements, so far
as the cannibahsm was concerned. There is no doubt
that the missing children were eaten by Jean Grenier,
and there is no doubt that in his own mind the half-
witted boy was firmly convinced that he was a woE
Here the lycanthropy was complete.
84 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
In the year 1598, " in a wild and unfrequented spot
near Caude, some countrymen came one day upon the
corpse of a boy of fifteen, horriljly mutihited and bespat-
tered Avith blood. As the men approached, two wolves,
which had been rending tlie body, bounded away into
the thicket. The men gave chase immediately, following
their bloody tracks till they lost them ; when, suddenly
crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with
fear, they found a man half naked, with long liair and
beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were
long as claws, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds
of human flesh." *
This man, Jacques Eoulet, was a poor, half-witted
creature under the dominion of a cannibal appetite. He
was employed in tearing to pieces the corpse of the boy
when these countrymen came up. Whether there were
any wolves in the case, except what the excited imagina-
tions of the men may have conjured up, I will not pre-
sume to determine ; but it is certain that Eoulet sup-
posed liimself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several
persons under the influence of the delusion. He was
sentenced to death, but the parliament of Paris reversed
the sentence, and charitably shut liim up in a madliouse.
The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases
similar to these* of Grenier and Eoulet. Their share in
maintaining the werewolf superstition is undeniable ;
but modern science finds in tliem notliing that canntjt be
readily explained. That stupendous jnocess of breeding,
which we call civilization, lias been for long ages strength-
ening those kindly social feelings by the jxtssession of
which we are chiefly distinguished from tlic biutes, leav-
ing our primitive bestial impulses to die for want of
exercise, or checking in every possible way their furthei
* Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 85
expansion by legislative enactments. But this process,
which is transforming us from savages into civilized
men, is a very slow one ; and now and then there occur
cases of what physiologists call atavism, or reversion to
an ancestral type of character. Now and then persons
are born, in civilized countries, whose intellectual powers
are on a level with those of the most degraded Austra-
lian savage, and these we call idiots. And now and
then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetites
and cravings of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty and
his liking for human flesh. Modern physiology knows
how to classify and explain these abnormal cases, but
to the unscientific mediaeval mind they were explicable
only on the hypothesis of a diabolical metamorphosis.
And there is nothing strange in the fact that, in an age
when the prevailing habits of thouglit rendered the
transformation of men into beasts an easily admissible
notion, these monsters of cruelty and depraved appetite
should have been regarded as capable of taking on bestial
forms. Nor is it strange that the hallucination under
which these unfortunate wretches laboured should have
taken such a shape as to account to their feeble intelli-
gence for the existence of the appetites which they were
conscious of not sharing with their neighbours and con-
temporaries. If a myth is a piece of unscientific philoso-
phizing, it must sometimes be applied to the explanation
of obscure psychological as well as of physical phenom-
ena. Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and
says, " Arrested development," the terrified ancient made
the sign of the cross and cried, " Werewolf."
We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning
aside for a moment to examine the wild superstitions
about " changelings," which contributed, along with so
many others, to make the lives of our ancestors anxious
86 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
and miserable. These superstitions were for tlie most
part attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity,
epilepsy, and other obscure nervous diseases. A man
who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, and whose ac-
tions have been consistent and rational, suddenly loses
all self-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to
himself. Modern science possesses the key to this phe-
nomenon ; but in former times it was explicable only on
the hypothesis that a demon had entered the body of the
lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man
and substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly Hke
him in stature and features. Hence the numerous le-
gends of changelings, some of which are very curious.
In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one Rickard, sur-
named the Rake, from liis w^orthless character. A good-
natured, idle fellow, he spent all liis evenings in dancing,
— an accomplishment in wiiich no one in tlie village
could rival him. One night, in the midst of a lively reel,
he fell down in a fit. " He 's struck with a fairy-dart,"
exclaimed all the friends, and they carried him liome and
nursed him ; but his face grew so tliin and his manner
so morose that by and by all began to suspect that the
true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his place.
Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician ;
and so, in order to \)\\i the matter to a crucial test, a bag-
pipe was left in the room by the side of liis bed. Tlie
trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all were
supposed to be in the field making hay, some members
of the family secreted in a clothes-press saw the bedroom
door open a little way, and a lean, foxy face, with a pair
of deep-sunken eyes, peer anxiously about the premises.
Having satisfied itself that the coast was clear, the face
withdrew, the door was closed, and presently such ravish-
ing strains of music were heard as never proceeded fronj
WEREWOLVES AND SWAX-MAIDEXS. 8/
a bagpipe before or since that day. Soon was heard the
rustle of innumerable fairies, come to dance to the
changeling's music. Then the " fairy-man " of the vil-
lage, who was keeping watch wdth the family, heated a
pair of tongs red-hot, and with deafening shouts all
burst at once into the sick-chamber. The music had
ceased and the room was empty, but in at the window
glared a fiendish face, with such fearful looks of hatred,
that for a moment all stood motionless with terror. But
when the fairy-man, recovering himself, advanced with
the hot tongs to pinch its nose, it vanished with an un-
earthly yell, and there on the bed was Eickard, safe and
sound, and cm'ed of his epilepsy.*
Comparing this legend ^\dth numerous others relating
to changelings, and stripping off the fantastic garb of
fairy-lore with which popular imagination has invested
them, it seems impossible to doubt that they have arisen
from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the
obscure phenomena of mental disease. If this be so,
they afford an excellent collateral illustration of the be-
lief in werewolves. The same mental habits which led
men to regard the insane or epileptic person as a change-
ling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy as the
temporary departure of a witch's soul from its body,
would enable them to attribute a wolf's nature to the
maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites. And when the
myth-forming process had got thus far, it would not stop
short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible
lupine body ; for all ancient mythology teemed with pre-
cedents for such a transformation.
It remains for us to sum up, — to tie into a bunch the
keys which have helped us to penetrate into the secret
causes of the werewolf superstition In a previous
* Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.
88 MYTHS AXD MYTII-MAKERS.
paper we saw what a host of mytlis, fairy-tales, and
superstitious observances have sprung from attempts to
interpret one simple natural phenomenon, — the descent
of fire from the clouds. Here, on the other hand, we see
what a heterogeneous multitude of mythical elements
may combine to build up in course of time a single enor-
mous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and
fancy have co-operated in keeping the superstition from
falling. In the first place the worship of dead ancestors
with wolf totems originated the notion of the transforma-
tion of men into divine or superhuman wolves ; and this
notion was confirmed by the ambiguous explanation of
the storm-wind as the rushing of a troop of dead men's
souls or as the howling of wolf-like monsters. Mediieval
Christianity retained these conceptions, merely changing
the superhuman wolves into evil demons ; and finally the
occurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibal-
ism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations, being
interpreted as due to such demoniacal metamorphosis,
gave rise to the werewolf superstition of tlie Middle
Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox
would incontinently ascribe the origin of the entire
superstition, seemed to me to have played a very subor-
dinate part in the matter. To suppose that Jean Grenier
imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word
for wolf sounded like the word for light, and thus gave
rise to the story of a light-deity who became a wolf,
seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as far as such ver-
bal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless
helped to sustain the delusion.
Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an
inexplicable creature of undeterniiiied pedigree. But any
account of him would be quite imperfect which should
omit all consideration of the methods l»y whicli his
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 89
change of form was accomplished. By the ancient
Eomans the werewolf was commonly called a " skin-
changer " or " turn-coat " (versi^Mllis), and similar epithets
were applied to him in the Middle Ages The mediseval
theory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form,
his hair grew inwards ; when he wished to become a wolf,
he simply turned himself inside out. In many trials on
record, the prisoners were closely interrogated as to how
this inversion might be accomplished ; but I am not aware
that any one of them ever gave a satisfactory answer.
At the moment of change their memories seem to have
become temporarily befogged. Now and then a poor
wretch had his arms and legs cut off, or was partially
flayed, in order that the ingrowing hair might be de-
tected.* Another theory was, that the possessed person
had merely to put on a wolf's skin, in order to assume
instantly the lupine form and character ; and in this may
perhaps be seen a vague reminiscence of the alleged fact
that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the woods
by night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears.f Such
* "En 1541, k Padone, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait change en
loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceux qii'il rencon-
trait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de liii. II dit
en confidence k ceux qui I'arreterent : Je suis vraiment un loup, et si
'.ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce qu'elle est retour-
uiee et que les poils sont en dedans. — Pour s'assurer du fait, on coupa
le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui emporta les bras
et les jambes." — Taine, De 1' Intelligence, Tom. II. p. 203. See the
account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the Russian Peo-
ple, pp. 404-418.
t Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather sur-
passes that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer the subject of the
Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of the
Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions of
Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have not the special
knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr.
Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not such as
90 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
a woKskin was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the
other hand, confessed to using a magic salve or ointment
A fourth method of becoming a werewolf was to obtain
a girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases are
related in Thorpe's " Northern Mythology." One hot day
in harvest-time some reapers lay down to sleep in the
shade ; Avhen one of them, who could not sleep, saw the
man next liim arise quietly and gird him with a strap,
whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up
from among the sleepers and ran off across the fields.
Another man, who possessed such a girdle, once went
away from home without remembering to lock it up.
His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and
as he proceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became
instantly transformed into a strange-looking beast. Just
then his father came in, and seizing the girdle restored
the child to his natural shape. The boy said that no
sooner had he buckled it on than he was tormented with
a raging hunger.
Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky
accidents. At Caseburg, as a man and his wife were
making hay, the woman threw down her pitchfork and
went away, telling her husl)and tliat if a wild beast
should come to him during her absence he must throw
his hat at it. Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him.
The man threw liis liat at it, but a boy came up from
another part of the field and stabl)ed tlie animal with
liis pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's
dead l)ofly lay at liis feet.
A parallel legend sliows tliat this woman wished to
to make one feel obli^'cd to accojit liis bare as.sertion, iinacoonipanieJ by
critical arguments. Tlie madness of tlie bearsarks may, no (loul>t, bo
the same thing as the frenzy of Iforakles ; but something more than
mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 9 1
have the hat thrown at her, in order that she might be
henceforth free from her liability to become a werewolf.
A man was one night returning with his wife from a
merry-making when he felt the change coming on. Giv-
ing his wife the reins, he jumped from the wagon, telling
her to strike with her apron at any animal which might
come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to the
side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with
her apron, it bit off a piece and ran away. Presently
the man returned with the piece of apron in his mouth,
and consoled his terrified wife with the information that
the enchantment had left him forever.
A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its
way into the annals of witchcraft. " A gentleman while
hunting was suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of mon-
strous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a
spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle
luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived
to cut off one of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed
in his pocket, and made the best of his way homewards
in safety. On the road he met a friend, to whom he
exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared)
a woman's hand, upon which was a wedding-ring. His
wife's ring was at once recognized by the other. His
suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his
wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen,
her arm hidden beneath her apron, when the husband,
seizing her by the arm, found his terrible suspicions veri-
fied. The bleeding stump was there, evidently just fresh
from the wound. She was given into custody, and in
the event was burned at Eiom, in presence of thousands
of spectators." *
* Williams, Superstitions 01 Witchcraft, p. 179. See a parallel case of a
cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26. ** Certain witches
92 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recogniz-
ing him while in liis brute shape. A Swedish legend
tells of a cottager who, on entering the forest one day
without recollecting to say his Pater Nostcr, got into the
power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For
many years his wife mourned him as dead. But one
Christmas eve the old Troll, disguised as a beggar-
woman, came to the house for alms ; and being taken in
and kindly treated, told the woman that her husband
might very likely appear to her in wolf-shape. Going at
night to the pantry to lay aside a joint of meat for to-
morrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws
on the window-sill, looking wistfully in at her. "Ah,
dearest," said she, " if I knew that thou wert really my
husband, I would give thee a bone." Whereupon the
wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her in
the same old clothes which he had on the day that the
Troll got hold of him.
In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to
creep tlirough a colt's placental membrane stretched be-
tween four sticks, she would for the rest of her life bring
forth children without pain or illness ; but all the boys
would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls
Maras, or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition
appears that curious kinship between tlie werewolf and
tlie wife or mai(k^,n of supernatural race, which serves
admirably to illustrate tlie nature of both concepticms,
and the elucidation of which shall occujjy us throughout
the remainder of this paper.
at Thurso for a long time tomipntod an honest fellow under the usual
form of cats, till one night he jiut them to flight with his broadsword,
and cut off the leg of one less nimlile than the rest ; taking it up, to his
amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and next moniing he discov-
ered the old hag its owner with but one leg left." — Tylor, rrimitive
Culture, I. 283.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 93
It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality
of the nightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine.
The Mara was a female demon,* who would come at
night and torment men or women by crouching on their
chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration. The
scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's picture,
though the frenzied-looking horse which there accom-
panies the demon has no place in the original supersti-
tion. A Netherlandish story illustrates the character of
the Mara. Two young men were in love with the same
damsel. One of them, being tormented every night by
a Mara, sought advice from his rival, and it was a treach-
erous counsel that he got. " Hold a sharp knife with the
point towards your breast, and you '11 never see the Mara
again," said this false friend. The lad thanked him, but
when he lay down to rest he thought it as well to be on
the safe side, and so held the knife handle downward.
So when the Mara came, instead of forcing the blade into
his breast, she cut herself badly, and fled howling ; and
let us hope, though the legend here leaves us in the dark,
that this poor youth, who is said to have been the come-
lier of the two, revenged himself on his malicious rival
by marrying the young lady.
But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting
shape, and became the mistress or even the wife of some
mortal man to whom she happened to take a fancy. In
such cases she would vanish on being recognized. There
is a well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who, jour-
neying one day through the forest, found a beautiful lady
stripped naked and tied to a tree, her back aU covered
with deep gashes streaming with blood, from a flogging
* " The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph ; compare
Anglo-Saxon wudummre (wood-mare) = echo." — Tylor, Primitive Cul-
ture, Vol. II. p. 173.
94 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
which some bandits had given her. Of course he took
her home to his castle and married her, and for a while
they lived very happily together, and the fame of the
lady's beauty was so great that kings and emperors held
tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight
used to go to mass every Sunday, and greatly was he
scandalized when he found that his wife would never
stay to assist in the Credo, but would always get up and
walk out of church just as the chuir struck up. All
her husband's coaxing was of no use ; threats and en-
treaties were alike powerless even to elicit an explana-
tion of this strange conduct. At last the good man de-
termined to use force ; and so one Sunday, as the lady
got up to go out, according to custom, he seized her by
the arm and sternly commanded her to remain. Her
whole frame was suddenly con\ailsed, and her dark eyes
gleamed wdth weird, unearthly brilliancy. The serA-ices
paused for a moment, and all eyes were turned toward
the knight and his lady. " In God's name, tell me what
thou art," shouted the knight ; and instantly, says the
chronicler, " the bodily form of the lady melted away,
and was seen no more ; whilst, with a cry of anguish and
of terror, an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the
ground, clave the chapel roof asunder, and disappeared in
the air."
In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to
the Nixies, or Swan-maidens. A peasant discovered that
his sweetheart was in the habit of coming to him by
night as a Mara. He kept strict watcli until he dis-
covered her creeping into the room tlirougli a small
knot-hole in the door. Next day he made a peg, and
after slie had come to him, drove in tlie peg so tliat she
was unable to escape. They were married and lived to-
gether many years ; but one night it liappened that the
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 95
man, joking with his wife about the way in which he had
secured her, drew the peg from the knot-hole, that she
might see how she had entered his room. As she peeped
through, she became suddenly quite small, passed out,
and was never seen again.
The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare
are sufficient to account for the mediaeval theory of a
fiend who sits upon one's bosom and hinders respiration ;
but as we compare these various legends relating to the
Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is needed
to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may
interfere with our breathing, but it does not make beau-
tiful women crawl through keyholes, nor does it bring
wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to an
ancient family, and in passing from the regions of monk-
ish superstition to those of pure mythology we find that,
like her kinsman the werewolf, she had once seen better
days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara, and adopted
the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures
as agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character
of the knight's wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But
in the Danish tale the Mara appears as one of that large
family of supernatural wives who are permitted to live
with mortal men under certain conditions, but who are
compelled to flee away when these conditions are broken,
as is always sure to be the case. The eldest and one of
the loveliest of this family is the Hindu nymph Urvasi,
whose love adventures with Pururavas are narrated in the
Puranas, and form the subject of the well-known and
exquisite Sanskrit drama by Kahdasa. Urvasi is allowed
to live with Pururavas so long as she does not see him
undressed. But one night her kinsmen, the Gandharvas,
or cloud-demons, vexed at her loni:^ absence from heaven,
resolved to get her away from her mortal companion.
96 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
They stole a pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of
her couch, whereat she bitterly upbraided her husband.
In rage and mortification, Pururavas sprang up without
throwing on liis tunic, and gi^asping his sword sought tlie
robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of
lightning, and Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly
vanished.
The different versions of this legend, which have been
elaborately analyzed by comparative mythologists, leave
no doubt that Urvasi is one of the dawn-nymphs or
bright fleecy clouds of early morning, wliich vanish as
the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the
preceding paper, tliat the ancient Aryans regarded the
sky as a sea or great lake, and that the clouds were ex-
plained variously as Phaiakian shij^s with bird-Hke beaks
sailing over this lake, or as bright birds of divers shapes
and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as mer-
maids, or as swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage.
In Sanskrit they are called Apsaras, or " those who move
in the water," and the Elves and Maras of Teutonic my-
thology have the same significance. Urvasi appears in
one legend as a bird ; and a South German prescription
for getting rid of the ]\Iara asserts that if she be wrapped
up in the bedclothes and firmly held, a white dove will
forthwith fly from the room, leaving the bedclothes
empty*
In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as
a kind of mermaid, but in other respects the legend re-
sembles that of Urvasi. Ptaymond, Count de la Foret,
of Poitou, having by an accident killed his patron and
benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and
* See Kuhn, HeraLkunft des Fcuers, p. 91 ; "WcIht, Indisclie Stiulien,
I. 197 ; Wolf, Bcitraf,'e ziir deutschen Mytliologie, II. 233 - 281 f
Miiller, Chips, II. 114-128.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 97
despair into the deep recesses of the forest. All the
afternoon and evening he wandered through the thick
dark woods, until at midnight he came upon a strange
scene. All at once " the boughs of the trees became less
interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his
horse, crashing through the shrubs, brought him out on
a pleasant glade, white with rime, and illumined by the
new moon ; in the midst bubbled up a limpid fountain,
and flowed away over a pebbly-floor with a soothing mur-
mur. Near the fountain-head sat three maidens in glim-
mering white dresses, with long waving golden hair, and
faces of inexpressible beauty." * One of them advanced
to meet Eaymond, and according to all mythological
precedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due
time the fountain-nymph -|- became Countess de la Foret,
but her husband w^as given to understand that all her
Saturdays would be passed in strictest seclusion, upon
which he must never dare to intrude, under penalty of
losing her forever. For many years all went well, save
that the fair Melusina's children were, without excep-
tion, misshapen or disfigured. But after a while this
strange weekly seclusion got bruited about all over the
neighbourhood, and people shook their heads and looked
■grave about it. So many gossiping tales came to the
Count's ears, that he began to grow anxious and suspi-
cious, and at last he determined to know the worst. He
went one Saturday to Melusina's private apartments, and
going through one empty room after another, at last came
to a locked door which opened into a bath ; looking
through a keyhole, there he saw the Countess transformed
from the waist downwards into a fish, disporting herself
* Baring- Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.
t The word nymph itself means " cloud-raaiden," as is illustrated by
the kinship between the Greek v6ij.<j>ti and the Latin nubes.
5 G
98
MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could not
keep the secret, but when some time afterwards they
quarrelled, must needs address her as " a vile serpent,
contaminator of his honourable race." So she disap-
peared through the window, but ever afterward hovered
about her husband's castle of Lusignan, lilve a Banshee,
whenever one of its lords was about to die.
The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of
Melusina, save that the naiad's desire to obtain a human
soul is a conception foreign to the spirit of the myth,
and marks the degradation which Christianity had in-
flicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of
Dasent's tales the water-maiden is replaced by a kind
of werewolf. A white bear marries a young girl, but
assumes the human shape at night. She is never to
look upon him in his human shape, but how could a
young bride be expected to obey sucli an injunction as
that ? She hghts a candle while he is sleeping, and dis-
covers the handsomest prince in the world ; unluckily she
drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the story. But
she is more fortunate than poor Raymond, for after a
tiresome journey to the " land east of the sun and west
of the moon," and an arduous washing-match with a par-
cel of ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends her
husband's enchantment*
In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsa-
ras, or cloud-maiden, has a shirt of swan's feathers which
plays tlie same part as the wolfskin cape or girdle of the
werewolf. If you could get hold of a werewolf 's sack
and bum it, a permanent cure was effected. No dangei
of a relapse, unless the Devil furnished liim with a new
wolfskin. So tlie swan-maiden ke])t lier liuman form, as
* This is substantially i<l«'nti(al with the .stoiii^d of Ik-auty and the
Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandliarba Sena, etc.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS.
99
long as she was deprived of her tunic of feathers. Indo-
European folk-lore teems with stories of swan-maidens
forcibly wooed and won by mortals who had stolen their
clothes. A man travelUng along the road passes by a
lake where several lovely girls are bathing ; their dresses,
made of feathers curiously and daintily woven, lie on the
shore. He approaches the place cautiously and steals
one of these dresses.* When the girls have finished
their bathing, they all come and get their dresses and
swim away as swans ; but the one whose dress is stolen
must needs stay on shore and marry the thief It is
needless to add that they live happily together for many
years, or that finally the good man accidentally leaves
the cupboard door unlocked, whereupon his wife gets back
her swan-shirt and flies away from him, never to return.
But it is not always a shirt of feathers. In one German
story, a nobleman hunting deer finds a maiden bathing
in a clear pool in the forest. He runs stealthily up to
her and seizes her necklace, at which she loses the
power to flee. They are married, and she bears seven
sons at once, all of whom have gold chains about their
necks, and are able to transform themselves into swans
whenever they like. A Flemish legend tells of three
Nixies, or water-sprites, who came out of the Meuse one
autumn evening, and helped the villagers celebrate the
end of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never
been seen in Flanders, and they could sing as well as
they could dance. As the night was warm, one of them
took off her gloves and gave them to her partner to hold
for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two
* The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hassan of El-
Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See Lane's
Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian Peo-
ple, p. 178.
lOO MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKEllS.
started off in hot haste, and then there was a hne and
cry for gloves. The lad woidd keep them as love-tokens,,
and so the poor Xixie had to go home without tliem;
but she must have died on the way, for next morn-
ing the waters of the Meuse were blood-red, and those
damsels never returned.
In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off
their skins every ninth night, assume liuman forms, and
sing and dance like men and women until daybreak,
when they resume their skins and their seal natures.
Of course a man once found and hid one of these seal-
skins, and so got a mermaid for a wife ; and of course she
recovered the skin and escaped.* On the coasts of Ire-
land it is supposed to be quite an ordinary thing for
young sea-fairies to get human husbands in this way;
the brazen things even come to shore on purpose, and
leave their red caps lying around for young men to pick
up ; but it behooves the husl)and to keep a strict watch
over the red cap, if he would nut see his children left
motlierless.
This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the
superstitions of witchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red
James was aroused from sleep one night by noises in the
kitchen. Going down to the door, lie saw a lot of old
women drinking ])unch around the fireplace, and laugli-
ing and joking witli his housekeeper. Wlien the jnmch-
bowl was empty, they all put on red caps, and singing
" By yarrow and me,
Aiid my r«'<l cap too,
Hie ine over to En^^'land,"
they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room,
and seized the housekeeper's cap, and went along with
♦ Thorpe, Xorthern Mytliologj% HI, 173; Kennedy, Fictions of the
Irish Celts, p. 123.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 10 1
them. They flew across the sea to a castle in Eng-
land, passed through the keyholes from room to room
and into the cellar, where they had a famous carouse.
Unluckily Jimmy, being unused to such good cheer, got
drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when the others did.
So next morning the lord's butler found him dead-drunk
on the cellar floor, surrounded by empty casks. He was
sentenced to be hung without any trial worth speaking
of; but as he was carted to the gallows an old woman
cried out, " Ach, Jimmy alanna ! Would you be afther
dyin' in a strange land without your red birredh ? " The
lord made no objections, and so the red cap was brought
and put on him. Accordingly when Jimmy had got to
the gallows and was making his last speech for the edi-
fication of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat
irrelevantly exclaimed, " By yarrow and rue," etc., and
was off like a rocket, shooting through the blue air en
route for old Ireland.*
In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into
the kitchen of a great house every night, and washes the
dishes and scours the tins, so that the servants lead an
easy life of it. After a while in their exuberant grati-
tude they offer him any present for which he may feel
inchned to ask. He desires only " an ould coat, to keep
the chill off of him these could nights " ; but as soon as
he gets into the coat he resumes his human form and bids
them good by, and thenceforth they may wash their own
dishes and scour their own tins, for all him.
But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maid-
ens, and are in danger of losing ourselves in that laby-
rinth of popular fancies which is more intricate than any
that Daidalos ever planned. The significance of all these
sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid caps and were-
* Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.
102 MYTHS AND MYTII-MAKERS.
wolf-girdles may best be sought in the etymology of words
like the German Icichnam, in which the body is described
as a garment of flesh for the soul.* In the naive phi-
losophy of primitive tliinkers, the soul, in passing from
one visible shape to another, had only to put on the out-
ward integument of the creature in whicli it wished to
incarnate itself With respect to the mode of metamor-
phosis, there is little difference between the werewolf and
the swan-maiden ; and tlie similarity is no less striking
between the genesis of the two conceptions. The origi-
nal werewolf is the night- wind, regarded now as a man-
like deity and now as a howling lupine fiend ; and the
original swan-maiden is the light fleecy cloud, regarded
either as a woman-like goddess or as a bird swimming in
the sky sea. Tlie one conception has been productive of
little else but horrors ; the otlier has given rise to a great
variety of fanciful creations, from the treacherous mer-
maid and the fiendish nightmare to the gentle Undine,
the charming !N'ausikaa, and the stately Muse of classic
antiquity.
We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in
the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of
departed souls ; he is the wild ancestor of the death-dog,
whose voice under the window of a sick-chamber is even
now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also
been supjxjsed to summon the dying to lier liome in the
Phaiakian land. The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-
plumage, who hovered over Scandinavian battle-fields to
receive the souls of falling heroes, were identical with
the Hindu Apsaras ; and the Houris of the ]\IuHsulman
belong to the same family. Even for the angels, —
women with large wings, who are seen in popular pictures
bearing mortals on high towards heaven, — we can hardly
* Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 163.
WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 103
claim a different kinship. Melusina, when she leaves
the castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee ; and it has
been a common superstition among sailors, that the
appearance of a mermaid, with her comb and looking-
glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all on
board.
October, 1870.
104 MYTES AXD MYTH-MAKEBS.
IV.
LIGHT A^^D DAEKNESS.
WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God
was but " a Bogie of the nursery," he unwittingly
made a remark as suggestive in point of philology as it
was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined
with the lenses of linguistic science, the " Bogie " or
" Bug-a-boo " or " Bugbear " of nursery lore turns out
to be identical, not only with the fairy " Puck," whom
Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the Sla-
vonic " Bog " and the " Baga " of the Cuneiform Inscrip-
tions, both of wliich are names for the Supreme Being.
If we proceed further, and inquire after the ancestral
form of these epithets, — so strangely incongruous in
their significations, — we shall find it in tlie Old Aryan
" Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of
the Yedas, and has left a memento of itself in the sur-
name of the Phrygian Zeus " Bagaios." It seems origi-
nally to have denoted either the unclouded sun or the
sky of noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sfiyana's
commentary on the liig-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 liappiness.*
Thus the same name wliich, to the Yedic poet, to the
Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to the modern Rus-
* Muir's Sanskrit Toxts, V<.1. IV. p. 12; Miillfv, Kiff-Vpila Saiihita,
Vol. I. pp. 230-251 ; Fick, Wocrttrbucli dcr In(J(t;:,'trnianist;heii Grund-
spracbe, p. 124, s, v. Bhaga.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 105
sian, suggests the supreme majesty of deity, is in English
associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin
to that gTotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was
unable to tliink without laugiiing. Such is the irony of
fate toward a deposed deity. The German name for idol
— Ahgott, that is, " ex-god," or " dethroned god " — sums
up in a single etymology the history of the havoc wrought
by monotheism among the ancient symbols of deity. In
the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Eomans a
niche was always in readiness for every new divinity
who could produce respectable credentials ; but the tri-
umph of monotheism converted the stately mansion into
a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist
an " ex-god " was simply a devihsh deceiver of mankind
whom the true God had succeeded in vanquishing ; and
thus the word demon, which to the ancient meant a di-
vine or semi-divine being, came to be apphed to fiends
exclusively. Thus the Teutonic races, who preserved the
name of their highest divinity, Odin, — originally, Guo-
dan, — by which to designate the God of the Christian,*
were unable to regard the Bog of ancient tradition as
anything but an " ex-god," or vanquished demon.
The most striking illustration of this process is to be
found in the word devil itself. To a reader unfamiliar
with* the endless tricks which language dehghts in play-
ing, it may seem shocking to be told that the Gypsies
use the word devil as the name of God.f This, however,
* In the ISTorth American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have col-
lected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond question t'nat
the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of Odin, the
supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly parallel to
that of the French Dieio, which is descended from the Deus of the pagan
Roman.
•\ See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311 ; Kuhn, Beitriige, I. 147. Yet
in the worship of deivel by the Gypsies is to be found the element of
5*
I06 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
is not because these people have made the archfiend an
object of worship, but because the Gypsy language, de-
scending directly from the Sanskrit, has retained in its
primitive exalted sense a word which the English language
has received only in its debased and perverted sense.
The Teutonic words devil, teufcl, diuval, djofidl, djcvful^
may all be traced back to the Zend dev* a name in which
is implicitly contained the record of the oldest monothe-
istic revolution known to history. The influence of the
so-called Zoroastrian reform upon the long-subsequent
development of Christianity will receive further notice
in the course of this paper ; for the present it is enough
to know that it furnished for all Christendom the name
by which it designates the author of evil. To the Parsee
follower of Zarathustra the name of the Devil has very
nearly the same signification as to the Christian ; yet, as
Grimm has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption
of deva, the Sanskrit name for God. "When Zarathustra
overthrew the primeval Aryan nature- worship in Bactria,
this name met the same evil fate which in early Christian
times overtook the word deinon, and from a symbol of
reverence became henceforth a symbol of detestation.-|-
But throughout the rest of the Aryan world it achieved
dialiolism invariably present in barbaric worship. ** Dewel, the great
god in heaven {deica, dcus), is rather feared than loved by these weather-
beaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his thun-
der and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with their
dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune falls on
them ; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it." Tyler,
Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 248.
* See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.
+ The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation degraded
the Vedic gods into demons. " In Buddhism we find these ancient de-
vas, Indra and the rest, cairied about at shows, as servants of Buddha,
vs goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Miiller, Chips, I. 2.0. This is like
he Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the Devil.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. lo/
a nobler career, producing the Greek tlicos, the Lithuanian
cliewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modern French
Vieu, all meaning God.
If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive
source in that once lost but now partially recovered moth-
er-tongue from which all our Aryan languages are de-
scended, we find a root div or dyu, meaning " to shine."
From the first-mentioned form comes deva, with its nu-
merous progeny of good and evil appellatives ; from the
latter is derived the name of Dyaus, with its brethren,
Zeus and Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyic, as a noun, means
" sky " and " day " ; and there are many passages in the
Eig-Yeda where the character of the god Dyaus, as the
personification of the sky or the brightness of the ethereal
heavens, is unmistakably apparent. This key unlocks
for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology. So long
as there was for Zeus no better etymology than that
which assigned it to the root zen, " to live," * there was
little hope of understanding the nature of Zeus. But
when we learn that Zeus is identical with Dyaus, the
bright sky, we are enabled to understand Horace's ex-
pression, " sub Jove frigido," and the prayer of the Athe-
nians, " Eain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Atheni-
ans, and on the fields." f Such expressions as these were
retained by the Greeks and Eomans long after they had
forgotten that their supreme deity was once the sky. Yet
even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical signifi-
* Zei7S — Am — Zrjva — 5t 6v ^v ad iraai roh ^Qaiv virapxei. Plato,
Kratylos, p. 396, A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm.
ad Timseum, II. p. 226, Schneider ; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De
Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology 5i 8u ^Qfiev. See also
Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147.
+ Evxv ' Ad-rjuaicjjv, dcrov, 5(Tov, Cb (piXe Zev, Kara rijs dpovpas rQiv 'kdn-
miwv Kal twv ireSiwv. Marcus Aurelius, v. 7 ; 5e 5' dpa Tievs avvex^^-
Hom. Iliad, xii. 25 ; cf. Petronius Arbiter, Sat. xliv.
I08 MYTHS AND MYTH MAKERS.
cance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could
speak of him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ances-
tor of gods and men ; and in this reverential name Di/aus
pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of the Roman's
Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can he fol-
lowed into Old German, where Zio is the god of day ;
and into Anglo-Saxon, where Tiicsdaeg, or the day of
Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.
Thus we again reach tlie same results which were ob-
tained from the examination of the name Bkctfja. These
various names for the supreme Aryan god, which without
the help afforded by the Yedas could never have been
interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to
the sun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples,
w^hen similarly analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan
conception of a Divine Power, nourishing man and sus-
taining the universe, was suggested by the light of the
mighty Sun ; who, as modern science has shown, is the
originator of all life and motion upon the globe, and
whom the ancients delighted to believe the source, not
only of "the golden ligiit,"* but of everything tliat is
bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, in accepting
this conclusion as well established by linguistic science,
we must be on our guard against an error into which
wTiters on mythology are very liable to fall. Neither
sky nor sun nor light of day, neither Zeus nor Apollo,
neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by tlie
ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense.
To interpret Zeus or Jupiter as originally the supreme
Aryan god, and to regard classic paganism as one of the
degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to sin
against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy.
* "II Sol, dell aurea luce etemo fonte." Tasso, Gerusalemme, XV.
47 ; cf. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. IO9
Philology itself teaches us that this could not have been
so. Father Dyaus was originally the bright sky and
nothing more. Although his name became generalized,
in the classic languages, into deus, or God, it is quite
certain that in early days, before the Aryan separation,
it had acquired no such exalted significance. It was
only in Greece and Eome — or, we may say, among the
still united Italo-Hellenic tribes — that Jupiter-Zeus
attained a pre-eminence over all other deities. The
people of Iran quite rejected him, the Teutons preferred
Thor and Odin, and in India he was superseded, first by
Indra, afterwards by Brahma and Yishnu. We need
not, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among
the old Aryans ; nor may we expect to find any sense,
active or dormant, of monotheism in the primitive intel-
ligence of uncivilized men.* The whole fabric of com-
parative mythology, as at present constituted, and as
described above, in the first of these papers, rests upon
the postulate that the earliest religion was pure fetichism.
In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans
the gods are presented to us only as vague powers, with
their nature and attributes dimly defined, and their rela-
tions to each other fluctuating and often contradictory.
There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one
deity to another. The same pair of divinities appear
now as father and daughter, now as brother and sister,
* The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the tribes of
North America. "In no Indian language could the early missionaries
find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and OM meant any-
thing endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy
Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were
forced to use a circumlocution, — 'the great chief of men,' or 'he who
lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. Ixxix.
" The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none ;
doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to
swear by." Ibid, p. 31.
no MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
now as husband and wife ; and again they quite lose
their personality, and are represented as mere natui'al
phenomena. As ' Mliller observes, " The poets of the
Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations without
being frightened by any contradictions. They knew of
Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the
god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all ; but
they were by no means startled at the idea that their
Indra had a mother, or that their Agni [Latin ignis] was
born like a babe from the friction of two fire-sticks, or
that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the
lap of Aditi." * Thus we have seen Bhaga, the day-
light, represented as the offspring of Aditi, the boundless
Orient; but he had several brothers, and among them
were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching firmament,
and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have
here but so many different names for what is at bottom
one and the same conception. The common element
which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga and Indra, was
made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth,
and life of day, as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and
seeming death of the night-time. And this common
element was personified in as many different ways as
the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper saw fit
to devise.-f
Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like
the sun, the sky, the dawn, and the night, should be repre-
sented in mythology by such a host of gods, goddesses,
and heroes. For at one time the Sun is represented as
the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away from
men the golden treasures of light and warmtli, and at
another time he is represented as a weary voyager trav-
* Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, 1. 230.
+ Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. Ill
ersing the sky-sea amid many perils, with the steadfast
purpose of returning to his western home and his twi-
light bride ; hence the different conceptions of Herakles,
Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is represented as
the son of the Dawn, and again, with equal propriety, as
the son of the Night, and the fickle lover of the Dawn ;
hence we have, on the one hand, stories of a virgin
mother who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the
other hand, stories of a beautiful maiden who is forsaken
and perhaps cruelly slain by her treacherous lover. In-
deed, the Sun's adventures with so many dawn-maidens
have given him quite a bad character, and the legends
are numerous in which he appears as the prototype of
Don Juan. Yet again his separation from the bride
of his youth is described as due to no fault of his own,
but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him away,
as Aineias was compelled to abandon Dido. Or, accord-
ing to a third and equally plausible notion, he is a hero
of ascetic virtues, and the dawn-maiden is a wicked
enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, who
vainly endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odys-
seus these various conceptions are blended together.
When enticed by artful women,* he yields for a while
to the temptation; but by and by liis longing to see
Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record
which Penelope might not altogether have liked. Again,
though the Sun, " always roaming with a hungry heart,"
* It should be borne in mind, however, that one of the women who
tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess of darkness ;
Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhauser. Kirke,
on the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, whom she
resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn -goddess Athene, the loftiest
of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an enchantress.
She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen Labe, whose
sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king of Persia.
112 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
has seen many cities and customs of strange men, he is
nevertheless confined to a single path, — a circumstance
which seems to have occasioned mucli speculation in the
primeval mind. Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain
Peruvian Inca, who seems to have been an "infidel"
with reference to the orthodox mythology of his day,
that he thought the Sun was not such a mighty god after
all ; for if he were, he would wander about the heavens
at random instead of going forever, like a horse in a
treadmill, along the same course. The American Indians
explained this circumstance by myths which told how
the Sun was once caught and tied with a chain which
would only let him swing a little way to one side or the
other. The ancient Aryan developed the nobler myth of
the labours of Herakles, performed in obedience to the
bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs
destroy its parents, the Night and the Dawn; and
accordingly his parents, forewarned by prophecy, expose
him in infancy, or order him to be put to death ; but his
tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter.
And again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own,
is sometimes represented as retiring moodily from the
sight of men, like Achilleus and Meleagros : he is short-
lived and ill-fated, born to do much good and to be
repaid with ingratitude ; his life depends on the duration
of a burning brand, and when that is extinguished he
must die.
The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well
illustrates the multiplicity of conceptions which clustered
about the daily career of the solar orb. His fatlier, Laios,
had been warned by the Delphic oracle that he was in
danger of death from his own son. The newly born
Oidipous was therefore exposed on the hillside ; but, like
Romulus and Remus, and all infants similarly situated
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 13
in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken to Corinth,
where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to
Thebes, he got into a quarrel with an old man whom he
met on the road, and slew him, who was none other than
his father, Laios. Eeaching Thebes, he found the city
harassed by the Sphinx, who afflicted the land with
drought until she should receive an answer to her riddles.
Oidipous destroyed the monster by solving her dark say-
ings, and as a reward received the kingdom, with his own
mother, lokaste, as his bride. Then the Erinyes has-
tened the discovery of these dark deeds ; lokaste died in
her bridal chamber ; and Oidipous, having bhnded himself,
fled to the grove of the Eumenides, near Athens, where,
amid flashing lightning and peals of thunder, he died.
Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from
Herakles and Perseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he
performs his marvellous deeds at the behest of others.
His father, Laios, is none other than the Vedic Dasyu,
the night-demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar
offspring. In the evening, Oidipous is united to the
Dawn, the mother who had borne him at daybreak ; and
here the original story doubtless ended. In the Vedic
hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne),
the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight,
marries. To the Indian mind the story was here com-
plete ; but the Greeks had forgotten and outgrown the
primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipous
and lokaste were human, or at least anthropomorphic
beings ; and a marriage between them was a fearful crime
which called for bitter expiation. Thus the latter part
of the story arose in the effort to satisfy a moral feeling.
As the name of Laios denotes the dark night, so, like
lole, Oinone, and lamos, the word lokaste signifies the
delicate violet tints of the morning and evening clouda
114 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
Oidipous was exposed, like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic
word meaning " the earth "), because the sunlight in the
morning lies upon the hillside.* He is borne on to the
destruction of his father and the incestuous maniage
with his mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the
sun cannot but slay the darkness and hasten to the couch
of the violet twilight.-f- The Sphinx is the storm-demon
who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain ; she
is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Ecliidna, and Chimaim,
and is akin to the throttling snakes of darkness which
the jealous Here sent to destroy Herakles in his cradle.
The idea was not derived from Eg}^t, but the Greeks, on
finding Eg}^tian figures resembling their conception of
the Sphinx, called them by the same name. Tlie omni-
scient Sun comprehends the sense of her dark mutterings,
and destroys her, as Indra slays Vritra, bringing do\\Ti
rain upon the parclied earth. The Erinyes, who bring to
light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a
previous paper, as the personification of daylight, wliich
reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night.
The grove of the Erinyes, like the garden of the Hyper-
boreans, represents " the fairy network of clouds, which
are the first to receive and the last to lose the light
of the sun in the morning and in the evening ; hence,
although Oidipous dies in a thunder-storm, yet the
Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is one of
* The Persian Cyrus Ls an historical personage ; but the story of his
perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology' as much as the stories of
the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His grandfather,
Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being identical with
that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh
as the biting sei-pent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations,
II. 358.
t In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed into the
curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the day of
judgment.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 115
(2eep peace and tranquillity." * To the last remains with
him his daughter Antigone, " she who is born opposite,"
the pale light wliich springs up opposite to the setting
sun.
These examples show that a story-root may be as
prohfic of heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just
as we find the root spak, " to look," begetting words so
various as sceptic, hishop, speculate, conspicuous, species,
and spice, we must expect to find a simple representation
of the diurnal course of the sun, like those Ipically given
in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as
those of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried.
In fact, the types upon which stories are constructed are
wonderfully few. Some clever pla}nvright — I believe
it was Scribe — has said that there are only seven pos-
sible dramatic situations; that is, all the plays in the
world may be classed with some one of seven arche-
typal dramas.-|- If this be true, the astonishing complex-
ity of mythology taken in the concrete, as compared
with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need not sur-
prise us.
The extreme Hmits of divergence between stories
descended from a common root are probably reached in
the myths of light and darkness with which the present
discussion is mainly concerned. The subject will be
best elucidated by taking a single one of these myths
and following its various fortunes through different
regions of the Aryan world. The myth of Hercules and
* Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.
+ In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of the x^Torthern
Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious and
praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of household
legends to about fifty story-roots ; and his list, though both redundant
and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very instruc-
tive.
Il6 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an essay which is
one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the
study of comparative mythology; and while following
liis footsteps our task will be an easy one.
The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one
of the oldest of the traditions common to the whole
Indo-European race, appears in Italy as a purely local
legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighth
book of the ^neid ; by Livy, at the beginning of his his-
tory ; and by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules, journeying
through Italy after his victory over Geryon, stops to rest
by the bank of the Tiber. Wliile he is taking his repose,
the three-headed monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan and a
formidable brigand, comes and steals his cattle, and drags
them tail-foremost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But
the lowing of the cows arouses Hercules, and he runs
toward the cavern where the robber, already frightened,
has taken refuge. Armed with a huge flinty rock, he
breaks open the entrance of the cavern, and confronts
the demon within, who vomits forth flames at him and
roars like the thunder in the storm-cloud. After a short
combat, his hideous body falls at the feet of the invincible
hero, who erects on the spot an altar to Jupiter Inventor,
in commemoration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient
Eome teemed witli reminiscences of this event, which
Livy regarded as first in the long series of the exploits
of Ids countrymen. The place where Hercules pastured
his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium ;
near it the Porta Trifianina preserved the recollection of
the monster's triple head; and in the time of I)i(jdurus
Siculus sight-seers were shown the cavern of Cacus on
the slope of tlie Aventine. Every tenth day the earlier
generations of Romans celebrated the victory with solenm
sacrifices at the Ara Maxima ; and on days of triumph
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. il^
the fortunate general deposited there a tithe of his booty,
to be distributed among the citizens.
In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did
not originally figure. The Latin Hercules was an essen-
tially peaceful and domestic deity, watching over house-
holds and enclosures, and nearly akin to Terminus and
the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar
divinity at aU. But the purely accidental resemblance
of his name to that of the Greek deity Herakles,* and
the manifest identity of the Cacus-myth with the story
of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led to the substi-
tution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend,
who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine
name Sancus. Now Johannes Lydus informs us that, in
Sabine, Sancus signified " the sky," a meaning which we
have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The
same substitution of the Greek hero for the Eoman
divinity led to the alteration of the name of the demon
overcome by his thunderbolts. The corrupted title Cams
was supposed to be identical with the Greek word kahos,
meaning " evil," and the corruption was suggested by the
epithet of Herakles, Alexikakos, or " the averter of ill."
Originally, however, the name was Ccecius, " he who
* There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and
Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like ThemistoJcles ;^ the
former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If
Herakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with
S, and not with H, as septa corresponds to eirTa, sequor to '^rro/xai, etc.
It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of
his History, abandons this view, and observes : " Auch der griechische
Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch
und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint
znnachst als Gott des gewagteu Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen
Vermogensveraiehrung." Eomische Geschichte, ]. 181. One would
gladly learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less
defensible opinion.
Il8 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
blinds or darkens," and it corresponds literally to the
name of the Greek demon Xaikias, whom an old proverb,
preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the
clouds.*
Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent.
The three-headed Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of
Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros, and of the three-
headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the dark
regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf
or Eakshasa, the fiend of the storm who steals the bright
cattle of Helios, and hides them in the black cavernous
rock, from which they are afterwards rescued by the
schamir or Hghtning-stone of the solar hero. The phys-
ical character of the myth is apparent even in the
description of Virgil, w^iich reads wonderfully like a
Vedic hymn in celebration of the exploits of Indra. But
when we turn to the Veda itself, we find the correctness
of the interpretation demonstrated again and again, with
inexhaustible prodigality of evidence. Here we encoun-
ter again the three-headed Orthros under tlie idenj^ical
title of Vritra, "he who shrouds or envelops," called
also (^ushna, " he who parches," Fani, " the robber," and
Ahif " the strangler." In many hymns of the Ilig-Veda
the story is told over and over, like a musical theme
arranged with variations. Indra, the god of light, is a
herdsman who tends a herd of bright golden or violet-
coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster with three
heads, steals them and hides them in a cavern, but Indra
slays him as Jupiter slew Csecius, and the cows are
recovered. The language of the myth is so significant,
that the Hindu commentators of the Veda have them-
selves given explanations of it similar to those proposed
* For the relations botwepn Saiifiis utid llcraklcs, .see Prellei;
Romische Mythologie, p. G35 ; Volhuur, Mythologie, p. 970.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. II9
by modem philologists. To them the legend never
became devoid of sense, as the myth of Geryon appeared
to Greek scholars like Apollodoros.*
These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of
purple and gold, are the clouds lit up by the solar rays ;
but the demon who steals them is not always the fiend
of the storm, acting in that capacity. They are stolen
every night by Vritra the concealer, and Caecius the
darkener, and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking
for them, sending Sarama, the inconstant twilight, to
negotiate for their recovery. Between the storm-myth
and the myth of night and morning the resemblance is
sometimes so close as to confuse the interpretation of the
two. Many legends which Max Midler explains as
myths of the victory of day over night are explained by
Dr. Kuhn as storm-myths ; and the disagreement between
two such powerful champions would be a standing
reproach to what is rather prematurely called the science
of comparative mythology, were it not easy to show that
the difference is merely apparent and non-essential. It
is the old story of the shield with two sides ; and a com-
parison of the ideas fundamental to these myths will
show that there is no valid ground for disagreement in
the interpretation of them. The myths of schamir and
the divining-rod, analyzed in a previous paper, explain
the rending of the thunder-cloud and the procuring of
water without especial reference to any struggle between
opposing divinities. But in the myth of Hercules and
Cacus, the fundamental idea is the victory of the solar
god over the robber who steals the light. Now whether
the robber carries off the light in the evening when Indra
has gone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against
the sky during the daytime, causing darkness to spread
* Bumouf, Bh^gavata-Purana, III. p. Ixxxvi ; Br^al, op. cit. p. 98.
120 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
over the earth, would make little diflerence to the framers
of tlie m}i;h. To a chicken a solar eclipse is the same
thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly.
Wliy, then, should the primitive thinker have made a
distinction between the darkening of the sky caused by
black clouds and that caused by the r(jtation of the
earth ? He had no more conception of the scientitic
explanation of these phenomena than the chicken has
of the scientific explanation of an eclipse. For him it
was enough to know that the solar radiance was stolen,
in the one case as in the other, and to suspect that the
same demon was to blame for both robberies.
The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that
the victory of Indra over Vritra is essentially the same
as his factory over the Panis. Vritra, the storm-fiend, is
himself called one of the Panis ; yet the latter are uni-
formly represented as night-demons. They steal Indra's
golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to a
dark hiding-place near the eastern horizon. Indra sends
the dawn-n}Tnph, Sarama, to search for them, but as she
comes within sight of the dark stable, the Panis try to
coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee our
sister, do not go away again ; we will give thee part of
the cows, 0 darling." * According to the text of this
hymn, she scorns their solicitations, but elsewhere the
fickle dawn-nym])h is said to coquet with the powers
of darkness. Slie does not care for their cows, but will
take a drink of milk, if tlioy will be so good as to get it
for her. Then she goes ])ack and tells Indra tliat she
cannot find the cows. He kicks her with his foot, and
slie runs back to tlie Panis, followed by the god, who
smites them all witli liis unerring arrows and recovers
the stolen liglit. From such a simple beginning as this
* Max Mii'.ler, Science of Language, II 484.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 121
has been deduced the Greek myth of the faithlessness of
Helen.*
These night-demons, the Panis, though not apparently-
regarded with any strong feehng of moral condemnation,
are nevertheless hated and dreaded as the authors of
calamity. They not only steal the daylight, but they
parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay
vegetation during the winter months. As Ccccius, the
"darkener," became ultimately changed into Cacus, the
"evil one," so the name of Vritra, the "concealer,"
the most famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized
until it came to mean " enemy," like the English word
fiend, and began to be appHed indiscriminately to any
kind of evil spirit. In one place he is called Adeva, the
"enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly equivalent to
the Persian dev.
In the Zendavesta the mjrth of Hercules and Cacus
has given rise to a vast system of theology. The fiendish
Panis are concentrated in Ahriman or Anro-mainyas,
whose name signifies the " spirit of darkness," and who
carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahura-
mazda, who is described by his ordinary surname, Spento-
mainyas, as the " spirit of light." The ancient polytheism
here gives place to a refined dualism, not very different
from what in many Christian sects has passed current as
monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who struggles
with Ormuzd, not for the possession of a herd of perisha-
ble cattle, but for the dominion of the universe. Ormuzd
creates the world pure and beautiful, but Ahriman comes
* As Max Miiller observes, "apart from all mythological considera-
tions, Saramd 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, Saramtijas to Hermeicts, and Almryu to
Achilleus. Miiller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers
to the Panis.
6
122 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
after liim and creates everytliing that is evil in it. He
not only keeps the earth covered with darkness during
half of the day, and withholds tlie rain and destroys the
crops, but he is the author of all evil thoughts and the
instigator of all wicked actions. Like his progenitor
Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under
the form of a serpent ; and the destruction which ulti-
mately awaits these demons is also in reserve for him.
Eventually there is to be a day of reckoning, when Ahri-
man will be bound in chains and rendered powerless, or
when, according to another account, he will be converted
to righteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed
would be the case with Satan.
This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a
powerful influence upon the development of Christian
theology. The very idea of an archfiend Satan, which
Christianity received from Judaism, seems either to have
been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to
have derived its principal characteristics from that
source. There is no evidence that the Jews, previous to
the Babylonish captivity, possessed the conception of a
Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier books of
the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as dispensing
with his own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus
of the Iliad* The story of the serpent in Eden — an
Aryan story in every particular, which has crept into the
Pentateuch — is not once alluded to in the Old Testa-
ment; and the notion of Satan as the author of evil
appears only in the later books, composed after the Jews
had come into close contact with I*ersian ideas.f In the
* " I create evil," Isaiah xlv. 7 ; " Shall there he evil in the city,
and the T^ord hath not done it ?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Hind, xxiv. 527, and
Contra.st 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Clironiclcs xxi. 1.
+ Nor is there any ground for believing that the scr}>eiit in the Eden-
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 23
Book of Job, as E^ville observes, Satan is " still a mem-
ber of the celestial court, being one of the sons of the
Elohim, but having as his special office the continual
accusation of men, and having become so suspicious by
his practice as pubhc accuser, that he believes in the
virtue of no one, and always presupposes interested
motives for the purest manifestations of human piety."
In this way the character of this angel became injured,
and he became more and more an object of dread and
dislike to men, until the later Jews ascribed to him all
the attributes of Ahriman, and in this singularly altered
shape he passed into Christian theology. Between the
Satan of the Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the
metamorphosis is as great as that wdiich degraded the
stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light, into the
demon-like Fury who torments WTong-doers in Tartarus ;
and, making allowance for difference of circumstances,
the process of degradation has been very nearly the same
in the two cases.
The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque
compound of elements derived from all the systems of
pagan mythology which Christianity superseded. He is
primarily a rebellious angel, expelled from heaven along
with his followers, like the giants who attempted to scale
Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend
who revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As
the serpent prince of the outer darkness, he retains the
old characteristics of Yritra, Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna.
myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the work of
modem dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the habit,
so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the
Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of wjitings of dif-
ferent ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity. In a
future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to examine, at con-
biderable length, this interesting myth of the garden of Eden.
124 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
As the black dog which appears behind tlie stove in Dr.
Faust's study, he is the chissic hell-hound Kerberos, the
Vedic (Jarvara. From the sylvan deity Pan he gets his
goat-like body, his horns and cloven hoofs. Like the
wind-god Orpheus, to whose music the trees bent their
heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the bagpipes.
Like those other wind-gods the psychopomp Hermes and
the wdld huntsman Odin, he is the prince of the powers
of the air : his flight through the midnight sky, attended
by his troop of witches mounted on their brooms, wluch
sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves from
the trees, is the same as the furious chase of the Erlking
Odin or the Burckar Vittikab. He is Dionysos, Avho
causes red wine to flow from the dry wood, alike on tlie
deck of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and in Auerbach's
cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a skilful
worker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic
fire-god Hephaistos or Vulcan ; and, like Hephaistos, he
is lame from the effects of his fall from heaven. From
the lightning-god Thor he obtains his red beard, his
pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts ; and, like
that ancient deity, he is in the habit of beating liis wife
behind the door when the rain falls during sunshine.
Finally, he takes a hint from Poseidon and from the
swan-maidens, and appears as a water-imj) or Xixy
(whence jjrobably his name of Old Nick), and as the
Davy (cleva) whose " locker " is situated at the bottom
of the sea.*
According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth
century, the Devil is a learned scholar and profound
thinker. Having profited by six thousand years of in-
* For furtlif-r particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations,
Vol. II. J.]). S-OS, 3G6 ; to which I am iii«lcl.te<l for several ol the details
here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, 1. 661,,seq.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 25
tense study and meditation, he has all science, philoso-
phy, and theology at his tongue's end ; and, as his skill
has increased with age, he is far more than a match for
mortals in cunning.* Such, however, is not the view
taken by mediaeval mythology, which usually represents
his stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory of
Hercules over Cacus is repeated in a hundred mediaeval
legends in which the Devil is overreached and made a
laughing-stock. The germ of this notion may be found
in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is it-
self a victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and
which curiously reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated
by Mr. Cox. " The Devil asks a man who is moulding
buttons what he may be doing ; and when the man an-
swers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether
he can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come
again another day ; and when he makes his appearance
accordingly, the man tells him that the operation cannot
be performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound with
Ms back fastened to a bench. Wliile he is thus pinioned
he asks the man's name. The reply is Issi (' himself ').
When the lead is melted, the Devil opens his eyes wide
to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is blinded,
lie starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which
he had been bound ; and when some workpeople in the
fields ask him who had thus treated him, his answer is,
' Issi teggi ' (^ Self did it '). With a laugh they bid him
lie on the bed which he has made : ' selbst gethan, selbst
habe.' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was never
* Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited in Buckle's
History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief is implied in
the quaint monkish tale of " Celestinus and the Miller's Horse." See
Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p, 134.
126 , MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is
frequently foiled by the superior cunning of mortals.
Once, he agreed to build a liouse for a peasant in ex-
change for the peasant's soul ; but if the house were not
finished before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and
void. Just as the Devil was putting on the last tile the
man imitated a cockcrow and waked up all the roosters
in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend had his labour for
his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold liimself to
the Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches
for seven years, and then came to get him. The mer-
chant " took the Devil in a friendly manner by the hand
and, as it w^as just evening, said, ' Wife, bring a light
quickly for the gentleman.' ' That is not at all neces-
sary,' said the Devil ; ' I am merely come to fetch you.'
* Yes, yes, that I know very well,' said the merchant,
* only just grant me the time till this little candle-end is
burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to put on
my coat.' ' Very well,' said the Devil, ' but only till the
candle is burnt out.' ' Good,' said the merchant, and
going into the next room, ordered the maid-servant to
place a large cask full of water close to a very deep pit
that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also car-
ried, each of them, a cask to the spot ; and when all was
done, they were ordered each to take a shovel, and stand
round the pit. The merchant then returned to the Devil,
who seeing that not more than about an inch of candle
remained, said, laughing, * Now get yourself ready, it will
soon be burnt out.' ' That I see, and am contert ; but I
shall hold you to your word, and stay till it is burnt.'
* Of course,' answered the Devil ; ' I stick to my word.'
'It is dark in the next room,' continued the merchant,
' but I must find tlie great book witli clasps, so let me
just take the light for one moment.' ' Certainly,' said the
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 12/
Devil, ' but I '11 go with you.' He did so, and the mer-
chant's trepidation was now on the increase. When in
the next room he said on a sudden, ' Ah, now I know,
the key is in the garden door.' And with these words he
ran out with the light into the garden, and before the
Devil could overtake him, threw it into the pit, and the
men and the maids poured water upon it, and then filled
up the hole with earth. Now came the Devil into the
garden and asked, ' Well, did you get the key ? and how
is it with the candle ? where is it ? ' ' The candle ? ' said
the merchant. ' Yes, the candle.' ' Ha, ha, ha ! it is not
yet burnt out,' answered the merchant, laughing, ' and
will not be burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies
there a hundred fathoms deep in the earth.' When the
Devil heard this he screamed awfully, and went off mth
a most intolerable stench." *
One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and
could n't hit a bird at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the
Devil in order to become a Freischiitz. The fiend was to
come for him in seven years, but must be always able to
name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise the
compact was to be nullified. After that day the fowler
never missed his aim, and never did a fowler command
such wages. When the seven years were out the fowler
told all these things to his wife, and the twain hit upon
an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman
stripped herself, daubed her whole body with molasses,
and rolled herself up in a feather-bed, cut open for this
purpose. Then she hopped and skipped about the field
where her husband stood parleying with Old Nick.
" There 's a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. " Of
course I '11 fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a
bird it is ; else our agreement is cancelled. Old Boy."
* Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 258.
128 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
There was no help for it ; the Devil had to own himself
nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone
which nearly suffocated the Freischiitz and his good
woman.*
In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more in-
gloriously defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, be-
ing jilted by liis sweetheart, went out into the woods to
hang himself. As he was sitting on the bough, with the
cord about liis neck, preparatory to taking the fatal
plunge, suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared
before him, and offered his services. He might become
as wealthy as he liked, and make his sweetheart burst
with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty years he
must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was
struck, for Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time
to enjoy one's self in, and perhaps the Devil might get
him in any event ; as well be hung for a sheep as for a
lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented chiming-bells and
lager-beer, for both of which achievements his name is
held in grateful remembrance by the Teuton. No sooner
had the Holy Eoman Emperor quaffed a gallon or two of
the new beverage than he made Gambrinus Duke of
Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the
fiddler's turn to laugh at the discomfiture of his old
sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear of women, says the
legend, and so lived in peace. For thirty years he sat
beneath his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drink-
ing beer with his nobles and burghers around him. Then
Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his imps, with orders to
* Thorpe, Northom ^lytholofr^', Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse story
of " Not a Pin to choose Ijetween them," the old woman is in doubt as
to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in a
tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers ; and when Tray barks at
her, her pery)lexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the Frei«
Bchiitz, See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 29
bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jocko was,
like Swiveller's Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer,
never having drunk of it even in a sip, and the Flemish
schoppen were too much for him. He fell into a drunken
sleep, and did not wake up until noon next day, at which
he was so mortified that he had not the face to go back
to hell at all. So Gambrinus hved on tranquilly for a
century or two, and drank so much beer that he turned
into a beer-barrel.*
The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in
these legends is probably derived from the Trolls, or
" night-folk," of Northern mythology. In most respects
the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elves and fairies, and
the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights ; but their
pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White
Ladies," were not originally spirits of darkness, but were
nearly akin to the swan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and
dryads, and though their wrath was to be dreaded, they
were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having no
place for such beings, degraded them into something like
imps ; the most charitable theory being that they were
angels who had remained neutral during Satan's rebel-
lion, in punishment for which Michael expelled them
from heaven, but has left their ultimate fate unannounced
until the day of judgment. The Jinn appear to have been
similarly degraded on the rise of Mohammedanism. But
the Trolls were always imps of darkness. They are de-
scended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern
paganism, and they correspond to the Panis, or night-
demons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they are said
to burst when they see the risen sun.f They eat human
flesh, are ignorant of the simplest arts, and hve in the
* See Deulin, Coxites d'lin Biiveur de Biere, pp. 3- 29.
+ Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No. XLII.
6* 1
130 MYTHS AND MYTU-MAKERS.
deepest recesses of the forest or in caverns on the hill-
side, where the sunlight never penetrates. Some of these
characteristics may very likely have been suggested by
reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from whom the
Aryan invaders wrested the dominion of Europe.* In
some legends the Trolls are represented as an ancient
race of beings now superseded by the human race.
" ' Wliat sort of an earth-worm is this ? ' said one Giant
to another, when they met a man as they walked.
* Tliese are the earth-worms that will one day eat us up,
brother,' answered the other ; and soon both Giants left
that part of Germany." " ' See what pretty playthings,
mother 1 ' cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties her
apron, and shows her a plough, and horses, and a peasant.
' Back with them this instant,' cries the mother in wrath,
' and put them dowTi as carefully as you can, for these
playthings can do our race great harm, and when these
come we must budge.*" Very naturally the primitive
Teuton, possessing already the conception of night-de-
mons, would apply it to these men of the woods whom even
to this day his uneducated descendants believe to be sor-
cerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever con-
tributions historical fact may have added to his character,
the Troll is originally a creation of mythology, like l*oly-
phemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth person, his
cannil)al appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready gulli-
bility is shown in the story of " Boots who ate a Matcli
with the Troll." Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and
the counterpart alike of Jack the Giant-killer, and of
Odysseus, is the youngest of three l)rotliers who go into
a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears and threatens to
kill any one who dares to meddle with his timber. The
♦ See Dasont's Introduction, p. cxxxix ; Canipbcll, Talcs of tlie West
Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344 ; and Williarus, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 10.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 131
elder brothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face He
pulled a cheese out of his scrip and squeezed it till the
whey began to spurt out. " Hold your tongue, you dirty
Troll" sdd he, "or Til squeeze you as I squeeze this
stone'." So the TroU gi-ew timid and begged to ^ ^Pared
and Boots let him off on condition that he would hew al
day with him. They worked till nightfall, and the Troll
^iJnt length accomplished wonders. Then Boots wen
home with the Troll, having arranged that ^e jliould get
the water while his host made the fire. When they
reached the hut there were two enoimous iron pails so
heavy that none but a TroU could hft them, but Boots
was not to be frightened. "Bah!" sa.d he. Do you
suppose I am going to get water m those patoy hand-
basins? Hold on till I go and get the spring itself!
" 0 dear ! " said the Troll, " I 'd rather not ; do you make
the fire, and 1 11 get the water" Then when the soup
was made. Boots challenged his new friend to an eating-
match ; and tying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to
pour soup into it by the ladleful. By and by the giant
threw down his spoon in despair, and owned himself con-
quered " No, no ! don't give it up yet," said Boots, just
cut a hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat for-
ever" And suiting the action to the words, he ripped
open his scrip. So the silly Troll cut himself open and
died and Boots carried off all his gold and silver.
Once there was a TroU whose name was Wmd-and-
» "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one occasion,
when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had never
seen a Bam before, and accordingly, approaching submissive y, he sa,d
' old day, friend ! what may your name be ?' The other, m his grutf
voice, an/strikmg his breast with his forefoot, said, ■ I am a Earn ; who
arc vou»' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive
Td then, taking leave of the Eam, he ran home as fast as he could.
Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.
132 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Weather, and Saint Olaf hired him to build a church.
If the church were completed within a certain specified
time, the Troll was to get possession of Saint Olaf. The
saint then planned such a stupendous edifice that he
thought the giant would be forever building it ; but the
work went on briskly, and at the appointed day nothing
remained but to finish the point of the spire. In his
consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed by the
Troll's den, when he heard the giantess telhng her chil-
dren that their father, "VYind-and- Weather, was finishing
his church, and would be home to-morrow with Saint
Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church and bawled
out, " Hold on, Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crook-
ed ! " Then the giant tumbled down from the roof and
broke into a thousand pieces. As in the cases of the
Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end
as soon as the enchanter was called by name.
These TroUs, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly
habit of carrying off beautiful princesses. This is strictly
in keeping with their character as night-demons, or Panis.
In the stories of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant, the
night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden after having
turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or In-
dra, in search of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the
Troll's castle, and then the dawn-nymph, true to her
fickle character, cajoles the Giant and enables Boots to
destroy him. In the famous myth wliich serves as the
basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the
dragon Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps
her shut up in a castle on tlie Glistening Heath, until
some champion shaU be found powerful enough to rescue
her. The castle is as hard to enter as that of the Sleep-
ing Beauty ; but Sigurd, the Nortliern Acliilleus, riding
on his deathless horse, and wielding his resistless sword
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 33
Gram, forces his way in, slays Fafnir, and recovers the
Valkyrie.
In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to
belong to the class of cloud-maidens ; and between the
tale of Sigurd and that of Hercules and Cacus there is
no difference, save that the bright sunlit clouds which are
represented in the one as cows are in the other repre-
sented as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they
reappear as the Golden Fleece, carried to the far east by
Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves Niblungs, or
" Children of the Mist " (Nephele), and there guarded by
a dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a
fiend of darkness, and recovered by a hero of light, who
slays the demon. And — remembering what Scribe said
about the fewness of dramatic types — I beHeve we are
warranted in asserting that aU the stories of lovely
women held in bondage by monsters, and rescued by
heroes who perform wonderful tasks, such as Don Quixote
burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar
myths, Hke the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not
mean to say that the story-tellers who beguiled their
time in stringing together the incidents which make up
these legends were conscious of their solar character.
They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weave
allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the
story of Perseus and Andromeda, the Arabians who de-
vised the tale of Codadad and his brethren, the Flemings
who listened over their beer-mugs to the adventures of
Culotte-Verte, were not thinking of sun-gods or dawn-
maidens, or night-demons ; and no theory of mythology
can be sound which implies such an extravagance. Most
of these stories have Lived on the lips of the common
people ; and illiterate persons are not in the habit of
allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical
134 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated
is, that the sun and the clouds, the light and the dark-
ness, were once supposed to be actuated by wills analo-
gous to the human will ; that they were personified and
worsliipped or propitiated by sacrifice ; and that their
doings were described in language which applied so well
to the deeds of human or quasi-human beings that in
course of time its primitive purport faded from recollec-
tion. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths
of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for
philology itself shows that the names employed in them
are the names of the gi'eat phenomena of nature. And
when once a few striking stories had thus arisen, — when
once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and
how Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how Odysseus blinded
the Kyklops, — then certain mythic or dramatic types
had been called into existence ; and to these types, pre*
served in the popular imagination, future stories would
inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no hesita-
tion in admitting a common origin for the vanquished
Panis and the outwitted Troll or Devil ; we may securely
compare the legends of St. George and Jack the Giant-
killer with the myth of Indra slaying Vritra ; we may
see in the invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a
doughty knight-errant of romance ; and we may learn
anew tlie lesson, taught with fresh emphasis by modern
scholarship, that in the deepest sense there is nothing
new under the sun.
I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems
to me that the unguarded language of many students of
mythology is liable to give rise to misapprehensions, and
to discredit both the method which they employ and the
results which they have ol)taint'd. If we were to give
Ml weight to the statements whicli are sometimes mpde,
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 35
we should perforce believe that primitive men had noth-
ing to do but to ponder about the sun and the clouds, and
to worry themselves over the disappearance of daylight.
But there is nothing in the scientific interpretation of
myths which obliges us to go any such length. I do not
suppose that any ancient Aryan, possessed of good di-
gestive powers and endowed with sound common-sense,
ever lay awake half the night wondering whether the
sun would come back again.* The child and the savage
believe of necessity that the future will resemble the
past, and it is only philosophy which raises doubts on
the subject.-|- The predominance of solar legends in
most systems of mythology is not due to the lack of
" that Titanic assurance with which we say, the sun must
rise " ; X nor again to the fact that the phenomena of day
and night are the most striking phenomena in nature.
Echpses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of
the most terrible and astounding kind, and they have
i^ generated myths ; yet their contributions to folk-lore
8Te scanty compared with those furnished by the strife
between the day-god and his enemies. The sun-myths
have been so prolific because the dramatic types to which
they have given rise are of surpassing human interest.
The dragon who swallows the sun is no doubt a fearful
j»ersonage ; but the hero who toils for others, who slays
hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tears of fair-haired
* I agree, most heartily, with Mr. MahafFy's remarks. Prolegomena
to Ancient History, p. 69.
+ Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about the coun-
tries within the arctic circle where during part of the year the sun never
sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah ! that must be
another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man ; and
in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this
opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of
Mankind, p. 301.
± Max Miiller, Chips, II. 96.
136 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
damsels, and acliieves success in spite of incredible obsta-
cles, is a being with whom we can all sympathize, and of
whom we never weary of hearing.
AVith many of these legends which present the myth
of lidit and darkness in its most attractive form, the
reader is already acquainted, and it is needless to retail
stories which have been told over and over again in books
wliicli every one is presumed to have read. I will con-
tent myself with a weird Irish legend, narrated by Mr.
Patrick Kennedy,* in which we here and there catch
glimpses of the primitive mythical symbols, as fragments
of gold are seen gleaming through the crystal of quartz.
Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died
at ]\Iuskerry a Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint
of hard work and close economy had amassed enormous
wealth. His only son did not resemble him. When the
young ScuUoge looked about the house, the day after his
father's death, and saw the big chests full of gold and
silver, and the cupboards shining with piles of sovereigns,
and the old stockings stuffed with large and small coin,
he said to himself, " Bedad, how shall I ever be able to
spend the Hkes o' that ! " And so he drank, and gam-
bled, and wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing,
until after a while he found the chests empty and the
cupboards poverty-stricken, and the stockings lean and
penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and gam-
bled away all the money he got for it, and then he be-
thought liiiii that a iew liundred pounds miglit be raised
on his mill. Ihit wlien lie went to look at it, he found
" the dam broken, and scarcely a thimldeful of water in
tlie mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the
house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the
lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over every-
* Fictions of tlic Irish Celts, j»i>. 255-270.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 37
thing." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and
take one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his hab-
its.
As he was returning late in the evening from this fare-
well hunt, passing through a lonely glen he came upon
an old man playing backgammon, betting on his left hand
against his right, and crying and cursing because the
right would win. " Come and bet with me," said he to
Sculloge. " Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world,"
was the reply ; " but, if you like, I '11 wager that on the
right." " Done," said the old man, who was a Druid ;
" if you win I '11 give you a hundred guineas." So the
game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was
always the winner, paid over the guineas and told Scul-
loge to go to the Devil with them.
Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the
young farmer went home and began to pay his debts, and
next week he went to the glen and won another game,
and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So Sculloge be-
came prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a
third time, and won a game played for a beautiful wife.
The Druid sent her to his house the next morning before
he was out of bed, and his servants came knocking at the
door and crying, " Wake up ! wake up ! Master Scul-
loge, there 's a young lady here to see you." " Bedad, it 's
the vanithee * herself," said Sculloge ; and getting up in
a hurry, he spent three quarters of an hour in dressing
himseK At last he went down stairs, and there on the
sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland ! Natu-
rally, ScuUoge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as
he begged the lady's pardon for this Druidic style of
wooing, and besought her not to feel obliged to stay with
him unless she really liked him. But the young lady,
* A corruption of Gaelic hJmn a teaigh, " lady of the house."
138 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
who was a king's daughter from a far countiy, was won-
drously charmed with the handsome farmer, and so weU
did they get along that the priest was sent for without
further delay, and they were married before sundown.
Sabina was the vanithee's name ; and she warned her
husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht,
the old man of the glen. So for a while all went happily,
and the Druidic bride was as good as she was beautiful
But by and by Sculloge began to think he was not earn-
ing money fast enough. He could not bear to see his
wdfe's white hands soiled with work, and thought it
would be a fine thing if he could only afford to keep a
few more servants, and drive about with Sabina in an
elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and adorned
wdth jewels.
" I will play one more game and set the stakes high,"
said Sculloge to himself one evening, as he sat pondering
over these tilings ; and so, without consulting Sabina, he
stole away to the glen, and played a game for ten thou-
sand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to
pounce on his prey, and he did not play as of old. Scul-
loge broke into a cold sweat with agony and terror as he
saw the left hand win ! Then the face of Lassa Buaicht
grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge the curse
which is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that he
should never sleep twice under the same roof, or ascend
the coucli of the dawn-nymph, his wife, until he should
have procured and brought to him the sword of light.
When Sculloge reached home, more dead than alive, he
saw tliat his wife knew all. Bitterly tliey wept togetlier,
but she told him that with courage all might be set ri^^ht.
She gave him a Druidic horse, which bore him swiftly
over land and sea, like the enchanted steed of the Arabian
Nights, until he reached the castle of his wife's father;
LIGHT AND DARKNESS. 1 39
'^\\o, as Sculloge now learned, was a good Dmid, the
brother of the evil Lassa Buaicht. This good Druid told
liim that the sword of light was kept by a third brother,
the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in an
enchanted castle, which many brave heroes had tried to
enter, but the dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three
high walls surrounded the castle, and many had scaled
the first of these, but none had ever returned alive. But
Sculloge was not to be daunted, and, taking from his
father-in-law a black steed, he set out for the fortress of
Fiach O'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped
the magic horse, and Sculloge called aloud on the Druid
to come out and surrender his sword. Then came out a
tall, dark man, with coal-black eyes and hair and melan-
choly visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with
the flaming blade. But the Druidic beast sprang back
over the wall in the twinkling of an eye and rescued his
rider, leaving, however, his tail behind in the court-yard.
Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his father-in-law's
palace, and the night was spent in feasting and revelry.
Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when
he got to Fiach's castle, he saw the first wall lying in
rubbish. He leaped the second, and the same scene
occurred as the day before, save that the horse escaped
unharmed.
The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp
like that of Orpheus in his hand, and as he swept its
strings the grass bent to listen and the trees bowed their
heads. The castle walls all lay in ruins, and Sculloge
made his way unhindered to the upper room, where Fiach
lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He seized
the sword of light, which was hung by the cliimney
sheathed in a dark scabbard, and making the best of his
way back to the good king's palace, mounted his wife's
140 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
steed, and scoured over land and sea until he found him-
self in the gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still cry-
ing and cursing ajid betting on his left hand against his
right.
" Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light ! "
shouted ScuUoge in tones of thunder ; and as he drew it
from its sheath the w^hole valley was lighted up as with
the morning sun, and next moment the head of the
wretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet
w^ife, w^ho had come to meet him, was laughing and
crying in his arms.
November, 1870.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD, 14 1
MYTHS OF THE BAEBAEIC WOELD.
THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preced-
ing papers, and illustrated by the examination of
numerous myths relating to the lightning, the storm-
wind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was originally framed
with reference solely to the mythic and legendary lore of
the Aryan world. The phonetic identity of the names
of many Western gods and heroes with the names of
those Vedic divinities which are obviously the personifi-
cations of natural phenomena, suggested the theory which
philosophical considerations had already foreshadowed in
the works of Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive
analysis of Greek, Hindu, Keltic, and Teutonic legends
has amply confirmed. Let us now, before proceeding to
the consideration of barbaric folk-lore, briefly recapitulate
the results obtained by modern scholarship working strict-
ly witliin the limits of the Aryan domain.
In the first place, it has been proved once for all that
the languages spoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks,
Eomans, Kelts, Slaves, and Teutons are all descended
from a single ancestral language, the Old Aryan, in the
same sense that French, Italian, and Spanish are de-
scended from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact
it is an inevitable inference that these various races con-
tain, along with other elements, a race-element in com-
mon, due to their Aryan pedigree. That the Indo-Euro-
pean races are wholly Aryan is very improbable, for in
every case the countries overrun by them were occupied
142 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
by inferior races, whose blood must have mingled in vary-
ing degrees with that of their conquerors ; but that every
Indo-European people is in great part descended from a
common Aryan stock is not open to question.
In the second place, along with a common fund of
moral and religious ideas and of legal and ceremonial ob-
servances, we find these kindred peoples possessed of a
common fund of myths, superstitions, proverbs, popular
poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother
amuses her child with fairy-tales which often correspond,
even in minor incidents, with stories in Scottish or
Scandinavian nurseries ; and she tells them in words
which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and
Gaehc. No doubt many of these stories might have
been devised in a dozen different places independently
of each other ; and no doubt many of them have been
transmitted laterally from one people to another ; but a
careful examination shows that such cannot have been
the case with the great majority of legends and beliefs.
The agreement between two such stories, for instance, as
those of Faithful Jolm and Eama and Luxman is so close
as to make it incredible that they should have been in-
dependently fabricated, while the points of difference are
so important as to make it extremely improbal)le that the
one was ever copied from the other. Besides whicli, tlie
essential identity of such mytlis as tliose of Si<rurd and
Tlieseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us back histor-
ically to a time when the scattered Indo-European tribes
had not yet begun to hold commercial and intellectual
intercourse with each other, and conse(|uently could not
have interchanged their epic materials or their household
stories. We are therefore driven to tlie conclusion —
which, startling as it may seem, is after all tlie most
natural and plausible one that can be stated — that the
kYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 43
Aryan nations, wliich have inherited from a common an-
cestral stock their languages and their customs, have in-
herited also from the same common original their fireside
legends. They have preserved Cinderella and Punchkin
just as they have preserved the words for father and
mother, ten and tiuenty ; and the former case, though
more imposing to the imagination, is scientifically no
less intelligible than the latter.
Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales
may be grouped in a few pretty well defined classes ; and
that the archetypal myth of each class — the primitive
story in conformity to which countless subsequent tales
have been generated — was originally a mere description
of physical phenomena, couched in the poetic diction of
an age when everything was personified, because all nat-
ural phenomena were supposed to be due to the direct
workings of a volition like that of which men were con-
scious within themselves. Thus we are led to the strik-
ing conclusion that mythology has had a common root,
both with science and with religious philosophy. The
myth of Indra conquering Vritra was one of the theo-
rems of primitive Aryan science ; it was a provisional
explanation of the thunder-storm, satisfactory enough
until extended observation and reflection supplied a bet-
ter one. It also contained the germs of a theology ; for
the life-giving solar light furnished an important part of
the primeval conception of deity. And finally, it became
the fruitful parent of countless myths, whether embod-
ied in the stately epics of Homer and the bards of the
Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler legends of St. George
and Wilham Tell and the ubiquitous Boots.
Such is the theory which was suggested half a century
ago by the researches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so far
as concerns the mythology of the Aryan race, is now
144 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
victorious along the whole line. It remains for us to
test the universality of the general principles upon AvLich
it is founded, by a brief analysis of sundiy legends and
superstitions of the barbaric world. Since the fetichistic
habit of explaining the outward phenomena of nature
after the analogy of the inward phenomena of conscious
intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ances-
tors, but is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of
the conditions under wliich uncivilized thinking pro-
ceeds, we may expect to find the barbaric mind personi-
fjdng the powers of nature and making myths about their
operations the whole world over. And we need not be
surprised if we find in the resulting mythologic structures
a strong resemblance to the familiar creations of tlie
Aryan intelligence. In point of fact, we shall often be
caUed upon to note such resemblance ; and it accordingly
behooves us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity
between mythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a
common traditional origin, and how far it may be inter-
preted as due merely to the similar workings of the un-
trained intelligence in all ages and countries.
Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages
will here be of service to us, if used discreetly ; other-
wise they are likely to bcAvilder far more than to en-
lighten us. A theorem which Max Mliller has laid down
for our guidance in this kind of investigation furnislies
us with an excellent example of the tricks whicli a
superficial analog}^ may play even with the trained
scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actuated by a
praiseworthy desire to raise the study of myths to some-
thing like the high level of scientific accuracy already
attained by the study of words, Max Miiller endeavours
to introduce one of the most useful canons of philology
into a department of inquiry where its introduction
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 145
could only work the most hopeless confusion. One of
the earliest lessons to be learned by the scientific stu-
dent of hnguistics is the uselessness of comparing to-
gether directly the words contained in derivative lan-
guages. For example, you might set the English tvjelve
side by side with the Latin duodccim, and then stare at
the two words to all eternity without any hope of reach-
ing a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them :
least of all would you suspect that they are descended
from the same radical. But if you take each word by
itself and trace it back to its primitive shape, explaining
every change of every letter as you go, you will at last
reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of
both these strangely metamorphosed words.* Nor will it
do, on the other hand, to trust to verbal similarity with-
out a historical inquiry into the origin of such similarity.
Even in the same language two words of quite different
origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look as
like one another as two pebbles. The French words souris,
a "mouse," and souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly
alike ; but the one comes from Latin sorex and the other
from Latin subridere.
Now Max Miiller tells us that this principle, which is
indispensable in the study of words, is equally indispen-
sable in the study of myths.f That is, you must not
rashly pronounce the Norse story of the Heartless Giant
identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although the
two correspond in every essential incident. In both
legends a magician turns several members of the same
family into stone ; the youngest member of the family
comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives of
* For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on " The Genesis of Lam
guage," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.
t Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.
7 J
146 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Bundry grateful beasts ; arrived at the magician's castle,
he finds a captive princess ready to accept his love and
to play the part of Delilah to the enchanter. In both
stories the enchanter's life depends on the integrity of
something which is elaborately hidden in a far-distant
island, but wliich the fortunate youth, instructed by the
artful princess and assisted by liis menagerie of grateful
beasts, succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth
uses liis advantage to free all liis friends from their en-
chantment, and then proceeds to destroy the villain who
wTOught all this wickedness. Yet, in spite of this agree-
ment. Max Miiller, if I understand him aright, would not
have us infer the identity of the two stories until we have
taken each one separately and ascertained its primitive
mythical significance. Otherwise, for aught we can teU,
the resemblance may be purely accidental, like that of
the French words for " mouse " and " smile."
A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this
perplexity, and assure us that the alleged analogy be-
tween the comparison of words and tlie comparison of
stories is utterly superficial. Tlie transformations of
words — which are often astounding enough — depend
upon a few well-estabhslied physiological principles of
utterance ; and since philology has learned to rely upon
these principles, it has become nearly as sure in its
methods and results as one of the so-called " exact
sciences." Folly enough is doubtless committed within
its precincts by writers who venture there without the
laborious preparation which this science, more than al-
most any other, demands. But the proceedings of the
trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of
the trained astronomer. And though the former may
seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel
when he coolly tells you that molin and fiddle are tlio
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 47
same word, wliile English care and Latin cura have
nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless no
more indulging in guess-work than the astronomer who
confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of Venus
while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydro-
gen in the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example
out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may
become r, and that the broad a-sound may dwindle into
the closer o-sound ; but when you adduce some plausible
etymology based on the assumption that r has changed
into s, or 0 into a, apart from the demonstrable influence
of some adjacent letter, the pliilologist will shake his
head.
Now in the study of stories there are no such simple
rules all cut and dried for us to go by. There is no uni-
form psychological principle which determines that the
three-headed snake in one story shall become a three-
headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in
mythology which decides that a Hindu magician shall
always correspond to a Norwegian Troll or a Keltic
Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not so
simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short,
the study of myths, though it can be made sufficiently
scientific in its methods and results, does not constitute
a science by itself, like philology. It stands on a footing
similar to that occupied by physical geography, or what
the Germans call " earth-knowledge." No one denies that
all the changes going on over the earth's surface conform
to physical laws ; but then no one pretends that there is
any single proximate principle which governs all the
phenomena of rain-fall, of soil-crumbling, of magnetic
variation, and of the distribution of plants and animals.
All these things are explained by principles obtained from
the various sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, and
148 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
physiology. And in just the same way the development
and distribution of stories is explained by the help of
divers resources contributed by philology, psychology,
and history. There is therefore no real analogy between
the cases cited by Max Miiller. Two unrelated words
may be ground into exactly the same shape, just as a
pebble from the North Sea may be undistinguishable
from another pebble on the beach of the AcU'iatic ; but
two stories like those of Punchkin and the Heartless
Giant are no more likely to arise independently of each
other than two coral reefs on opposite sides of the globe
are likely to develop into exactly similar islands.
Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between
legends is proof of kinship, and go our way without fur-
ther misgivings ? Unfortunately we cannot dispose of
the matter in 'quite so summary a fashion ; for it remains
to decide what kind and degree of similarity shall be con-
sidered satisfactory evidence of kinship. And it is just
here tliat doctors may disagree. Here is the point at
which our " science " betrays its weakness as compared
with the sister study of pliilology. Before we can de-
cide with confidence in any case, a great mass of evi-
dence must be brought into court. So long as we re-
mained on Aryan ground, all went smoothly enougli,
because all the external evidence was in our favour. We
knew at the outset, that the Aryans inherit a common
language and a common civilization, and therefore we
found no difficulty in accepting tlie conclusion that they
have inherited, among other things, a common stock of
legends. In the barbaric world it is quite otherwise.
Philology does not pronounce in favour of a common
origin for all barbaric culture, such as it is. The notion
of a single primitive language, standing in tlie same rela-
tion to all existing dialects as tlie relation of old Aryan
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 49
to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew
and Arabic, was a notion suited only to the infancy of
lino-uistic science. As the case now stands, it is certain
that all the languages actually existing cannot be referred
to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable that
there never was any such common ancestor. I am not
now referring to the question of the unity of the human
race. That question lies entirely outside the sphere of
philology. The science of language has nothing to do
with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words
can tell us whether the black men are brethren of the
white men, or whether yellow and red men have a com-
mon pedigree : these questions belong to comparative
physiology. But the science of language can and does
tell us that a certain amount of civilization is requisite
for the production of a language sufficiently durable and
wide-spread to give birth to numerous mutually resem-
bling offspring. Barbaric languages are neither wide-
spread nor durable. Among savages each little group of
families has its own dialect, and coins its own expressions
at pleasure ; and in the course of two or three gener-
ations a dialect gets so strangely altered as virtually to
lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns,
which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get
lost every few years in Polynesia. Since the time of
Captain Cook the Tahitian language has thrown away
five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced them
by brand-new ones ; and on the Amazon you may acquire
a fluent command of some Indian dialect, and then, com-
ing back after twenty years, find yourself worse off than
Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated and
useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval
savages originated a language which has held its own
like the old Aryan, and become the prolific mother of the
r50 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
three or four thousand dialects now in existence ! Before
a durable language can arise, there must be an aggrega-
tion of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may
be need of communication on a large scale, and so that
tradition may be strengthened. Wherever mankind have
associated in nations, permanent languages have arisen,
and their derivative dialects bear the conspicuous marks
of kinship ; but where mankind have remained in their
primitive savage isolation, their languages have remained
sporadic and transitory, incapable of organic develop-
ment, and showing no traces of a kinship which never
existed.
The bearing of these considerations upon the origin
and diffusion of barbaric myths is obvious. The devel-
opment of a common stock of legends is, of course, im-
possible, save where there is a common language; and
thus philology pronounces against the kinship of bar-
baric myths with each other and with similar myths of
the Aryan and Semitic worlds. Similar stories told in
Greece and Norway are likely to have a common pedi-
gree, because the persons who have preserved them in
recollection speak a common language and have inherited
the same civilization. But similar stories told in Lab-
rador and South Africa are not hkely to be genealogi-
cally related, because it is altogether probable that the
Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their present race
characteristics before either of tliem j)ossessed a language
or a culture sufficient for the production of myths. Ac-
cording to the nature and extent of the similarity, it
must be decided whether such stories have been carried
about from one part of tlie world to anotlier, or have
Veen independently originated in many different places.
Here the methods of pliilology suggest a rule which
will often be found useful. In comparing the vocabula-
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 5 I
lies of different languages, those words wliich directly
imitate natural sounds — such as whiz, crash, crackle —
are not admitted as evidence of kinsliip between the
languages in which they occur. Eesemblances between
such words are obviously no proof of a common ancestry ;
and they are often met with in languages which have
demonstrably had no connection with each other. So in
mythology, where we find two stories of which the primi-
tive character is perfectly transparent, we need have no
difficulty in supposing them to have originated inde-
pendently. The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk is
found all over the world ; but the idea of a country
above the sky, to which persons might gain access by
climbing, is one which could hardly fail to occur to every
barbarian. Among the American tribes, as well as
among the Aryans, the rainbow and the Milky- Way
have contributed the idea of a Bridge of the Dead, over
which souls must pass on the way to the other world.
In South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits of the
fox and of his brother the jackal have given rise to fables
in which brute force is overcome by cunning. In many
parts of the world we find curiously similar stories de-
vised to account for the stumpy tails of the bear and
hyaena, the hairless tail of the rat, and the blindness of
the mole. And in aU countries may be found the be-
liefs that men may be changed into beasts, or plants, or
stones ; that the sun is in some way tethered or con-
strained to follow a certain course ; that the storm-cloud
is a ravenous dragon ; and that there are talismans which
will reveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions are
so obvious to the uncivilized intelligence, that stories
founded upon them need not be supposed to have a com-
mon origin, unless there turns out to be a striking simi-
larity among their minor details. On the other hand.
152 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
the numerous myths of an all-destroying deluge have
doubtless arisen partly from reminiscences of actually
occumng local inundations, and partly from the fact
that the Scriptural account of a deluge has been caiTied
all over the world by Catholic and Protestant mission-
aries.*
By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite
a few of the American myths so carefully collected by
Dr. Brinton in his admirable treatise. We shall not find
in the mythology of the New World the wealth of wit
and imagination which has so long delighted us in the
stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra.
The mythic lore of the American Indians is compara-
tively scanty and prosaic, as befits the product of a lower
grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not only
are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but
there is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure
index of an inferior imagination. Nevertheless, after
making due allowances for differences in the artistic
method of treatment, there is between the mythologies
of the Old and the New Worlds a fundamental resem-
blance. We come upon solar myths and myths of the
storm curiously blended with culture-myths, as in tlie
cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and Kadmos. The Amer-
ican parallels to these are to be found in the stories of
Michabo, Viracocha, loskeha, and Quetzalcoatl. "As
elsewhere the world over, so in America, many tribes had
to tell of .... an august character, who taught them
what they knew, — the tillage of the soil, the properties
of plants, the art of picture-wTiting, the secrets of magic ;
who founded their institutions and established their re-
ligions ; who governed them long with glory abroad nnd
* For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, l^igends of tlio
Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 153
peace at home ; and finally did not die, but, like Frederic
Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great
heroes, vanished mysteriously, and still lives somewhere,
ready at the right moment to return to his beloved peo-
ple and lead them to victory and happiness." * Every
one is familiar with the numerous legends of white-
skinned, full-bearded heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl,
who in times long previous to Columbus came from the far
East to impart the rudiments of civilization and religion
to the red men. By those who first heard these stories
they were supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer to
pre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like
that of the Northmen in the tenth century. But a sci-
entific study of the subject has dissipated such notions.
These legends are far too numerous, they are too similar
to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to admit
of any such interpretation. By comparing them care-
fully with each other, and with correlative myths of the
Old World, their true character soon becomes apparent.
One of the most widely famous of these culture-heroess
was Manabozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With en-
tire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the various branches
of the Algonquin race, " the Powhatans of Virginia, the
Lenni Lenapp. of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of
New England, the Ottawas of the far North, and the
Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of
*this chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries
calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan,
which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar
respect." Not only was Michabo the ruler and guardian
of these numerous tribes, — he w^a.<3 the founder of their
religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing, the ruler
of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth and
* Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.
7*
154 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
heaven. " From a grain of sand brought from the bot-
tom of the primeval ocean he fashioned the habitable
land, and set it floating on the waters till it gi-ew to such
a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died
of old age ere he reached its limits." He was also, like
Nimrod, a mighty hunter. " One of his footsteps meas-
ured eight leagues, the Great Lakes were the beaver-dams
he built, and when tlie cataracts impeded his progi-ess he
tore them away with his hands." " Sometimes he was
said to dwell in the skies with his brother, the Snow, or,
like many great spirits, to have built his wigwam in the
far Xorth on some floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean
But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was
alleged to reside toward the East ; and in the holy for-
muliie of the mcda craft, when the winds are invoked to
the medicine lodge, the East is summoned in his name,
the door opens in that direction, and there, at the edge
of the earth where the sun rises, on the shore of the inti-
nite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and
sends the luminaries forth on their daily journeys." *
From such accounts as this we see tliat Alichabo was no
more a wdse instructor and legislator than Minos or Kad-
mos. Like these heroes, he is a personification of the
solar life-giving power, which daily comes forth from its
home in the east, making the earth to rejoice. The ety-
mology of his name confirms the otherwise clear indica-
tions of the legend itself It is compounded of niiclii,
"great," and ivahofi, which means alike "liare" and
" white." " Dialectic forms in Algonquin for wliite are
wahiy ivape, wampi, etc. ; for morning, wapan, ivapanch,
opah ; for east, vmpa, vxinhun, etc.; for day, wompan,
oppan ; for light, oppung" So that Miclialjo is the
Great White One, the God of tlie Dawn and the East.
• Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIO WORLD.
155
And the etymological confusion, by virtue of which he
acquired his soubriquet of the Great Hare, affords a
curious parallel to what has often happened in Aryan
and Semitic mythology, as we saw when discussing the
subject of werewolves.
Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let
us note how full of meaning are the myths concernino-
him. In the first cycle of these legends, " he is grandson
of the Moon, his father is the West Wind, and his mother,
a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of con-
ception. For the Moon is the goddess of night; the
Dawn is her daughter, who brings forth the Morning,
and perishes herself in the act ; and the West, the spirit
of darkness, as the East is of light, precedes, and as it
were begets the latter, as the evening does the morning.
Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son
sought the unnatural father to revenge the death of
his mother, and then commenced a long and desperate
struggle. It began on the mountains. The West was
forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across
rivers and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came
to the brink of this world. ' Hold,' cried he, ' my son,
you know my power, and that it is impossible to kill me.'
What is this but the diurnal combat of light and dark-
ness, carried on from what time ' the jocund morn stands
tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,' across the wide world
to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, for both
the opponents are immortal ? " *
Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent
narrative than this. The Iroquois tradition is very simi-
lar. In it appear twin brothers,f born of a virgin mother,
* Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.
t Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the Dioskouroi,
and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.
156 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
daughter of the Moon, who died in giving them life. Their
names, loskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida dia-
lect the Wliite One and the Dark One. Under the influ-
ence of Christian ideas the contest between the brothers
has been made to assume a moral character, like the
strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such in-
tention appears in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton
has shown that none of the American tribes had any con-
ception of a Devil. When the quarrel came to blows,
the dark brother was signally discomfited ; and the vic-
torious loskeha, returning to his grandmother, " estab-
lished his lodge in the far East, on the borders of the
Great Ocean, whence the sun comes. In time he became
the father of mankind, and special guardian of tlie Iro-
quois." He caused the earth to bring fortli, he stocked
the woods with game, and taught his chikh-en the use of
fire. " He it was who watched and watered their crops ;
* and, indeed, without his aid,' says the old missionary,
quite out of patience with their puerilities, ' they think
they could not boil a pot.' " There was more in it than
poor Brebeuf thouglit, as we are forcibly reminded by
recent discoveries in physical science. Even civilized
men would find it difticult to boil a pot without tlie aid
of solar energy. Call liim what we will, — loskeha,
Michabo, or Phoibos, — the beneficent Sun is the master
and sustainer of us all ; and if we were to relapse into
heathenism, like Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could
not do better than to select him as our chief object of
worship.
The same principles by which these simple cases are'
explained furnish also the key to the more complicated
mythology of Mexico and rem. Like the deities just
discussed, Viracocha, the supnjme god of tin; Quicliuas,
rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys west-
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 57
ward, slaying with his lightnings the creatures who op-
pose him, until he finally disappears in the Western
Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his name the evi-
dence of his origin, Viracocha signifying " foam of the
sea " ; and hence the " White One " {Va/itbe), the god of
light rising white on the horizon, like the foam on the
surface of the waves. The Aymaras spoke of their origi-
nal ancestors as white ; and to this day, as Dr. Brinton
informs us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha.
The myth of Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same charac-
ter. All these solar heroes present in most of their quali-
ties and achievements a striking likeness to those of the
Old World. They combine the attributes of Apollo,
Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey
from east to west, smiting the powers of darkness, storm,
and winter with the thunderbolts of Zeus or the unerring
arrows of Phoibos, and sinking in a blaze of glory on
the western verge of the world, where the waves meet
the firmament. Or like Hermes, in a second cycle of
legends, they rise with the soft breezes of a summer morn-
ing, driving before them the bright celestial cattle whose
■udders are heavy with refreshing rain, fanning the flames
which devour the forests, blustering at the doors of wig-
wams, and escaping with weird laughter through vents
and crevices. The w^hite skins and flowing beards of
these American heroes may be aptly compared to the fair
faces and long golden locks of their Hellenic compeers.
Yellow hair was in all probability as rare in Greece as a
full beard in Peru or Mexico ; but in each case the de-
scription suits the solar character of the hero. One
important class of incidents, however is apparently quite
absent from the American legends. We frequently see
the Dawn described as a virgin mother v>'\\o dies in giv-
ing birth to the Day ; but nowhere do we remember see-
158 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
ing her pictured as a lovely or valiant or crafty maiden,
ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her solar lover.
Perhaps in no respect is tlie superior richness and beauty
of the Aryan mytlis more manifest than in this. Bryn-
hild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne, Oinone, and countless other
kindred heroines, with their brilliant legends, could not
be spared from the mythology of our ancestors without
leaving it meagre indeed. These were the materials
which Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of
tlie Nibelungen found ready, awaiting their artistic treat-
ment. But the mythology of the New World, with all
its pretty and agreeable naiveU, affords hardly enough,
either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive,
for a grand epic or a genuine tragedy.
But little reflection is needed to assure us that the
imagination of the barbarian, who either carries away his
wife by brute force or buys her from her relatives as he
would buy a cow, could never have originated legends in
which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which their
favour is won by tlie performance of deeds of valour.
These stories owe their existence to the romantic turn of
mind which has always characterized the Aryan, whose
civilization, even in the times before the dispersion of liis
race, was sufficiently advanced to allow of his entertain-
ing such comparatively exalted conceptions of the rela-
tions between men and women. Tlie absence of these
myths from barbaric folk-lore is, therefore, just what
might be expected ; but it is a fact which militates
against any possible hypothesis of the common origin
of Aryan and barbaric mythology. Tf there were any
genetic relationship between Sigurd and loskeha, be-
tween Herakles and Michabo, it would be hard to tell
why Brynhild and lole shoidd have disappeared entirely
from one whole group of legends, while retained, in some
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 59
form or other, throughout the whole of the other group.
On the other hand, the resemblances above noticed be-
tween Aryan and American mythology fall very far short
of the resemblances between the stories told in different
parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genu-
ine barbaric growth, has yet been cited which resembles
any Aryan legend as the story of Punchkin resembles the
story of the Heartless Giant. The myths of Michabo and
Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of natural phe-
nomena, just as imitative words are direct copies of natu-
ral sounds. Neither the Eedskin nor the Indo-European
had any choice as to t)je main features of the career of
his solar divinity. He must be born of the Night, — or
of the Dawn, — must travel westward, must slay harass-
ing demons. Eliminatiog these points of likeness, the
resemblance between the ^ryan and barbaric legends is
at once at an end. Such an identity in point of details
as that between the wooden horse which enters Ilion, and
the horse which bears Sigurd int^ the place where Bryn-
hild is imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps
with Sculloge over the walls of Fiach's enchanted castle,
is, I believe, nowhere to be found aftei we leave Indo-
European territory.
Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the
legends of the Aryan and the non- Aryan worlds contain
common mythical elements, the legends themselves are
not of common origin. The fact that certain mythical
ideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in^
each case a similar human intelligence has been at work
explaining similar phenomena ; but in order to prove a
family relationship between the culture of these differ-
ent races, we need something more than this. We need
to prove not only a community of mythical ideas, but
also a community between the stori£?s based upon these
l60 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
ideas. We must show not only that Michabo is like
Herakles in those striking features which the contempla-
tion of solar phenomena would necessarily suggest to the
imagination of the primitive myth-maker, but also that
the two characters are similarly conceived, and that the
two careers agree in seemingly arbitrary points of detail,
as is the case in the stories of Punchkin and the Heart-
less Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, all over the
world, travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness
is of great value as throwing light upon primeval habits
of thoufjht, but it is of no value as evidence for or against
an alleged community of civilization between dilierent
races. The same is true of the sacredness universally
attached to certain numbers. Dr. Brinton's opinion that
the sanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of
mythology is due to a primitive worship of the cardinal
points, becomes very probable when we recollect that the
similar pre-eminence of seven is almost demonstrably con-
nected with the adoration of the sun, moon, and five vis-
ible planets, wluch has left its record in the structure and
nomenclature of the Aryan and Semitic week.*
In view of these considerations, tlie comparison of bar-
baric myths with each other and with the legends of the
Aryan world becomes doubly interesting, as illustrating
the similarity in the w^orkings of the untrained intelli-
gence the world over. In our first paper we saw how the
moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Euro-
peans, as a man with a tliorn-bush or as two children
bearing a bucket of water on a \)(Ag. In Ceylon it is
* See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A feticliistic
regard for the cardinal points h;i.s not always been absent from the minds
of persons instructed in a higher theology ; as witness a well-known
passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal in Europe,
of buildin'' Christian churches in a line cast aud west.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. l6l
said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half
starved in the forest, a pious hare met him, and offered
itself to him to be slain and cooked for dinner ; where-
upon the holy Buddha set it on high in the moon, that
future generations of men might see it and marvel at its
piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are
supposed to be portions of a woman's figure. A certain
woman was once hammering something with a mallet,
when the moon arose, looking so much like a bread-fruit
that the woman asked it to come down and let her child
eat off a piece of it ; but the moon, enraged at the insult,
gobbled up woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the
moon's belly, you may still behold them. According to
the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the Hare to inform
men that as she died away and rose again, so shoidd men
die and again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot
che purport of the message, and, coming down to the earth,
proclaimed it far and wide that though the Moon was in-
variably resuscitated whenever she died, mankind, on the
other hand, should die and go to the Devil Wlien the
silly brute returned to the lunar country and told what
he had done, the Moon was so angry that she took up an
axe and aimed a blow at his head to split it. But the
axe missed and only cut his lip open ; and that was the
origin of the " hare-lip." Maddened by the pain and the
insult, the Hare flew at the Moon and almost scratched
her eyes out ; and to this day she bears on her face the
marks of the Hare's claws.*
Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene
cast Endymion into a profound slumber because he re-
fused her love, and how at sundown she used to come
* Bleek, Hottentot Fa"bles and Tales, p. 72. Compare the Fiji story
of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, Primitive
Culture, I. 321.
1 62 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch him
as he lay asleep on the marble steps of a temple half
hidden among drooping elm-trees, over which clambered
vines hea\y with dark blue grapes. This represents the
rising moon looking down on the setting sun ; in Labra-
dor a similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat dif-
ferent story. Among the Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden
and the Moon is her brother, who is overcome by a wick-
ed passion for her. Once, as this girl was at a dancing-
party in a friend's hut, some one came up and took liuld
of her by the shoulders and shook her, which is (accord-
ing to the legend) the Esquimaux manner of declaring
one's love. She could not tell who it was in the dark,
and so she dipped her hand in some soot and smeared
one of his cheeks with it. When a light was struck in
the hut, she saw, to her dismay, that it was her brotlier,
and, without waiting to learn any more, she took to her
heels. He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran till
they got to the end of the world, — the jumi)ing-off
place, — when they both jumped into the sky. There
the Moon still chases his sister, the Sun ; and every now
and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth, when
he becomes so dark that you cannot see him.*
Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that
Malays, as well as Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the
clouds as swan-maidens. In tlie island of Celebes it is
said that " seven heavenly nymphs came down from the
sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who
thought first that tliey were white doves, but in the l):itli
he saw that they were women. Tlien lie stole one ol' tlie
thin robf.'S that gave tli(5 Tiym])hs tlieir jtowcr of llyiii;/,
and so lie caught Utaliagi, the one wliose rf)l)e he bnd
stolen, and took her for his wife, and she l)ore him a son
* Tylor, Early History of iMankind, p. 327.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 63
Now she was called Utahagi from a single white hair she
had, which was endowed with magic power, and this hair
her husband pulled out. As soon as he had done it,
there arose a great storm, and Utahagi went up to
heaven. The child cried for its mother, and Kasim-
baha was in great grief, and cast about how he should
follow Utahagi up into the sky." Here we pass to the
myth of Jack and the Beanstalk. " A rat gnawed the
thorns off the rattans, and Kasimbaha clambered up by
them with his son upon his back, till he came to heaven.
There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and
after various adventures he took up his abode among the
gods."*
In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which
also reminds us of the story of the Heartless Giant. A
certain Samojed once went out to catch foxes, and found
seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded by gloomy
pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore.
He crept up and stole one of these dresses, and by and
by the sv/ an-maiden came to him shivering with cold and
promising to become his wife if he would only give her
back her garment of feathers. The ungallant fellow,
however, did not care for a wife, but a little revenge was
not unsuited to his way of thinking. There were seven
robbers who used to prowl about the neighbourhood, and
who, when they got home, finding their hearts in the
way, used to hang them up on some pegs in the tent.
One of these robbers had killed the Samojed's mother;
and so he promised to return the swan-maiden's dress
after she should have procured for him these seven hearts.
So she stole the hearts, and the Samojed smashed six of
them, and then woke up the seventh robber, and told him
to restore his mother to life, on pain of instant death,
* Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.
164 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
Then the robber produced a purse containing tlie old
woman's soul, and going to the graveyard shook it over
her bones, and she revived at once. Then the Saniojed
smashed the seventh heart, and the robber died ; and so
the swan-maiden got back her plumage and flew away-
rejoicing.*
Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr. Baring-Gould,
found among the Minussinian Tartars. But there they
appear as foul demons, like the Greek Harpies, who de-
light in drinking the blood of men slain in battle. There
are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in
their flight ; but sometimes they all coalesce into one great
black storm-fiend, who rages for blood, like a werewolf
In South Africa we find the werewolf himself -f- A
certain Hottentot was once travelling with a Bushwoman
and her child, when they perceived at a distance a troop
of wild horses. The man, being hungry, asked the
woman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of
these horses, that they might eat of it ; whereupon the
woman set dowTi her child, and taking off a sort of petti-
coat made of human skin became instantly transformed
into a lioness, which rushed across the plain, struck down
ft wild horse and lapped its blood. The man climbed a
tree in terror, and conjured Ids companion to resume her
uatural shape. Then the lioness came back, and putting
on the skirt made of luiman skin reaj)peared as a woman,
and took up her cliild, and the two friends resumed their
journey after making a meal of tlie liorse's flesh.J
* Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 200-302.
+ Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallacfe says :
*' It is universally believed in Lomboek that some men have the power
to turn themselves into crocodiles, whieh they do for the sake of devour-
ing their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transforma-
tions." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.
X Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 65
The werewolf also appears in North America, duly
furnished with Ms wolf-skin sack; but neither in Amer-
ica nor in Africa is he the genuine European werewolf,
inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for human
flesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men
can be changed into beasts or have in some cases de-
scended from beast ancestors, but the application of this
belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibal cravings
seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf
of the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man,
he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite,
due to the machinations of the Devil, showed its power
over his physical organism by changing the shape of it.
The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and
simpler kind of thinking. There is no diabolism about
him ; for barbaric races, while beheving in the existence
of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a sufficiently
vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception
of diabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the
medieval European was a phenomenon so strange as to
demand a mythological explanation, would not impress
the barbarian as either very exceptional or very blame-
worthy.
In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most quick-
witted and inteUigent of African races, the cannibal pos-
sesses many features in common with the Scandinavian
TroU, who also has a hking for human flesh. As we saw
in the preceding paper, the Troll has very Hkely derived
some of his characteristics from reminiscences of the
barbarous races who preceded the Aryans in Central and
Northern Europe. In like manner the long-haired can-^
nibal of Zulu nursery Hterature, who is always repre.
sented as belonging to a distinct race, has been supposed
to be explained by the existence of inferior races con-
1 66 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
quered and displaced by the Zulus. Nevertheless, as
Dr. Callaway observes, neither the long-haired mountain
cannibals of Western Africa, nor the Fulahs, nor the
tribes of Eghedal described by Earth, " can be considered
as answering to the description of long-haired as given
in the Zulu legends of cannibals ; neitlier could they
possibly have formed their historical basis It is
perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are
not common men ; they are magnified into giants and
magicians ; they are remarkably swift and enduring ;
fierce and terrible warriors." Very probably tliey may
have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin to tliose
which begot the Panis of the Veda and the Northern
Trolls. The parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable
one which can be found in comparing barbaric with
Aryan folk-lore. Like the Panis and Trolls, the canni-
bals are represented as the foes of the solar liero Uthla-
k^nyana, who is almost as great a traveller as Odysseus,
and whose presence of mind amid trying circumstances
is not to be surpassed Ijy that of the incomparable Boots.
Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles or Hermes.
He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he en-
tered the world than he begins to outwit other people
and get possession of their property. He works bitter
ruin for the cannibals, wlio, with all their strength and
fleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit than the
Trolls, whom Boots invariably victimizes. On one of his
journeys, Uthlakanyana fell in with a cannibal. Their
greetings were cordial enough, and they ate a bit of leop-
ard together, and began to build a house, and killed a
couple of cows, but the cannil)ars cow was lean, while
Uthlakanyana's was fat. Then the crafty traveller, fear-
ing that his companion might insist upon having the fat
cow, turned and said, " ' Let the house be thatched now
MYTHS OF THE BABBARIO WORLD. 167
then we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we
shall get wet.' The cannibal said, ' You are right, child
of my sister ; you are a man indeed in saying, let us
thatch the house, for we shall get wet.' Utlilakanyana
said, ' Do you do it then ; I will go inside, and push the
thatching-needle for you, in the house.' The cannibal
went up. His hair was very, very long. Utlilakanyana
went inside and pushed the needle for him. He thatched
in the hair of the cannibal, tying it very tightly ; he
knotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by sep-
arate locks and fastening it firmly, that it might be tightly
fastened to the house." Then the rogue went outside
and began to eat of the cow which was roasted. " The
cannibal said, * Wliat are you about, child of my sister ?
Let us just finish the house ; afterwards we can do that ;
we will do it together.' Utlilakanyana rephed, ' Come
down then. I cannot go into the house any more. The
thatching is finished.' The cannibal assented. When
he thought he was going to quit the house, he was un-
able to quit it. He cried out saying, ' Child of my sister,
how have you managed your thatching ? ' Uthlakanyana
said, ' See to it yourself I have thatched well, for I shall
not have any dispute. Now I am about to eat in peace ;
I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am now alone
with my cow.'" So the cannibal cried and raved and
appealed in vain to Uthlakanyana's sense of justice, until
by and by " the sky came with hailstones and lightning.
Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house ; he
stayed in the house and lit a fire. It hailed and rained.
The cannibal cried on the top of the house ; he was
struck with the hailstones, and died there on the house.
It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said, ^ Uncle,
just come down, and come to me. It has become clear.
It no longer rains, and there is no more hail, neither is
1 68 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
tliere any more lightning. Wliy are you silent ? ' So
Utlilakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it.
He then went on his way." *
In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals,
and shut up in the rock Itslie-likantunjambili, wliich, like
the rock of the Forty Thieves, opens and shuts at the
command of those who understand its secret. She gets
possession of the secret and escapes, and when the mon-
sters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabasli ful)
of sesame, wliich they stop to eat. At last, getting tired
of running, she climbs a tree, and there she finds her
brother, who, warned by a dream, has come out to look
for her. They ascend the tree together until they come
to a beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They
kill an ox, and wliile its flesh is roasting they amuse tli em-
selves by making a stout thong of its hide. By and by
one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking meat, comes
to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy
and girl in the sky-country ! They invite him up there
to share in their feast, and throw him an end of the
thong by which to climb up. When the cannibal is
dangling midway between earth and heaven, tliey let go
the rope, and down he falls witli a terrible crash.-f
In tliis story the enchanted rock opened by a talis-
manic formula brings us again into contact with Indo-
European folk-lore. And tliat the conception has in botli
cases been suggested by tlie same natural pliennmenon is
rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in wliich the
cannibal's cave is opened ])y a swallow wliicli flies in tlie
air. Here we have the elements of a genuine liglitning-
* Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27 - 30.
+ Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-ir)2 ; cf. a similar story in whicli tlio
lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the se<|U<'l
of the tale.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. 1 69
myth. We see that among these African barbarians, as
well as among our own forefathers, the clouds have been
conceived as birds carrying the lightning which can cleave
the rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent.
The Dakotahs explain the thunder as " the sound of the
cloud-bird flapping his wings," and the Caribs describe
the lightning as a poisoned dart which the bird blows
through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting.*
On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a
cloud-bird, but explain the lightning as something anal-
ogous to the flames of a volcano. The Kamtchatkans
say that when the mountain goblins have got their stoves
well heated up, they throw overboard, with true barbaric
shiftlessness, all the brands not needed for immediate use,
which makes a volcanic eruption. So when it is summer
on earth, it is winter in heaven ; and the gods, after heat-
ing up their stoves, throw away their spare kindling-
wood, which makes the hghtning.*!-
When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw
the unvarying, unresting course of the sun variously
explained as due to the subjection of Herakles to Eurys-
theus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse
laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has
worked at the same problem ; but the explanations
which it has given are more childlike and more gro-
tesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used to race
through the sky so fast that men could not get enough
daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by
an inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the idea of
catching the Sun in a noose and making him go more
deliberately. He plaited ropes and made a strong net,
and, arming himself with the jawbone of his ancestress,
Muri-ranga-whenua, called together all his brethren, and
* Brinton, op. cit. p. 104. + Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.
8
i70 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
they journeyed to the place where the Sun rises, and
there spread the net. WTien the Sun came up, he stuck
his head and fore-paws into the net, and while the broth-
ers tightened the ropes so that they cut him and made
him scream for mercy, Maui beat him with the jawbone
until he became so weak that ever since he has only been
able to crawl through the sky. According to another
Polynesian myth, there was once a gi'umbling Eadical,
who never could be satisfied with the way in which
things are managed on this earth. This bold Radical set
out to build a stone house which should last forever ; but
tlie days were so short and the stones so heavy that he
despaired of ever accomplishing his project. One niglit,
as he lay awake thinking the matter over, it occurred to
him that if he could catch the Sun in a net, he could
have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish
his house. So he borrowed a noose from the god Itu,
and, it being autumn, when the Sun gets sleepy and stu-
pid, he easily caught the luminary. The Sun cried till
his tears made a great freshet wliich nearly drowned the
island ; but it was of no use ; there he is tethered to this
day.
Similar stories are met with in North America. A
Dog-Iiilj Indian once chased a squirrel up a tree until he
reached the sky. There he set a snare for the squirrel
and climbed down again. Next day the Sun was caught
in the snare, and night came on at once. Tliat is to say,
the sun was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there,"
thought the Indian, " I must have caught the Sun " ; and
so lie sent up ever so many animals to release the captive.
They were all burned to aslies, but at last the mole,
going up and burrowing out through the ground of the
sky, (!) succeeded in gnawing asunder the cords of the
snare. Just as it thrust its head out througli the ■>pei?ing
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. ijl
made in the sky-ground, it received a flash of light
which put its eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind.
The Sun got away, but has ever since travelled more de-
liberately.*
These sun-myths, many more of which are to be found
collected in Mr. Tylor's excellent treatise on " The Early
History of Mankind," well illustrate both the similarity
and the diversity of the results obtained by the primitive
mind, in different times and countries, when engaged
upon similar problems. No one would think of referring
these stories to a common traditional origin with the
myths of Herakles and Odysseus ; yet both classes of
tales were devised to explain the same phenomenon.
Both to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast
but deliberate journey of the sun through the firmament
was a strange circumstance which called for explanation ;
but wliile the meagre intelligence of the barbarian could
only attain to the quaint conception of a man throwing
a noose over the sun's head, the rich imagination of the
Indo-European created the noble picture of Herakles
doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in accordance wdth
the resistless decree of fate.
Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar
are the mental habits of uncivilized men, is the myth of
the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a great tortoise that
lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling is famil-
iar to every reader. According to one account, this tor-
toise, swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth
on his back ; but by and by, when the gods get ready to
destroy mankind, the tortoise will grow weary and sink
under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed
by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods
and demons took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick
* Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338 - 343.
172 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
and churned the ocean to make ambrosia, the god A'ishnu
took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the bottom of
the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest
upon. But these versions of the myth are not primitive.
In the original conception the world is itself a gigantic
tortoise swinnning in a boundless ocean ; the flat surface
of the earth is the lower plate which covers the reptile's
belly ; the rounded shell wliich covers his back is tlie
sky ; and the human race lives and moves and has its
being inside of the tortoise. I^ow, as Mr. Tylor has
pointed out, many tribes of Eedskins hold substantially
the same tlieory of the universe. They regard the tor-
toise as the symbol of the world, and address it as the
mother of mankind. Once, before the earth was made,
the king of heaven quarrelled with his wife, and gave
her such a terrible kick that she fell down into the
sea. Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back,
and proceeded to raise up the earth, upon which the
heavenly woman became the mother of mankind. These
first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the
ground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower
thrust his knife too far and stabbed the tortoise, which
immediately sank into the sea and drowned all the
human race save one man.* In Finnish mythology the
world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the
wliite part is the ocean, the yolk is tlie earth, and tlie
arched sliell is the sky. In India this is the mundane
egg of Brahma ; and it reappears among the Yorubas as
a pair of calaliaslies ])ut together like oyster-sliells, one
making a dome over tlie otlier. In Zulu-land the earth
is a huge beast called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a
rock, and whose moutli is very large and broad and red :
" in some countries whicli were on his body it was win*
« Tylor, op. cit. p. 336.
MYTHS OF THE BARBARIQ WORLD. 173
ton, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad
rivers flow over his back, and he is covered with forests
and hills, as is indicated in his name, which means " the
rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this group of con-
ceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish,
which lay still so long that sand and clay gTadually ac-
cumulated upon its back, and at last it became covered
with trees. And lastly, passing from barbaric folk-lore
and from the Arabian Nights to the highest level of Indo-
European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and
Kepler amusing themselves with speculations in which
the earth figures as a stupendous animal ?
NovemheTy 187U.
174 MYTHS JJS^D MYTH'MAKERS.
VI.
JUYEXTUS MUNDI *
TWTILVE years ago, when, in concluding his " Studies
on Homer and the Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone
applied to himseK the warning addressed by Agamemnon
to the priest of Apollo, " Let not Xemesis catch me by the
swift ships,
fj vvv br]6vvovT, fj ixTTcpov avdis lovra'*
he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to
classical studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have
been, they have yielded to the sweet desire of revisiting
familiar ground, — a desire as strong in the breast of the
classical scholar as was the yearning which led Odysseus
to reject the proffered gift of immortality, so that he
might but once more behold the wreathed smoke curl-
ing about the roofs of his native Ithaka. In this new
treatise, on the "Youth of the World," Mr. Gladstone
discusses the same questions which were treated in his
earlier work ; and the main conclusions reached in tlie
" Studies on Homer" are here so little modified with refer-
ence to the recent progress of arch geological inquiries,
that the book can hardly be said to have had any otlier
reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the
ships of the Argives, and of returning tliitlier as oi'ten as
possible.
* Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By the
Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, Boston : Little, Brown, & Ca
1869.
JUVENTUS MUNDI. 1 75
The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work
is either a very appropriate one or a strange misnomer,
according to the point of view from which it is regarded.
Such being the case, we might readily acquiesce in its
use, and pass it by without comment, trusting that the
author understood himself when he adopted it, were it
not that by incidental references, and especially by his
allusions to the legendary literature of the Jews, Mr.
Gladstone shows that he means more by the title than it
can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks to
determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos,
and Danaos, and Abraham, is at once liable to the sus-
picion of holding very inadequate views as to the char-
acter of the epoch which may properly be termed the
" youth of the world." Often in reading Mr. Gladstone
we are reminded of Eenan's strange suggestion that an
exploration of the Hindu Kush territory, whence prob-
ably came the primitive Aryans, might throw some new
light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be
more futile. The primitive Aryan language has already
been partly reconstructed for us ; its grammatical forms
and syntactic devices are becoming familiar to scholars ;
one great philologist has even composed a tale in it ; yet
in studying this long-buried dialect we are not much
nearer the first beginnings of human speech than in
studying the Greek of Homer, the Sanskrit of the Vedas,
or the Umbrian of the Iguvine Inscriptions. The Aryan
mother-tongue had passed into the last of the three stages
of linguistic growth long before the break-up of the
tribal communities in Aryana-vaedjo, and at that early
date presented a less primitive structure than is to be
seen in the Chinese or the Mongohan of our own times.
So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems,
and well illustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees
176 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
less primitive than that which is revealed to us by the
archieological researches either of Pictet and Windisch-
mann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and ^M'Lennan. We shall
gather evidences of this as we proceed. Meanwhile let
us remember that at least eleven thousand years before
the Homeric age men lived in communities, and manu-
lactured pottery on the banks of the Nile ; and let us
not leave wholly out of sight that more distant period,
perhaps a million years ago, when sparse tribes of savage
men, contemporaneous with the mammoths of Siberia
and the cave-tigers of Britain, struggled against the in-
tense cold of the glacial winters.
Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a
late one when considered with reference to the whule
career of the human race, there is a point of view from
which it may be justly regarded as the " youth of the
world" However long man may have existed upon the
earth, he becomes thoroughly and distinctly human in
the eyes of tlie historian only at the epoch at which he
began to create for himself a literature. As far back as
we can trace the progress of the human race continuously
by means of the written word, so far do we feel a true
liistorical interest in its fortunes, and pursue our studies
^vith a sympathy which the mere lapse of time is pow-
erless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history
never has been and never will be written, whose career
on the earth, dateless and chartless, can be dimly re-
vealed to us only by paheontology, excites in us a very
different feeling. Tliough with tlie keenest interest we
ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface for
information about him, we are all tlie while aware that
what we are studying is liuman zo()logy and not history.
Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a cliaracter. We
cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name,
JUVENTUS MUNDI. 1 77
who were his parents, and how did he get where we
found him. His language has died with him, and he can
render no account of himself We can only regard him
specifically as Homo Anthropos, a creature of bigger brain
than his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater
promise. But this, we say, is physical science, and not
history.
For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his
various social relations, the youth of the world is the
period at which literature begins. We regard the history
of the western world as beginning about the tenth cen-
tury before the Christian era, because at that date we
find literature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to
tlirow direct light upon the social and intellectual condi-
tion of a portion of mankind. That great empires, rich
in historical interest and in materials for sociological
generalizations, had existed for centuries before that
date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they
appear at the dawn of history with all the marks of great
antiquity; but the only steady historical light thrown
upon them shines from the pages of Greek and Hebrew
authors, and these know them only in their latest period.
For information concerning their early careers we must
look, not to history, but to hnguistic archaeology, a science
which can help us to general results, but cannot enable
us to fix dates, save in the crudest manner.
We mention the tenth century before Christ as the
earliest period at which we can begin to study human
society in general and Greek society in particular, through
the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking, the
epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with
accuracy. The earliest ascertainable date in Greek
history is that of the Olympiad of Koroibos, B. C. 776.
There is no doubt that the Homeric poems were written
8* L
178 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
before tliis date, and that Homer is therefore strictly
prehistoric. Had tliis fact been duly realized by those
scholars who have not attempted to deny it, a vast
amount of profitless discussion might have been avoided.
Sooner or later, as Grote says, " the lesson must be learnt,
hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach
of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate
fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of
evidence." We do not know who Homer Avas ; we do
not know where or when he lived ; and in all probability
we shall never know. The data for settling the question
are not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will
ever be discovered. Even in early antiquity the question
was wrapped in an obscurity as deep as that which
shrouds it to-day. The case between the seven or eight
cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the poet,
and which Welcker has so aljly discussed, cannot be
decided. The feebleness of the evidence brought into
court may be judged from the fact that the claims of
Chios and the story of the poet's blindness rest alike
upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which
Thukydides (111. 104) accepted as authentic. The ma-
jority of modem critics have consoled themselves with the
vague conclusion that, as between the two great divisions
of the early Greek world. Homer at least belonged to
the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons
for doubting this opinion. He has pointed out several
instances in which the poems seem to betray a closer
topogTaphical acquaintance witli European than with
Asiatic Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos
have at least as good a claim to Homer as Chios or
Smyrna.
It is far more desirable that wo should form an approx-
imate opinion as to the date of the Homeric poems, than
JUVENTUS MUNDL 179
that we should seek to determine the exact locality in
which they originated. Yet the one question is hardly
less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiq-
uity assigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which
the earliest is separated from the most recent by an in-
terval of four hundred and sixty years, — a period as
long as that which separates the Black Prince from the
Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the
Christian era. While Theopompos quite preposterously
brings him down as late as the twenty- third Olympiad,
Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C. The
date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is the one
assigned by Herodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone
shows reasons, which appear to me convincing, for doubt-
ing or rejecting this date. •
I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of
Herakles, which seems capable of yielding an item of
trustworthy testimony, provided it be circumspectly dealt
with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone in not regarding the
legend as historical in its present shape. In my appre-
hension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have
no value whatever ; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in
refusing to accept any date earlier than the Olympiad of
Koroibos. The tale of the " Eeturn of the Herakleids"
is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legend of
Hengst and Horsa ; yet, like the latter, it doubtless em-
bodies a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as
scholarlike or philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox,
who can see in the whole narrative nothing but a solar
myth. There certainly was a time when the Dorian
tribes — described in the legend as the allies of the
Children of Herakles — conquered Peloponnesos ; and that
time was certainly subsequent to the composition of the
Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliad and the
l80 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Pelo-
ponnesos, if there were Dorians not only dwelling but
ruling there at the time when the poems were written.
The poems are very accurate and rigorously consistent
in their use of ethnical appellatives ; and their author,
in speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently
alluding to peoples directly known to him, as is Shake-
speare when he mentions Danes and Scotchmen. Now
Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwell-
ing in Peloponnesos ; and he knows Dorians also, but
only as a people inhabiting Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.)
With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the Greeks
in general, but only a people dwelling in the north, in
Thessaly. When these poems were written, Greece was
not known as Hellas, but as Achaia, — the whole countiy
taking its name from the Achaians, the dominant race in
Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the truly his-
torical period, in the eighth century B. C., all this is
changed. The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes ;
the Dorians rule in Peloponnesos, while their lands are
tilled by Argive Helots ; and the Achaians appear only
as an insignificant people occupying the southern shore
of the Corinthian Gulf How this change took place we
cannot tell. The explanation of it can never be obtained
from history, though some light may perhaps be tlirown
upon it by linguistic archaeology. But at all events it
was a great change, and could not have taken place in a
moment. It is fair to suppose that the HeUeno-Dorian
conquest must liave begun at least a century before the
first Olympiad ; for othervvise tlie geogi'aphical limits
of the various Greek races would not have been so com-
pletely established as we find them to have been at that
date. The Greeks, indeed, sup])Osed it to have begun at
least three centuries earlier, but it is impossible to collect
JUVENTUS MtJNDL l8l
evidence which will either refute or establish that opin-
ion. For our purposes it is enough to know that the con-
quest could not have taken place later than 900 B. C. ;
and if this be the case, the minimum date for the com-
position of the Homeric poems must be the tenth century
before Christ ; which is, in fact, the date assigned by
Aristotle. Thus far, and no farther, I believe it possible
to go with safety. Whether the poems were composed in
the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be deter-
mined. We are justified only in placing them far enough
back to allow the Helleno-Dorian conquest to intervene
between their composition and the beginning of recorded
history. The tenth century B. C. is the latest date which
will account for all the phenomena involved in the case,
and with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this
showing, the Iliad and Odyssey appear as the oldest ex-
isting specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the
hymns of the Eig-Veda and the sacred books of the
Avesta.
The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems
for three or four centuries without the aid of writing may
seem at first sight to justify the hypothesis of Wolf, that
they are mere collections of ancient ballads, like those
which make up the Mahabharata, preserved in the
memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first arranged
under the orders of Peisistratos. But on a careful ex-
amination this hypothesis is seen to raise more difiicul-
ties than it solves. What was there in the position of
Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the sixth century
B. C, so authoritative as to compel all Greeks to recog-
nize the recension then and there made of their revered
poet ? Besides which the celebrated ordinance of Solon
respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges us
to infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer
1 82 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
pre\'ioiis to 550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the
interference of Peisistratos "presupposes a certain fore-
known and ancient aggi'egate, the main lineaments of
wliicli were familiar to the Grecian public, although
many of the rhaj^sodes in their practice may have de-
viated from it both by omission and interpolation. In
correcting the Athenian recitations conformably with
such understood general type, Peisistratos might hope
both to procure respect for Athens and to constitute a
fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of ' collect-
ing the torn body of sacred Homer ' is something gener-
ically different from the composition of a new Iliad out
of pre-existing songs : the former is as easy, suitable, and
promising as the latter is violent and gratuitous." *
As for Wolf's objection, that the lUad and Odyssey are
too long to have been preserved by memory, it may be
met by a simple denial. It is a strange objection indeed,
coming from a man of Wolf's retentive memory. I do
not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be
regarded as such a very arduous task ; and if literature
were as scanty now as in Greek antiquity, there are
doubtless many scholars who would long since have had
them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but
little conscious effort, managed to carry in his head a
very considerable portion of Greek and Latin classic
literature ; and Xiebuhr (who once restored from recol-
lection a book of accounts which had been accidentally
destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book and
chapter of an ancient author without consulting his
notes. Nay, there is Professor Sophocles, of Harvard
University, who, if you suddenly stop and interrogate
him in the street, will tell you just liow many times any
given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in ^scliyloti
* Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.
JUVENTUS MUNDL 1 83
or in Plato, and will obligingly rehearse for you the con-
text. If all extant copies of the Homeric poems were
to be gathered together and burnt up to-day, like Don
Quixote's library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of
which Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets
of Granada, the poems could very likely be reproduced
and orally transmitted for several generations ; and much
easier must it have been for the Greeks to preserve these
books, which their imagination invested with a quasi-
sanctity, and which constituted the gi'eater part of the
literary furniture of their minds. In Xenophon's time
there were educated gentlemen at Athens who could re-
peat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph. Sym-
pos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know that at Chios there
was a company of bards, known as Homerids, whose
business it was to recite these poems from memory ; and
from the edicts of Solon and the Sikyonian Kleisthenes
(Herod., V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same
in other parts of Greece. Passages from the IKad used
to be sung at the Pythian festivals, to the accompani-
ment of the harp (Athenseus, XIV. 638), and in at least
two of the Ionic islands of the ^gsean there were regular
competitive exhibitions by trained young men, at which
prizes were given to the best reciter. The difficulty of
preserving the poems, under such circumstances, becomes
very insignificant ; and the Wolfian argument quite van-
ishes when we reflect that it would have been no easier
to preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long
ones. Nay, the coherent, orderly arrangement of the
Iliad and Odyssey would make them even easier to re-
member than a group of short rhapsodies not consecu-
tively arranged.
When we come to interrogate the poems themselves,
we find in them quite convincing evidence that they
1 84 MYTHS A^D MYTH-MAKERS.
were originally composed for the ear alone, and without
reference to manuscript assistance. They abound in
catchwords, and in verbal repetitions. The " Catalogue
of Ships," as Mr. Gladstone has acutely observed, is
arranged in well-defined sections, in such a way that the
end of each section suggests the beginning of the next
one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in old-
fashioned grammars. But the most convincing proof of
all is to be found in the changes which Greek pronim ela-
tion went through between the ages of Homer and
Peisistratos. " At the time when these poems were com-
posed, the digamma (or w) was an effective consonant,
and figured as sucli in the structure of the verse ; at the
time when they were committed to Avriting, it had ceased
to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in
any of the manuscripts, — insomuch that the Alexan-
drian critics, though they knew of its existence in the
much later poems of Alkaios and Sappho, never recog-
nized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplex-
ities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma,
were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But
the whole history of this lost letter is very curious, and
is rendered intelligible only by the supposition tliat tlie
Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time to
the memory, the voice, and the ear exclusively."*
Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by
the Wolfians ; but the inference drawn from them, that
the Homeric poems began to exist in a piecemeal con-
dition, is, as we have seen, imnecessary. These poems
may indeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the
early sacred and epic literature of the Jews, Indians, and
Teutons. But if we assign a plurality of composers to
the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata, the Vedasy
* Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.
JUVENTUS MUNDI. 1 85
and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence
furnished by the books themselves, and not because
these books could not have been preserved by oral tra-
dition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems any such
internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished
by the interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents of
the Pentateuch ? A careful investigation will show that
there is not. Any scholar who has given some attention
to the subject can readily distinguish the Elohistic from
the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch ; and, save in
the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics
coincide in the separation which they make between the
two. But the attempts which have been made to break
up the Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no such har-
monious agreement. There are as many systems as there
are critics, and naturally enough. For the Iliad and the
Odyssey are as much alike as two peas, and the resem-
blance which holds between the two holds also between
the different parts of each poem. From the appearance
of the injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the
intervention of Athene on the field of contest at Ithaka,
We find in each book and in each paragraph the same
style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same habits
of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the
faculty of observation. Now if the style were common-
place, the observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as
is wont to be the case in baUad-ILterature, this argument
from similarity might not carry with it much conviction. '
But when we reflect that throughout the whole course
of human history no other works, save the best tragedies
of Shakespeare, haA^e ever been written which for com-
bined keenness of observation, elevation of thought, and
sublimity of style can compare with the Homeric poems,
we must admit that the argument has very great w^eight
1 86 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and t\venty^
fourth books of the Iliad. According to the theory of
Lachniann, the most eminent champion of the Wolfian
hypothesis, these are by different authors. Human speech
has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of
its capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene
between Priam and Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book ;
while the interview between Hektor and Andromache in
the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power of lan-
guage. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether
it is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly
in turn of expression, and alike exhibiting the same un-
approachable degree of excellence, could have been pro-
duced by two different authors. And the physiologist
— with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Gal-
ton's theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even
as we surpass the negroes — has a right to ask whether
it is in the natural course of things for two such wonder-
ful poets, strangely ago-eeing in their minutest psycho-
logical characteristics, to be produced at the same time.
And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming
when we reflect that it is the coexistence of not two
only, but at least twenty such geniuses whicli the Wolf-
ian hypothesis requires us to account for. Tliat theory
worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly as-
sumed tliat the Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to
ballad poetry. But, except in the simplicity of the prim-
itive diction, there is no sucli analogry. The power and
T)eauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when
it is rendered into tlie style of a modern ballad. One
might as well attempt to preserve tlie grandeur of the
triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas ])y turning it into
tlie light Anacreontics of tlie ode to "Eros stung by a
Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which
JUVENTUS UUNDI. ig-
defies translation, is its union of the simplicity charao-
tenstic of an early age with a sustained elevation of style
which can be explained only as due to individual genius'
Xhe same conclusion is forced upon us when we ex
amine the artistic structure of these poems. With rec^ard
to the Odyssey in particular, Mr. Grote has elaborately
shown that Its structure is so thorouglily integral, that no
considerable portion could be subtracted ^vithout con-
verting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment
Ihe fliad stands in a somewhat different position There
are unmistakable peculiarities in its structure, which
have led even Mr. Grote, who utterly rejects the Wolf-
mn hypothesis, to regard it as made up of two poems;
although he mcbnes to the behef that the later poem
was grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way
of fur her eluc dation and expansion; just as Goethe, in
his old age added a new part to "Faust." According to
a^ :4Sf • . Y- ^l°"gi°^"y --«ved, was proplly
^nAclnU^; ,ts design being, as indicated in the opening
lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of AchiUeus and
the unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks
The plot of this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained
m Books I, VIII, and XI. - XXII. ; and, in Mr. Grl's
opimon, the remaining books injure the symmetry of this
wi? ™°«;f««arily prolonging the duration of the
Wrath, while the embassy to AchiUeus, in the ninth book
unduy anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the
nineteen h, and is therefore, as a piece of bungling work,
to be refei.ed to the hands of an inferior intei;olator
Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these book,,, with the
exception of the ninth, were subsequently add;d by the
TLT^ \ "T *? .^"'^^«'°g *e original Achilleis into
Troy Wi?,' T "'^ ''' ""'' "' '''' ^^^^^^s against
Troy With reference to tliis hypothesis, I gladly Idmit
1 88 MYTHS AXD MYTH MAKERS.
that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the one best
entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point
connected with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems
to me that his theory rests solely upon imagined difficul-
ties which have no real existence. I doubt if any scholar,
reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by
these alleged inconsistencies of structure, imless they
were suggested by some a priori theory. And I fear
that the Woltian theory, m spite of Mr. Grote's emphatic
rejection of it, is responsible for some of these over-refined
criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an account
of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the
siege, and it does not continue to the capture of the city.
It is simply occupied with an episode in the war, — with
the wrath of Achilleus and its consequences, according
to the plan marked out in the opening lines. The sup-
posed additions, therefore, though they may have given
to the poem a somewhat wider scope, have not at any
rate clianged its primitive character of an Achilleis. To
my mind tliey seem even called for by the original
conception of the consequences of tlie wrath. To
have inserted tlie battle at tlie ships, in which Sarpedon
breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately after
the occurrences of the first book, would have been too
abrupt altogetlier. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to
Tlietis, must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such
fell determination. And after the long series of books
descriljing the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Aga-
memnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful interven-
tion of Achilleus appears in far gi-ander proportions tlian
would otherwise be possi])le. As ibr tlie embassy to
Achilleus, in the ninth book, I am unable to see how the
final reconciliation with Agaiiieninon would be conqjlete
without it. As Mr. Gladstone well observes, what Acliil-
JUVENTUS MUNDL 1 89
lens wants is not restitution, but apology; and Aga-
memnon offers no apology until the nineteenth book. In
his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleus scornfully re-
jects the proposals which imply that the mere return of
Briseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be
accompanied with that pubKc humiliation to which cir-
cumstances have not yet compelled the leader of the
Greeks to subject himseE Achilleus is not to be bought
or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the Greeks in
the thirteenth book does not prevail upon him ; nor is
there anything in the poem to show that he ever would
have laid aside his wrath, had not the death of Patroklos
supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen motive.
It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after the
death of his friend would lose half its poetic effect, were
it not preceded by some such scene as that in the ninth
book, in which he is represented as deaf to all ordinary
inducements. As for the two concluding books, which
Mr. Grote is inclined to regard as a subsequent addition,
not necessitated by the plan of the poem, I am at a loss
to see how the poem can be considered complete without
them. To leave the bodies of Patroklos and Hektor
unburied would be in the highest degree shocking to
Greek religious feelings. Remembering the sentence in-
curred, in far less superstitious times, by the generals at
Arginusai, it is impossible to believe that any conclusion
which left Patroklos's manes unpropitiated, and the mu-
tilated corpse of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied
either the poet or his hearers. For further particulars I
must refer the reader to the excellent criticisms of Mr.
Gladstone, and also to the article on " Greek History and
Legend " in the second volume of Mr. Mill's " Disserta-
tions and Discussions." A careful study of tlie arguments
of these writers, and, above all, a thorough and independent
190 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
examination of the Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the
student that this great poem is from beginning to end the
consistent production of a single author.
The arguments of those wlio would attribute tlie Iliad
and Odyssey, taken as wholes, to two difierent authors,
rest chiefly upon some apparent discrepancies in the
mythology of the two poems ; but many of these diffi-
culties have been completely solved by the recent pro-
gress of the science of comparative mythology. Thus,
for example, the fact that, in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called
the husband of Charis, while in the Odyssey he is called
the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited even by Mr.
Grote as evidence that the two poems are not by the
same author. It seems to me that one such discrepancy,
in tlie midst of complete general agreement, would be
much better explained as Cervantes explained his own
inconsistency with reference to the stealing of Sancho's
mule, in the twenty-second chapter of "Don Quixote."
But there is no discrepancy. Aphrodite, though originally
the moon-goddess, like tlie German Horsel, had before
Homer's time acquired many of tlie attributes of the
dawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had
been to a great extent transferred to Artemis and Per-
sephone. In her renovated character, as goddess of the
dawn. Aphrodite became identified with Charis, who
appears in the Rig- Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-
Homeric mythology, the two were again separated, and
Charis, becoming divided in personality, appears as the
Charites, or Graces, who were supposed to be constant
attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems
the two are still identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite
may be called the wife of the lire-god, without incon-
sistency.
Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite
JUVENTUS MUNDL I9I
right in maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are,
from beginning to end, with the exception of a few in-
significant interpolations, the work of a single author,
whom we have no ground for calling by any other name
than that of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this
author lived before the beginning of authentic history,
and that w^e can determine neither his age nor his coun-
try with precision. Vf e can only decide that he was a
Greek who ]jved at some time previous to the year 900 B.C.
Here, however, I must begin to part company with
Mr. Gladstone, and shall henceforth unfortunately have
frequent occasion to differ from him on points of funda-
mental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only regards
the Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic
history, but he even goes much further than this. He
would not only fix the date of Homer positively in the
twelfth century B. C, but he regards the Trojan war as a
purely historical event, of which Homer is the authentic
historian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he even
takes the word of the poet as proof conclusive of the
historical character of events happening several genera-
tions before the Troika, according to the legendary chro-
nology. He not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus, and
Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same re-
ality to characters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and
talks of the Pelopid and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire
of Minos, with as much confidence as if he were dealing
with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch of the
Crusades.
It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much
has been finally settled by waiters like Grote, Mommsen,
and Sir G. C. Lewis, to come upon such views in tho
work of a man of scholarship and intelligence. One
begins to wonder how many more times it will be neces-
192 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
sary to prove that dates and events are of no historical
value, unless attested by nearly contemporary evidence.
Pausanias and Plutarch were able men no doubt, and
Thukydides was a profound historian ; but what these
writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of
Homer, and the war of Troy, can have no great weight
with the critical historian, since even in the time of
Thukydides these events were as completely obscured by
lapse of time as they are now. There is no literary Greek
history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three
centuries subsequent to the first recorded Olympiad. A
portion of this period is satisfactorily covered by inscrip-
tions, but even these fail us before we get within a cent-
ury of this earliest ascertainable date. Even the career
of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems to belong to
the commencement of the eighth century B. C, presents
us, from lack of anything like contemporary records,
with many insoluble problems. The Helleno-Dorian
conquest, as we have seen, must have occurred at some
time or other ; but it evidently did not occur within two
centuries of the earliest known inscription, and it is
therefore folly to imagine that we can determine its date
or ascertain the circumstances which attended it. An-
terior to this event there is but one fact in Greek an-
tiquity directly known to us, — the existence of the
Homeric poems. Tlie belief that there was a Trojan war
rests exclusively upon the contents of those poems : there
is no otlier independent testimony to it whatever. But
the Homeric poems are of no value as testimony to the
truth of the statements contained in tliem, unless it can
be proved that their author was either contemporary with
the Troika, or else derived his information from contem-
porary witnesses. This can never be proved. To assume,
as Mr. Gladstone does, that Homer lived witliin fifty
JUVENTUS MUNDL 1 93
years after the Troika, is to make a purely gratuitous
assumption. For auglit the wisest historian can tell, the
interval may have been five hundred years, or a thousand.
Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it is deal-
ing with an ancient state of things which no longer ex-
ists. It is difficult to see what else can be meant by the
statement that the heroes of the Troika belong to an
order of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. 304.)
Most assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon
the son of Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no
ordinary mortals, such as might have been seen and con-
versed with by the poet's grandfather. They belong to
an inferior order of gods, according to the peculiar an-
thropomorphism of the Greeks, in which deity and hu-
manity are so closely mingled that it is difficult to tell
where the one begins and the other ends. Diomedes,
single-handed, vanquishes not only the gentle Aphrodite,
but even the god of battles himself, the terrible Ares.
Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we are told,
not two men among the poet's contemporaries could by
their united exertions raise and place upon a table. Aias
and Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses of rock as
easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. AU tliis
shows that the poet, in his naive way, conceiving of these
heroes as personages of a remote past, was endeavouring
as far as possible to ascribe to them the attributes of
superior beings. If all that were divine, marvellous, or
superhuman were to be left out of the poems, the sup-
posed historical residue would hardly be worth the trou-
ble of saving. As Mr. Cox well observes, " It is of the
very essence of the narrative that Paris, who has deserted
Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, and before
whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as
claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the
194
MY Tits AXD MYTH-MAKEItS.
beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi ; that the chiefs are
summoned together for no otlier purpose than to avenge
her woes and ^^Tongs ; that Acliilleus, the son of the sea-
nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible weapons and the
lord of undying horses, goes to light in a quarrel which
is not liis own ; that his wrath is roused because he is
robbed of the maiden Briseis, and that henceforth he
takes no part in the strife until his friend Patroldos has
been slain ; that then he puts on the new armour which
Thetis brings to him from the anvil of Hephaistos, and
goes forth to win the victory. The details are throughout
of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converses with
Athene ; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep
and Death bear away the lifeless Sarpedon on their
noiseless wings to the far-off land of light." In view of
all tliis it is evident that Homer was not describing, like
a salaried historiographer, the state of things which existed
in the time of his father or grandfather. To his mind
the occurrences wliich he described were those of a re-
mote, a wonderful, a semi-divine past.
This conclusion, whicli I have tlius far supported
merely by reference to the Iliad itself, becomes irresist-
ible as soon as we take into account the results obtained
during the past thirty years by the science of compara-
tive mythology. As long as our view was restricted to
Greece, it was perhaps excusable tliat Achilleus and
Paris should be taken for exaggerated copies of actual
persons. Since the day when Grimm laid the founda-
tions of the science of mythology, all this has been
clianged. It is now held that Acliilleus and Paris and
Helena are to be found, not only in the Iliad, but also in
the Ptig-Veda, and therefore, as mythical conceptions,
date, not from Homer, but from a period preceding the
dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath
JUVENTUS MUNDI. 195
of Achilleus, far from originating with Homer, far from
being recorded by the author of the Ihad as by an eye-
witness, must have been known in its essential features
in Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when the Indian,
the Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the
same. For the story has been retained by the three races
ahke, 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 *
* For tlie precise extent to whicli I would indorse the theory that the
Iliad-mj'th is an account of the victory of light over darkness, let me refer
to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not suppose that the struggle
between light and darkness was Homer's subject in the Iliad any more
than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet." Homer's subject was
the wrath of the Greek liero, as Shakespeare's subject was the vengeance
of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story of Hamlet, when traced
back to its Norse original, is unmistakably the story of the quarrel be-
tween summer and winter ; and the moody prince is as much a solar
hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des Shakespeare, I.
127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, as Homer knew
nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories, therefore, are
not to be taken as sun-myths in their present form. They are the off-
spring of other stories which were sun-myths ; they are stories which
conform to the sun-myth type after the manner above illustrated in the
paper on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothing unintelligible
in the inconsistency — which seems to puzzle Max Miiller (Science of
Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20) - of investing Paris with
many of the characteristics of the children of light. Supposing, as we
must, that the primitive sense of the Iliad-myth had as entirely disap-
peared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of the Hamlet-myth
had disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit ground for wonder is
that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The physical theory
of myths will be properly presented and comprehended, only when it is
understood that we accept the physical derivation of such stories as the
Iliad-myth in much the same way that w^e are bound to accept the phys-
ical etjTiiologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince, deliber-
ate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, in his "Philo-
logical Studies," — a Httle book which I used to read with delight when
196 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
In the Eig-Yeda the Panis are the genii of niglit and
winter, corresponding to the Nibehings, or " Children of
the Mist/' in the Teutonic legend, and to the children of
Nephele (cloud) in the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece.
Tlie Panis steal the cattle of the Sun (Indra, Helios,
Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to a
dark cave eastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent
by Indra to find and recover them. The Panis then
tamper with Sarama, and try their best to induce her to
betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailed upon
to dally with them ; yet she ultimately returns to give
Indra the information needful in order that he might
conquer the Panis, just as Helena, in the slightly altered
version, ultimately returns to her western home, carry-
ing with her the treasures (KTrjfiaTa, Iliad, II. 285) of
which Paris had robbed Menelaos. ihit, 1)efore the bright
Indra and his solar heroes can recon(|uer their treasures
they must take captive the offspring of Brisaya, the
violet light of morning. TIius Achilleus, answering to
the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the daughter
of Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from
the morning-light, to return to it again just before set-
ting, so AchiUeus loses Briseis, and regains her only just
before his final struggle. In similar wise Herakles is
parted from lole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from
Brynhild. In sullen \\Tath the hero retires from the
conflict, and his Myrmidons are no longer seen on tlie
battle-field, as the sun hides beliind the dark cloud and
his rays no longer appear about him. Yet toward the
a boy, — (lescrihes such etymologies a.s " faded mctaphons." In similar
wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or the tragedy of
Hamlet — any more than I would chara(;terize Le Juif Errant by Sue,
or La Mavion ForestUre by Erckmann-Chatrian — as nature-myths, I
would at the same time consider these poems well described as embody-
ing "faded nature-myths."
JUVENTUS MUNDI. 1 97
evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might,
clothed in the dazzling armour wrought for him by the
fire-god Hephaistos, and with liis invincible spear slays
the great storm-cloud, which during his absence had
wellnigh prevailed over the champions of the daylight.
But his triumph is sliort-lived ; for having trampled on
the clouds that had opposed him, while yet crimsoned
with the fierce carnage, the sharp arrow of the night-
demon Paris slays him at the Western Gates. We have
not space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's
" Mythology of the Aryan Nations," and " Tales of An-
cient Greece," the reader will find the entire contents of
the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated by com-
parison with the Yeda, the Edda, and the Lay of the
Nibelungs.
Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they
are modern in comparison with the tale of Achilleus
a,nd Helena, as here unfolded. The date of the en-
trance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never
be determined ; but I do not see how any competent
scholar can w^ell place it at less than eight hundred
or a thousand years before the time of Homer. Be-
tween the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and
Keltic languages had time to acquire distinct individual-
ities. Far earlier, therefore, than the Homeric " juventus
mundi" was that "youth of the world," in which the
Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and pos-
sessing no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke
of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or
as animals. The Yeda, though composed much later
than this, — perhaps as late as the Iliad, — nevertheless
preserves the record of the mental life of this period.
The Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the
fickle twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive
198 MYTUS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
to coax her from her allegiance to the day-god. He
keeps the scene of action in the sky. P>ut tlie Homeric
Greek had long since forgotten that Helena and Paris
were anything more than semi-divine mortals, the daugh-
ter of Zeus and the son of the Zeus-descended Priam.
The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the bright one")
meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one") the
dawn, and spoke significantly when he called the latter
the daugliter of the former. But the Greek could not
know that Zeus was derived from a root div, " to shine,"
or that Helena belonged to a root sar, " to creep." Pho-
netic change thus helped him to rise from fetichism to
polytheism. His nature-gods became thoroughly anthro-
pomorphic ; and he probably no more remembered that
Acliilleus originally signified the sun, than we remember
that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast
of conceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-wind.
Indeed, when the fetichistic tendency led the Greek
again to personify the powers of nature, he had recourse
to new names formed from his ow^n language. Thus, be-
side Apollo we have Helios ; Selene beside Artemis and
Persephone; Eos beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter.
As a further consequence of this decomposition and new
development of tlie old Aryan mythology, we find, as
might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not
always consistent in their use of their mythic materials.
Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is — to Max Mliller's per-
plexity— invested with many of the attributes of tlie
bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus,
and Cyrus, he is doomed to bring ruin on his parents ;
like them he is exposed in his infancy on the hillside,
and rescued by a she])herd." All the solar heroes begin
life in tliis way. "VVliether, like Apollo, born of the
dark night (Leto), or like Oidij)Ous, of the violet dawn
JUVENTUS MUNDL 1 99
(lokaste), they are alike destined to bring destruction on
their parents, as the night and the dawn are both de-
stroyed by the sun. The exposure of the child in infancy
represents the long rays of the morning-sun resting on
the hillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the wine-
coloured one"), but meets her again at the gloaming
when she lays herself by his side amid the crimson
flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero,
is made to fight on the side of the Mblungs or Trojans,
attended by his friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one").
They command the Lykians, or " children of light " ; and
with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawm, from
the fiery land of the Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of
Zeus and the gods of Olympos.
The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current
many ages before the Greeks inhabited Greece, long be-
fore there was any Ilion to be conquered. Nevertheless,
this does not forbid the supposition that the legend, as
we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization
of mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine
tradition. In this view I am upheld by a most sagacious
and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, who finds in
Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the
problem before us.
The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage.
He is supposed to have been a Frenchman, at a time
when neither the French nation nor the French language
can properly be said to have existed ; and he is repre-
sented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was
not thought of until long after the Karolingian era. The
legendary deeds of Charlemagne are not conformed to
the ordinary rules of geography and chronology. He is
a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth, — an
(tvatar, or at least a representative, of Odin in his solar
200 MYTHS AXD MYTU^MAKERS.
capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled and
rectified by history, he would be for us as unreal as
Agamemnon.
History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor
Karl, German in race, name, and language, who was one
of the two or three greatest men of action that the world
has ever seen, and who in the ninth century ruled over all
"Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in
many particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend
has preserved the fact, which without the information
supplied by history we might perhaps set down as a
fiction, that tliere was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy,
and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr.
Freeman has weU observed, the mythical crusades of
Charlemagne are good e\'idence that there were crusades,
although the real Karl had nothing whatever to do with
one.
]N'ow the case of Agamemnon may be much like that
of Charlemagne, except that we no longer have history
to help us in rectifying the legend. The Ihad preserves
the tradition of a time when a large portion of tlie islands
and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject
to a common suzerain ; and, as Mr. Freeman has again
slirewdly suggested, the assignment of a place like
]\Iykenai, instead of Athens or Sparta or Argos, as tlie
seat of tlie suzerainty, is strong evidence of the trust-
worthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that tlie
legend was constrained by some remembered fact, instead
of being guided b}^ general proltability. Charlemagne's
seat of government has been transferred in romance from
Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Far i.s says Mr.
Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to
Aaclien. Moreover, tlie story of Agamemnon, though
uncontifjlled i»y liistoric* records, is here at least sup-
JUVENTUS MUNDL 201
ported by archaeologic remains, which prove Mykenai to
have been at some time or other a place of great con-
sequence. Then, as to the Trojan war, we know that the
Greeks several times crossed the ^gsean and colonized
a large part of the seacoast of Asia Minor. In order to
do this it w^as necessary to oust from their homes many
warlike communities of Lydians and Bithjiiians, and we
may be sure that this w^as not done without prolonged
fighting. There may very probably have been now and
then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was
in mediaeval Europe ; and whether the great suzerain at
Mykenai ever attended one or not, legend w^ould be sure
to send him on such an expedition, as it afterwards sent
Charlemagne on a crusade.
It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and
Menelaos may represent dimly remembered sovereigns or
heroes, with their characters and actions distorted to suit
the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solar myth.
The character of the Nibelungenlied here weU illustrates
that of the Iliad. Siegfried knd Brunhild, Hagen and
Gunther, seem to be mere personifications of physical
phenomena ; but Etzel and Dietrich are none other than
Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attri-
butes; and even the conception of Brunhild has been
supposed to contain elements derived from the traditional
recollection of the historical Brunehault. When, therefore,
AchiJleus is said, Mke a true sun-god, to have died by a
wound from a sharp instmment in the only vulnerable
part of his body, we may reply that the legendary Char-
lemagne conducts himself in many respects Like a solar
deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents the
8un ensnared and held captive by the pale goddess of
night, the legend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a
Thuringian mountain embodies a portion of a kindred
9*
202 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic
have been substituted for Odin ; we may suspect that
with the mythical impersonations of Achilleus and Odys-
seus some traditional figures may be blended. We should
remember that in early times the solar-myth was a sort
of type after which all wonderful stories would be pat-
terned, and that to such a type tradition also would be
made to conform.
In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to
Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion concern-
ing the Homeric poems wliich the labours of a whole
generation of scholars may be said to have satisfactorily
estaljKshed, it is tliis, that no trustworthy history can be
obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by
sifting out the mythical element. Even if the poems
contain the faint reminiscence of an actual event, that
event is inextricably ^\Tapped up in mythical phraseology,
so that by no cunning of the scholar can it be construed
into history. In view of this it is quite useless for ]\Ir.
Gladstone to attempt to base historical conclusions upon
the fact that Helena is always caUed " Argive Helen," or
to draw ethnological inferences from the circumstances
that Menelaos, Acliilleus, and the rest of the Greek heroes,
have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so described.
The Argos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos,
thougli doul)tless so construed even in Homer's time. It
is " tlie briglit land " where Zeus resides, and the epitliet
is applied to his wife Here and his daughter Helena, as
well as to the dog of Odysseus, wlio reappears with Sara-
meyas in the Veda. As for yellow hair, tliere is no evi-
dence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed it; but
no other colour would do for a solar hero, and it accord-
ingly characterizes the entire company of them, wlierever
found, while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is
not required.
JUVENTUS MUNDL 203
A wider acquaintance with the results which have been
obtained during the past thirty years by the comparative
study of languages and mythologies would have led Mr.
Gladstone to reconsider many of his views concerning
the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to
cut out half or two thirds of his book as hopelessly
antiquated. The chapter on the divinities of Olympos
would certainly have had to be rewritten, and the ridic-
ulous theory of a primeval revelation abandoned. One
can hardly preserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone
derives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and Athene
from the Logos. To accredit Homer with an acquaintance
with the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until
the time of Philo, and did not receive its authorized
Christian form until the middle of the second century
after Christ, is certainly a strange proceeding. We shall
next perhaps be invited to believe that the authors of
the Yolsunga Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd
from the " Thirty-Nine Articles." It is true that these
deities, Athene and Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more
dignified, on the whole, than any of the other divinities
of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. Gladstone
truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated. For all
Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of futurity, and in the
maid Athene we have perhaps the highest conception of
deity to which the Greek mind had attained in the early
times. In the Yeda, Athene is nothing but the dawn;
but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous
glories of daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes
the impersonation of the illimiinating and knowledge-
giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she is daughter
of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from
his forehead; but, according to the Greek conception,
this imagery signifies that she shares, more than any
204 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
other deity, in the boundless wisdom of Zeus. The
knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the peculiar
pri^dlege of the sun, who, from his lofty position, sees
everything tliat takes place upon the earth. Even the
secondary divinity Helios possesses this prerogative to a
certain extent.
Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician
ancestry for the Greek divinities. But the same lack of
acquaintance with the old Aryan mythology vitiates all
his conclusions. No doubt the Greek mythology is in
some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions.
Aphrodite was originally a purely Greek divinity, but in
course of time she acquired some of tlie attributes of the
Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improved by the change.
Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported into Greece.
But the same cannot be proved of Poseidon ; * far less
of Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas,
the rising wind, the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying,
tricksome wind-god, who invented music, and conducts
the souls of dead men to the house of Hades, even as his
counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the tree-tops
leading the host of the departed. When one sees Iris,
the messenger of Zeus, referred to a Hebrew original,
because of Jeliovah's promise to Noah, one is at a loss to
understand the relationship between the two conceptions.
Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks than to call
* T have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earth-shaker, and,
regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can hardly do better
than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be
doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come of comparisons
between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between
the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's Poseidon ;
a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872, — a book
which is open to several of the criticisms here directed against Mr. Glad-
•tone's manner of theorizing.
JUVENTUS MUNDL 20$
the rainbow the messenger of the sky-god to earth-dwell-
ing men ; to call it a token set in the sky by Jehovah, as
the Hebrews did, was a very different thing. We may
admit the very close resemblance between the myth of
Bellerophon and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha ;
but the fact that the Greek story is explicable from Aiyan
antecedents, while the Hebrew story is isolated, might
perhaps suggest the inference that the Hebrews were the
borrowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of the
myth of Eden. Lastly, to conclude that Hehos is an
Eastern deity, because he reigns in the East over Thrina-
kia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pure Greek for
the sun .? and where should his sacred island be placed,
if not in the East ? As for his oxen, which wrought such
dire destruction to the comrades of Odysseus, and wliich
seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they are those very
same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by
the storm-demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and
which furnished endless material for legends to the poets
of the Veda.
But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems
to be terra incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the
even tenour of his way in utter disregard of Grimm, and
Kuhn, and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf. He takes
no note of the Eig-Veda, nor does he seem to realize that
there was ever a time when the ancestors of the Greeks
and Hindus worshipped the same gods. Two or three
times he cites Max Muller, but makes no use of the
copious data which might be gathered from him. The
only work which seems really to have attracted his at-
tention is M. JacoUiot's very discreditable performance
called "The Bible in India." Mr. Gladstone does not,
indeed, unreservedly approve of this book ; but neither
does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of
206 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKEIiS.
charlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudi-
ments of the subject which he professes to handle.
Mr. Gladstone is equally out of liis depth when he
comes to treat purely philological questions. Of the
science of pliilology, as based upon established laws of
phonetic change, he seems to have no knowledge what-
ever. He seems to tliink that two words are sufficiently
proved to be connected when they are seen to resemble
each other in spelling or in sound. Thus he quotes approv-
ingly a derivation of the name Themis from an assumed
verb them, " to speak," whereas it is notoriously derived
from rlOrjfii, as statute comes ultimately from stare. His
reference of hieros, " a priest," and geron, " an old man,"
to the same root, is utterly baseless ; the one is the San-
skrit ishiras, " a powerful man," the other is the Sanskrit
jaran, " an old man." The hsts of words on pages 96 -
100 are disfigured by many such errors ; and indeed the
whole purpose for which they are given shows how sadly
Mr. Gladstone's philology is in arrears. The theory of
Niebuhr — that the words common to Greek and Latin,
mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgian
— was serviceable enough in its day, but is now rendered
wholly antiquated by the discovery that sucli words are
Aryan, in the widest sense. The Pelasgian tlieory works
very smoothly so long as we only compare the Greek
with the Latin words, — as, for instance, ^uyov with ju-
g\im ; but when we add the English yoke and the San-
skrit yiKjam, it is evident tliat we liave got far out of the
range of the Pelasgoi. But what shall we say when we
find Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus in sup-
port of tliis antiquated theory ? Doubtless the word tha-
lamus is, or should be, significative of peaceful occupa-
tions ; but it is not a Latin word at all, except by
adoption. One might as well cite the word enscmhle to
JUVENTUS MUNDL
207
prove the original identity or kinship between English
and French.
When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of
pure and applied philology, confines himself to illustrat-
ing the contents of the Homeric poems, he is always ex-
cellent. His chapter on the " Outer Geography " of the
Odyssey .is exceedingly interesting; showing as it does
how much may be obtained from the patient and atten-
tive study of even a single author. Mr. Gladstone's
knowledge of the surface of the Iliad and Odyssey, so
to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he
attempts to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the
treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, that he
shows himself unprovided with the talisman of the wise
dervise, which alone can unlock those mysteries. But
modern philology is an exacting science : to approach its
higher problems requires an amount of preparation suf-
ficient to terrify at the outset all but the boldest ; and a
man who has had to regulate taxation, and make out
financial statements, and lead a political party in a great
nation, may weU be excused for ignorance of philology.
It is difficult enough for those who have little else to do
but to pore over treatises on phonetics, and thumb their
lexicons, to keep fuUy abreast with the latest views in
linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever
broach a new hypothesis without misgivings lest some-
body, in some weekly journal published in Germany,
may just have anticipated and refuted it. Yet while Mr.
Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philol-
ogy, it is far less excusable that he should sit down to
write a book about Homer, abounding in philological
statements, without the shghtest knowledge of what has
been achieved in that science for several years past. In
spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abid-
208 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
ing taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a
certain kind of praise. I hope, — though just now the
idea savours of the ludicrous, — that the day may some
time arrive when our Congressmen and Secretaries of the
Treasury will spend their vacations in writing books
about Greek antiquities, or in illustrating the meaning
of Homeric phrases.
July, 1870.
THE FRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 209
VII.
THE PBIMEYAL GHOST-WOELD.
NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have
forgotten or wholly outlived the feehng of delight
awakened by the first perusal of Max Muller's brilliant
" Essay on Comparative Mj^hology," — a work in which
the scienafic principles of myth-interpretation, though
not newly announced, were at least brought home to the
reader with such an amount of fresh and striking con-
crete illustration as they had not before received. Yet
it must have occurred to more than one reader that, while
the analyses of myths contained in tliis noble essay are
in the main sound in principle and correct in detail,
nevertheless the author's theory of the genesis of myth
is expressed, and most likely conceived, in a way that is
very suggestive of carelessness and fallacy. There are
obvious reasons for doubting whether the existence of
mythology can be due to any " disease," abnormity, or
hypertrophy of metaphor in language ; and the criticism
at once arises, that with the myth-makers it was not so
much the character of the expression which originated the
thought, as it was the thought which gave character to the
expression. It is not that the early Aryans were myth-
makers because their language abounded in metaphor ; it
is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphor
because the men and women who spoke it were myth-
makers. And they were myth-makers because they had
nothing but the phenomena of human will and effort
with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore
2IO MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
it was that they spoke of tlie sun as an unwearied voy-
ager or a matchless archer, and classified inanimate no
less than animate objects as masculine and feminine,
^lax Mliller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay
and in liis later Lectures, affords one among several in-
stances of the curious manner in which he coml)ines a
marvellous penetration into the significance of details with
a certain looseness of general conception.* The princi-
ples of pliilological interpretation are an indispensable
aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a
legend in which the powers of nature are represented in
the guise of living and thinking persons ; but before we can
get at the secret of the myth-making tendency itself, we
must leave philology and enter upon a psychological
study. We must inquire into the characteristics of that
primitive style of thinking to wliich it seemed quite
natural that the sun should be an unerring archer, and
the thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robber find-
* " The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Da\\ii, finds out the
criminal, was originally quite free from m^-thology ; it meant no more
than that crime vjould be brought to light soine day or other. It became
m}'thological, however, as soon as the et}Tuological meaning of Erinys
was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the
rank of a personal being." — Science of Language, 6th edition, II. 615.
This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine, contains Max Miiller's
theor>- in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at variance with the facts
of history. The facts concerning primitive culture which are to he cited
in this paper will show that the case is just the other way. Instead of
the expres.sion " Erinys finds tl)e criminal" being originally a metaphor,
it was originally a literal st^itement of what was believed to be fact.
The Dawn (not "a ])ortion of time," (!) but the rosy flush of the morn-
ing sky) was originally regarded as a real person. Primitive men, strictly
sy)eaking, do not talk in metaphors ; they believe in the literal tnith of
their similes and person ification.s, from which, by survival in culture, our
poetic metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling
stone as iaffvfxevos or *' yearning" (to keep on rolling), is to us a mere
figurative expression ; but to the savage it is the description of a fact
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 2ri
ing his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant
Lord of Light.
Among recent treatises which have dealt with this
interesting problem, we shall find it advantageous to
give especial attention to Mr. Tylor's " Primitive Cult-
ure," * one of the few erudite works which are at once
truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning
displayed in it would do credit to a German specialist,
both for extent and for minuteness, while the orderly ar-
rangement of the arguments and the elegant lucidity of
the style are such as we are accustomed to expect from
Trench essay- writers. And what is still more admirable
is the way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of
a genial and original speculator is tempered by the
patience and caution of a cool-headed critic. Patience
and caution are nowhere more needed than in writers
who deal with mythology and with primitive rehgious
ideas ; but these quahties are too seldom found in com-
bination with the speculative boldness which is required
when fresh theories are to be framed or new paths of
investigation opened. The state of mind in which the
explaining powers of a favourite theory are fondly con-
templated is, to some extent, antagonistic to the state of
mind in which facts are seen, with the eye of impartial
criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromising real-
ity. To be able to preserve the balance between the two
opposing tendencies is to give evidence of the most con-
summate scientific training. It is from the want of such
a balance that the recent great work of Mr. Cox is at
times so unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seem ill-natured
to say so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays
* Primitive Culture : Researches into the Development of Mythology,
Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. By Edward B. Tylor. 2 vols,
8vo. London. 1871.
212 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
every available illustration of the physical theory of the
origin of myths has now and then the curious effect of
weakening the reader's conviction of the soundness of
the theory. For my own part, though by no means in-
clined to waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted
on good gromids, I never felt so much like rebelling
against the mythologic supremacy of the Sun and the
Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. That Mr.
Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory,
awakens no such rebellious feelings, is due to liis clear
perception and realization of the fact that it is impossible
to generalize in a single formula such many-sided corre-
spondences as those which primitive poetry and philosophy
have discerned between the life of man and the life of
outward nature. Wlioso goes roaming up and down the
elf-land of popular fancies, wdth sole intent to resolve
each episode of myth into some answering physical event,
his only criterion being outward resemblance, cannot be
trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns for
evidence he is sure to find something that can be made
to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household
legend or nursery rhyme is safe from his hermeneutics.
"Should he, for instance, demand as his property the
nursery * Song of Sixpence,' his claim would be easily
established, — obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds
are the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds
them is the underlying earth covered with the overarch-
ing sky, — how true a touch of nature it is that when the
pie is optened, that is, when day breaks, the birds begin
to sing ; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his
money is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower uf
Danae; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent
honey the moonlight; the !Maid is the 'rosy-fingered'
Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 213
out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky ; the particular
blackbird, who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off
her nose, is the hour of sunrise." In all this interpreta-
tion there is no a priori improbability, save, perhaps, in
its unbroken symmetry and completeness. That some
points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antique
interpretations of physical events, is in harmony with all
that we know concerning nursery rhymes. In short, " the
time-honoured rhyme really wants but one thing to
prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof by
some argument more valid than analogy." The character
of the argument which is lacking may be illustrated by
a reference to the rhyme about Jack and Jill, explained
some time since in the paper on " The Origins of Folk-
Lore." If the argument be thought valid which shows
these ill-fated children to be the spots on the moon, it is
because the proof consists, not in the analogy, which is
in this case not especially obvious, but in the fact that
in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of
our own day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given
as an explanation of the moon-spots. To the neglect of
this distinction between what is plausible and what is
supported by direct evidence, is due much of the crude
speculation which encumbers the study of myths.
It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology
into the wider inquiry into the characteristic features of
the mode of thinking in which myths originated, that we
can best appreciate the practical value of that union of
speculative boldness and critical sobriety which ever}--
where distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a
writer who can treat of primitive rehgious ideas without
losing his head over allegory and symbolism, and who
duly realizes the fact that a savage is not a rabbinical
commentator, or a cabaKst, or a Eosicruoian, but a plain
214 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with
feeble intelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic
allegory with which such modern ^^Titers as Lord Bacon
have invested the myths of antiquity is no part of their
original clothing, but is rather the late product of a style
of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which we
shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their
primitive constructions. The myths and customs and
beliefs which, in an advanced stage of culture, seem
meaningless save when characterized by some quaintly
wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seem
meaningless in the lower culture whicli gave birth to
them. Myths, like words, survive their primitive mean-
ings. In the early stage the myth is part and parcel of
the current mode of pliilosophizing ; the explanation
which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one
which would most readily occur to any one thinking on
the theme with which the myth is concerned. But by
and by the mode of philosophizing has changed ; expla-
nations which formerly seemed quite obvious no longer
occur to any one, but the myth has acquired an indepen-
dent substantive existence, and continues to be handed
dowTi from parents to children as something true, though
no one can tell why it is true. Lastly, the myth itself
gradually fades from remembrance, often leaving behind
it some utterly unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd
superstitious notion. For example, — to recur to an illus-
tration already cited in a previ(jus paper, — it is still
beheved here and there by some ven(!ral)le granny tliat it
is wicked to kill robins; but he wlio sliould attribute
the belief to the old granny's refined sympathy with all
sentient existence, would l)e making one of tlie blun-
ders which are always committed l)y those wlio reason
K priori about historical matters without following the
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 21$
historical method. At an earlier date the superstition
existed in the shape of a beHef that the killing of a
robin portends some calamity ; in a still earlier form the
calamity is specified as death ; and again, still earlier, as
death by lightning. Another step backward reveals that
the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that
he is the bird of Thor, the lightning god ; and finally we
reach that primitive stage of philosophizing in which the
lightning is explained as a red bird dropping from its
beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the belief
that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life
of a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded
as a case of survival in culture. In the older form of the
superstition it is held that the rescuer will sooner or later
be drowned himself ; and thus we pass to the fetichistic
interpretation of drowning as the seizing of the unfortu-
nate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally
angry at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth
bears a special grudge against the bold mortal who has
thus dared to frustrate him.
The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and
of drowning as the work of a smiling but treacherous
fiend, are parts of that primitive pliilosophy of nature in
which all forces objectively existing are conceived as
identical with the force subjectively known as volition.
It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but
treated by Mr. Tylor under the somewhat more compre-
hensive name of " animism," which we must now consider
in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications. When
we have properly characterized some of the processes
which the untrained mind habitually goes through, we
shall have incidentally arrived at a fair solution of the
genesis of mythology.
Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric oi
2l6 Mi'THS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
uncultivated niind reaches all manner of apparently fan-
ciful conclusions through reckless reasoning from analogy.
It is through the operation of certain laws of ideal as-
sociation that all human thinking, that of the highest as
well as that of the lowest minds, is conducted : the dis-
covery of the law of gravitation, as well as the invention
of such a superstition as the Hand of Glory, is at bottom
but a case of association of ideas. The difference between
the scientific and the mythologic inference consists solely
in the number of checks which in the former case combine
to prevent any other than the true conclusion from being
framed into a proposition to which tlie mind assents.
Countless accumulated experiences have tauglit the modern
that there are many associations of ideas which do not
correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in
the world of phenomena ; and he has learned accordingly
to apply to his newly framed notions the rigid test of ver-
ification. Besides which the same accumulation of ex-
periences has built up an organized structure of ideal asso-
ciations into which only the less extravagant newly framed
notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or
the modern savage who is to some extent his counter])art,
must reason without the aid of these multifarious checks.
That immense mass of associations which answer to what
are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the
civilized modern have become almost organic, have not
been formed in the mind of the savage ; nor has he
learned the necessity of experimentally testing any of
his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the
commonest. Consequently there is nothing but super-
ficial analogy to guide the course of his thought hither
or thither, and the conclusions at which he arrives will
be determined by associations of ideas occurring appar-
ently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fan-
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 21/
cies with which European and barbaric folk-lore is filled,
in the framing of which the myth-maker was but reason-
ing according to the best methods at his command. To
this simplest class, in which the association of ideas is
determined by mere analogy, belong such cases as that
of the Zulu, who chews a piece of wood in order to soften
the heart of the man with whom he is about to trade
for cows, or the Hessian lad who " thinks he may escape
the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his
pocket, — a symbolic way of repudiating manhood." *
A similar style of thinking underlies the mediaeval
necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his
enemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring
about the enemy's death ; as also the case of the magic
rod, mentioned in a previous paper, by means of which
a sound thrashing can be administered to an absent foe
through the medium of an old coat which is imagined to
cover him. The principle involved here is one which is
doubtless familiar to most children, and is closely akin to
that which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his doughty
general who struts through a field of cabbages or corn-
stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-
handed a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the
fancies that the breaking of a mirror heralds a death in
the family, — probably because of the destruction of the
reflected human image ; that the " hair of the dog that
bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the
wound ; or that the tears shed by human victims, sacri-
ficed to mother earth, will bring down showers upon the
land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's remark, " that
the king had been ill, and that people generally expected
the illness to be fatal, because the oldest lion in the
* Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.
10
2l8 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
Tower, ahout the king's age, had just died. * So wild
and capricious is the human mind,' " observes the elegant
letter- writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks,
" the thought was neither wild nor capricious ; it was
simply such an argument from analogy as the educated
world has at length painfully learned to be w^orthless, but
which, it is not too much to declare, would to this day
cany considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the
human race." Upon such symbolism are based most of
the practices of divination and the great pseudo-science
of astrology. " It is an old story, that when two brothers
were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, the physician,
concluded from the coincidence that they were twins, but
Poseidonios, the astrologer, considered rather that they
w^ere born under the same constellation; we may add
that either argument would be thought reasonable by a
savage." So when a Maori fortress is attacked, the be-
siegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the
moon. The moon represents the fortress; and if it
appears below the companion planet, the besiegers will
carry the day, otlierwise they will be repulsed. Equally
primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought
on the memorable day at Les Charmettes when, being
distressed with doubts as to the safety of his soul, he
souglit to determine the point by throwing a stone at a
tree. " Hit, sign of salvation ; miss, sign of damnation ! "
The tree being a large one and very near at hand, the
result of tlie experiment was reassuring, and tlie young
philosopher walked away without further misgivings con-
cerning this momentous question.*
"When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts
result only in speculations of tliis cliildlike character, is
* "Rousseau, Conffssions, T. vi. For furtlif^v illustration, see especially
the note on the "doctrine of signatures," supra, p. 55.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 219
confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to
see what he will make of them. His practical knowledge
of psychology is too limited to admit of liis distinguish-
ing between the solidity of waking experience and what
w^e may call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He
may, indeed, have learned that the dream is not to be
relied on for telling the truth ; the Zulu, for example,
has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logic
achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that
" dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has not learned,
nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard the
utterances of the dream as being purely subjective phe-
nomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern cult-
ure, the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess
as much objective reality as the gestures and shouts of
waking hours. Wlien the savage relates his dream, he
tells how he saiu certain dogs, dead warriors, or demons
last night, the implication being that the things seen
were objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer ob-
serves, "his rude lang-uage fails to state the difference
between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and
dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his
langaiage it not only results that he cannot truly represent
this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly
represent it to himself. Hence in the absence of an
alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of those to
whom he tells his adventures, is that his other self has
been away and came back when he awoke. And this
belief, which we find among various existing savage
tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early
civiHzed races." *
Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the
* Spencer, Kecent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36, "The Origin of
Animal Worship."
220 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
other self, for upon this is based the great mass of crude
inference wliich constitutes the primitive man's philoso-
phy of nature. The hypothesis of the other self wliich
serves to account for the savage's wanderings during
sleep in strange lands and among strange people, serves
also to account for the presence in his dreams of parents,
commdes, or enemies, known to be dead and buried. The
other self of the dreamer meets and converses with the
other selves of his dead brethren, joins with them in the
hunt, or sits down with them to the wild cannibal ban-
quet. Thus arises the belief in an ever-present world of
souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire experience of
uncivihzed man goes to strengthen and expand. The
existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly desti-
tute of rehgious belief has often been hastily asserted
and as often called in question. But there is no question
that, while many savages are unable to frame a concep-
tion so general as that of godhood, on the other hand no
tribe has ever been found so low in the scale of intel-
ligence as not to have framed the conception of ghosts or
spiritual personalities, capable of being angered, propi-
tiated, or conjured with. Indeed it is not improbable
a priori that the original inference involved in tlie notion
of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious
to fall within the capacity of animals even less intel-
ligent than uncivilized man. An authentic case is on
record of a Skye terrier who, being accustomed to obtain
favours from his master by sitting on his haunches, will
also sit before his pet india-rubl)er ball ])laced on tlie
chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down
and play with him.* Such a fact as this is quite in
* See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The circumstances
narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that the sitting up is in-
tended to attract the master's attention. The dog has fre(iuently been
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 221
harmony with Auguste Comte's suggestion that such in-
telligent animals as dogs, apes, and elephants may be
capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The be-
haviour of the terrier here rests upon the assumption
that the ball is open to the same sort of entreaty which
prevails with the master ; which implies, not that the
wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in
his mind the distinction between life end inanimate
existence has never been thoroughly established. Just
this confusion between things living and things not liv-
ing is present throughout the whole philosophy of feti-
chism ; and the confusion between things seen and things
dreamed, which suggests the notion of another self, be-
longs to this same twilight stage of intelligence in which
primeval man has not yet clearly demonstrated his im-
measurable superiority to the brutes.*
seen trying to soften the heart of tlie ball, while observed unawares by
his master.
* "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr. Mark
Twain's dog, who ' could n't be depended on for a special providence,'
as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life than is the Skye ter-
rier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to whose letter
Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had ' a few fetichistic no-
tions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of a
mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with which he wished
to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says the letter- writer,
he was evidently beseeching to come down and play with him. We
consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had been drilled
into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing to his
master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on his
hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of get-
ting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may
have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit and
eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or ex-
pected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. "We admit,
however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the
dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October
1, 1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in
222 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
The conception of a soul or other seK, capable of going
away from the body and retui*ning to it, receives decisive
confirmation from the phenomena of fainting, trance,
catalepsy, and ecstasy,* which occur less rarely among
savages, owing to their irregTilar mode of life, than
among civilized men. "Further verification," observes
Mr. Spencer, " is aftbrded by every epileptic subject, into
whose body, during the absence of the other seK, some
enemy has entered ; for how else does it happen that the
other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his
body has been doing ? And this supposition, that the
body has been ' possessed ' by some other being, is con-
firmed by the phenomena of somnambuHsm and insan-
the dog's mind ; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add
another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine
that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living
essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed :
my dog, a full-giown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
during a hot and still day ; but at a little distance a slight breeze occa-
sionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disre-
garded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time
that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.
He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious
manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the pres-
ence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on
his territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. I, p. 64. Without in-
sisting upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I
think, that in the dog, aa in the savage, there is an undisturbed associ-
ation between motion and a living motor agency ; and that out of a
multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with his
greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.
* Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these Greek
words. Cat/ilepsy, KaTdXrjxpLS, a seizing of the body by some spirit or
demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, fKaraais, a displacement or re-
moval of the soul from the body, into which the demon enters and
causes strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor,
but the literal belief in a ghost-world, which has given rise to such
words as these, and to such expressions as " a man beside himself or
transported."
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 223
ity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we
recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to
have their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves
should get carried ofi' and be exposed to foul play,* we
* Something akiu to the savage's belief in the animation of pictures
may be seen in young children. I have often been asked by my three-
year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite him if he
were to go near it ; and I can remember that, in my own childhood,
when reading a book about insects, which had the formidable likeness
of a spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest
my finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held the
book.
With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it fall
into the hands of some enemy who may injure him by conjuring with
it, may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward telling
his name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar
ghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriously
associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its get-
ting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly
originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may resent such
meddling A^'ith his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak will
not allude by name to the small-pox, but will call it "the chief" or
"jungle-leaves" ; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man
with the fur coat" ; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or
"Lord " ; while in more civilized communities such sayings are current
as "talk of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also
compare such expressions as "Eumenides " or "gi-acious ones" for the
Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil mortuis
nisi honum had most likely at one time a fetichistic flavour.
In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above specified, the
name of the reigning chief is so rigorously "tabu," that common words
and even syllables resembling that name in sound must be omitted from
the language. In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was ^[arip^, or
"knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra ; and in Tahiti, fetu,
"star," had to be changed into/e^m, and tui, " to strike," became tiai,
etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with
the languages of these islands by this ever-recurring necessity. Among
the Kafirs the women have come to speak a diff'erent dialect from the
men, because words resembling the names of their lords or male rela-
tives are in like manner "tabu." The student ot human culture will
trace among such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness
224 MYTHS AND MYTU-MAKERS.
must readily admit that the weird reflection of the person
and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland
pools will go far to intensify the belief in the other self.
Less frequent but uniform confirmation is to be found in
echoes, which in Europe witliin two centuries have been
commonly interpreted as the voices of mocking fiends or
wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well regard
as the utterances of his other self.
Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Sclilemihl belongs
to a widely diffused family of legends, which show that a
man's shadow has been generally regarded not only as an
entity, but as a sort of spiritual attendant of the body,
which under certain circumstances it may permanently
forsake. It is in strict accordance with this idea that
not only in the classic languages, but in various barbaric
tongues, the word for " shadow " expresses also the soul
or other self. Tasmanians, Algonquins, Central-Ameri-
cans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited by Mr. Tylor
as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow
with the ghost or phantasm seen in dreams ; the Basutos
going so far as to think "that if a man walks on the
river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water
and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person
is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily
detached from his body, and the convalescent is at times
" reproached for exposing liimself before his shadow was
safely settled down in him." If the sick man has been
to pronounce the name of Jehovah ; and hcnco we may ])erhaps have
before u.s the ultimate source of the horror with which the Hebraizing
Puritan regards such forms of light swearing — "Mon Dieu," etc. —
as are still tolerated on the continent of Europe, but have disappeared
from good society in Puritanic England and America. The reader in-
terested in this group of ideas and customs may consult Tylor, P'.arly
History of Mankind, pp. 142, 363 ; Max Miiller, Science of Language,
6th edition, Vol. II. p. 37 ; Mackay, Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 225
plunged into stupor, it is because his other self has
travelled away as far as the brink of the river of death,
but not being allowed to cross has come back and re-
entered him. And acting upon a similar notion the ail-
ing Fiji will sometimes lie down and raise a hue and cry
for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr.
Tylor, "in various countries the bringing back of lost
souls becomes a regular part of the sorcerer's or priest's
profession." * On Aryan soil we find the notion of a
temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date
in the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sab-
bath while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at
home. The primeval conception reappears, clothed in
bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference to his living con-
temporaries whose souls he met with in the vaults of
hell, while their bodies were still walking about on the
earth, inhabited by devils.
The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow,
and supposes the shadow to depart with the sickness and
death of the body, would seem liable to be attended with
some difficulties in the way of verification, even to the
dim intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of
identifying soul and breath is borne out by all primeval
experience. The breath, w^hich really quits the body at
its decease, has furnished the chief name for the soul,
not only to the Hebrew, the Sanskrit, and the classic
tongues ; not only to German and English, where geist,
and ghost, according to Max Miiller, have the meaning of
"breath," and are akin to such words as gas, gust, and
geyser ; but also to numerous barbaric languages. Among
* Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. *' The Zulus hold that a dead
body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from it at
the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,
p. 123.
10* o
226 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in
"VYest Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze
which passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth ;
and the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two
separate souls, the breath and the shadow. " Among the
Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth,
the infant was held over her face to receive her parti n«^'
spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for it«
future use Their state of mind is kept up to this
day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good
man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like a little
white cloud." * It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where a
well-known witch died a few years since ; " but before she
could * shuffle off this mortal coil ' she must needs traiis-
fer her familiar spirit to some trusty successor. An in-
timate acquaintance from a neighbouring township was
consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was
immediately closeted with her dying friend. What
passed between them has never fully transpired, but it is
confidently affirmed that at the close of the interview
this associate received the witch's last hreath into her mouth
and icith it her familiar spirit. The dreaded woman
thus ceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were
transferred to her companion ; and on passing along the
road from Burnley to Blackburn we can point out a i arm-
house at no great distance witli whose thrifty matron no
neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel." "f
Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to
speak furtlier on. At present let us not ])ass over tlie
iact that the other self is not only conceived as shadow
or breath, which can at times quit the body during life,
but is also supposed to become temporarily embcjdied in
* Tylor, op. cit. T. 391.
t Harland and Wilkinson, Lancasliire Folk-Lore, 1807, p. 210.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 22/
the visible form of some bird or beast. In discussing
elsewhere the myth of Bishop Hatto, we saw that the
sonl is sometimes represented in the form of a rat or
mouse ; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the
belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in
the night-wind, have taken on the semblance of howling
dogs or wolves. " Consistent with these quaint ideas are
ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a
cock (live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a
distant place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the
departing spirit which has already left his body and so
conveying it back." * In Castr^n's great work on Fin-
nish mythology, we find the story of the giant who could
not be killed because he kept his soul hidden in a twelve-
headed snake which he carried in a bag as he rode on
horseback ; only when the secret was discovered and the
snake carefully kiUed, did the giant yield up his life. In
this Finnish legend we have one of the thousand phases of
the story of the " Giant who had no Heart in his Body," but
whose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in a duck's
Qgg, or in a pigeon, carefully disposed in some belfry at the
world's end a million miles away, or encased in a well-
nigh infinite series of Chinese boxes.f Since, in spite
of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart invariably
came to grief, we need not wonder at the Karen super-
stition that the soul is in danger when it quits the body
* Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
+ In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be embodied in
pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his three
schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the
' Old Believers ' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia
dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their native
village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to
seek by soft twittering or soug to console their sorrowing parents."
Kalston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.
228 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
on its excursions, as exemplified in countless Indo-Euro-
pean stories of the accidental killing of the weird mouse
or pigeon which embodies the wandering spirit. Con-
versely it is held that the detachment of the other self
is fraught with danger to the self which remains. Iri the
philosophy of " wraiths " and " fetches," the appearance
of a double, like that which troubled Mistress Affery in
her waking dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been from
time out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New Zealand
it is ominous to see the figure of an absent person, for if
it be shadowy and the face not visible, his death may
erelong be expected, but if the face be seen he is dead
already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the
story) were seated round a fire in the open air, when
there appeared, seen only by two of them, the figure of a
relative, left ill at home ; they exclaimed, the figure van-
ished, and on the return of the party it appeared that the
sick man had died about the time of the vision." * The
belief in wTaiths has survived into modern times, and now
and then appears in the records of that remnant of pri-
meval philosophy known as " spiritualism," as, for exam-
ple, in the case of the lady who " thought she saw her
own father look in at the church-window at the moment
he was dying in his own house."
The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine
which identifies soul with shadow, is instructive as show-
ing that in barbaric thought the other self is supposed to
resemble the material self witli which it has customarily
been associated. In various savage superstitions the min-
ute resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The
Australian, for instance, not content with slaying his ene-
my, cuts off the right thumb of tlie cor})se, so tliat tlie de-
parted soul may be incapacitated from throwing a si)ear
* Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD.
229
Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion to de-
capitation, that their souls may not wander headless
about the spirit- world.* Thus we see how far removed
from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory
of the soul or other seK that figures in dreamland. So
grossly materialistic is the primitive conception that the
savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the cofi&n of
his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance,
if it likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the
peasants in some parts of Northern Europe, when Odin,
the spectral hunter, rides by attended by his furious host,
the windows in every sick-room are opened, in order
that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hindered
from joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr.
Tylor, after the Indians of North America had spent a
riotous night in singeing an unfortunate captive to death
with firebrands, they would howl like the fiends they
were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the
distressed and revengeful ghost. " With a kindlier feehng^
the Congo negroes abstained for a whole year after a death
from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the
deUcate substance of the ghost " ; and even now, " it re-
mains a German peasant saying that it is wrong to slam
a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it." "^ Dante's ex-
perience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were
astonished at his weighing down the boat in which they
were carried, is behed by the sweet German notion " that
the dead mother's coming back in the night to suckle the
* Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.
+ Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival this belief
will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no reason "being as-
signed ; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks why it is naughty
to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an evidence of bad temper.
Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the inroads of the practical
230 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow
pressed down in the bed where she lay." Almost univer-
sally ghosts, however impervious to thrust of sword or
shot of pistol, can eat and drink like Squire Westerns.
And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls
sufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the
case of the negro widows who, wishing to marry a second
time, will go and duck themselves in the pond, in order
to drown the souls of their departed husl)ands, which aro
supposed to cling about their necks ; while, according to
the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must go
through a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in
which, if he succeeds, he will enter Paradise, but if he
fails he will be killed over again and finally eaten by the
dreaded Samu and his unearthly company.
From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms,
as above illustrated, it is not a wide step to the concep-
tion of beast-souls which, like human souls, survive the
death of the tangible body. The wide-spread supersti-
tions concerning werewolves and swan-maidens, and the
hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that
primitive culture has not arrived at the distinction at-
tained by modern philosophy between the immortal man
and the soulless brute. Still more direct evidence is fur-
nished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who has
killed an elepliaut will cry that he did n't mean to do it,
and, lest the elephant's soul should still seek vengeance,
he will cut off and bury the trunk, so that the mighty
licast may go crippled to the spirit-land. In like manner,
the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about
the body offering excuses and laying the blame on the
Russians ; and the American redskin will even put the
pipe of peace into tlie dead animal's mouth, and beseecli
him to forgive the deed. In Assam it is believed that
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 23 1
the ghosts of slain animals will become in the next world
the property of the hunter who kills them ; and the
Kamtchadales expressly declare that all animals, even
flies and bugs, will live after death, — a belief, wliich, in
our own day, has been indorsed on philosophical grounds
by an eminent living naturalist.* The Greenlanders, too,
give evidence of the same belief by supposing that when
after an exhausting fever the patient comes up in unpre-
cedented health and vigour, it is because he has lost his
former soul and had it replaced by that of a young child
or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest
fancies of primeval savagery are thinly disguised in a
jargon learned from the superficial reading of modern
books of science, M. Figuier maintains that human souls
are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased ani-
mals ; in general, the souls of precocious musical children
like Mozart come from nightingales, while the souls of
great architects have passed into them from beavers, etc.,
etc. •[•
The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has
just slain is in some parts of the world extended to the
case of plants. Wlien the Talein offers a prayer to the
tree which he is about to cut down, it is obviously be-
cause he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghost
which in the next life may need to be propitiated. And
the doctrine of transmigration distinctly includes plants
along with animals among the future existences into
which the human soul may pass.
As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life,
though to a much less conspicuous degree, it is not in-
comprehensible that the savage should attribute souls to
fchem. But the primitive process of anthropomorphisa-
* Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97 - 99.
+ Figuier, The To-raorrow of Death, p. 247.
232 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
tion does not end here. Not only tlie horse and dog, the
bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such
as the hatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of
the dead man, possess other selves which pass into the
world of ghosts. Fijis and other contemporary savages,
when questioned, expressly declare that this is their be-
lief. " If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up,
away flies its soul for the service of the gods." The
Algonquins told Charlevoix that since hatchets and ket-
tles have shadows, no less than men and women, it fol-
lows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must pass
along with human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land.
In this we see how simple and consistent is the logic
which guides the savage, and how inevitable is the genesis
of the great mass of beliefs, to our minds so arbitrary
and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaric
world. However absurd the behef that pots and kettles
have souls may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only
belief which can be held consistently by the savage to
whom pots and kettles, no less than human friends or
enemies, may appear in his dreams ; who sees them fol-
lowed by shadows as they are moved about ; who hears
their voices, dull or ringing, when they are struck ; and
who watches their doubles fantastically dancing in the
water as they are earned across the stream.* To minds,
even in civilized countries, which are unused to the
severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be
alleged than what is called " the evidence of the senses " ;
for it is only long familiarity with science which teaches
* Here, as usually, the doctrine of nietenipsycliosis comes in to com-
plete the proof. " Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island,
who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll ; this spoon had
been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full
moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat
at a modern spi ri t -s toncc. " Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 233
US that the evidence of the senses is trustworthy only in
so far as it is correctly interpreted by reason. For the
truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and beasts, trees
and axes, the savage has undeniably the evidence of his
senses which have so often seen, heard, and handled
these other selves.
The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly
illustrate this crude philosophy, and receive fresh illus-
tration from it. On the primitive belief in the ghostly
survival of persons and objects rests the almost universal
custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs
of the departed chief of the tribe, as well as of presenting
at his shrine sacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons,
and money. Among the Kayans the slaves who are killed
at their master's tomb are enjoined to take great care of
their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo it, and to nurse
it when sick. Other savages think that " all whom they
kill in this world shall attend them as slaves after death,"
and for this reason the thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until
lately would not allow their young men to marry until
they had acquired some post mortem property by procur-
ing at least one human head. It is hardly necessary to
do more than allude to the Fiji custom of strangling all
the wives of the deceased at his funeral, or to the equally
well-known Hindu rite of suttee. Though, as Wilson
has shown, the latter rite is not supported by any genuine
Vedic authority, but only by a shameless Brahmanic cor-
ruption of the sacred text, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite
right in arguing that unless the horrible custom had re-
ceived the sanction of a public opinion bequeathed from
pre-Yedic times, the Brahmans would have had no motive
for fraudulently reviving it ; and tliis opinion is virtually
established by the fact of the prevalence of widow sacri-
fice among Gauls, Scandinavians, Slaves, and other Euro-
234 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
pean Aryans.* Though under English rule the rite has
been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic sentiments
which so long maintained it are not yet extinct. Within
the present year there has appeared in the newspapers a
not improbable story of a beautiful and accompKshed
Hindu lady who, having become the wife of a wealtliy
Enghshman, and after living several years in England
amid the influences of modern society, nevertheless went
off and privately burned herself to death soon after her
husband's decease.
The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral
offerings of food, w^eapons, ornaments, or money, on the
theory of object-souls, will probably suggest that such
offerings may be mere memorials of affection or esteem
for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to be
in many countries after surviving the phase of culture in
which they originated ; but there is ample evidence to
show that at the outset they were presented in the belief
that their ghosts would be eaten or otherwise employed
by the gliost of the dead man. The stout club which is
buried with the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him
that he may be able to defend himself against the hostile
ghosts which will lie in amT)ush for him on tlie road to
Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him. Sometimes the club
is afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use,
since its ghost is all that the dead man needs. In like
manner, " as the Greeks gave the dead man the obolus
for Charon's toll, and the old Prussians furnislied liim
with spending money, to buy refresliment on his weary
journey, so to tliis day German peasants l)ury a corpse
with money in his moutli or liaiid," and this is also said
to be one of tlie regidar ceremonies of an Irish wake.
Of similar purport were tlie funeral leasts and oblations
* Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 235
of food in Greece and Italy, the " rice-cakes made with
ghee " destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's king-
dom, and the meat and gruel offered by the Chinaman to
the manes of his ancestors. " Many travellers have de-
scribed the imagination with which the Chinese make
such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume
the impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its
coarse material substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers,
having set out sumptuous feasts for ancestral souls, allow
them a proper time to satisfy their appetite, and then
fall to themselves." * So in the Homeric sacrifice to the
gods, after the deity has smeUed the sweet savour and
consumed the curling steam that rises ghost-like from
the roasting viands, the assembled warriors devour the
remains." -f*
Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we
have traced out, with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not
always obvious to the modern inquirer without consider-
able concrete illustration. The remainder of the process,
resulting in that systematic and complete anthropomor-
phisation of nature which has given rise to mythology,
may be more succinctly described. Gathering together
the conclusions abeady obtained, we find that daily or
frequent experience of the phenomena of shadows and
dreams has combined with less frequent experience of the
phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate
in the mind of uncultured man the notion of a twofold
existence appertaining alike to aU animate or inanimate
objects : as aU alike possess material bodies, so all alike
possess ghosts or souls. Now when the theory of object-
souls is expanded into a general doctrine of spirits, the
* Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446 ; II. 30, 36.
+ According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the soul of the eys
is eaten by demons. Id., 11. 353.
236 MYTHS AXD MYTH-MAKERS.
philosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once ha-
bituated to the conception of souls of knives and tobacco-
pipes passing to the land of ghosts, the savage cannot avoid
carrying the interpretation still further, so that wind and
water, fire and storm, are accredited with indwelling
spirits akin by nature to the soul wluch inliabits tlie
human frame. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose
impelling will the trees are rooted up and the storm-
clouds driven across the sky sliould resemble a freed
human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured man
has not attained to the conception of physical force act-
ing in accordance with uniform methods, and hence all
events are to his mind the manifestations of capricious
volition. If the fire burns down Ids hut, it is because the
fire is a person with a soul, and is angry with him, and
needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of
prayer or sacrifice. Thus the savage has a priori no
alternative but to regard fire-soul as something akin to
human-soul; and in point of fact we find that savage
philosophy makes no distinction between the human
ghost and the elemental demon or deity. This is suffi-
ciently proved by the universal prevalence of the worship
of ancestors. The essential principle of manes-worship
is that the tribal chief or patriarch, who has governed the
community during life, continues also to govern it after
death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes,
rewarding brave warriors, and punishing traitors and
cowards. Thus from the conception of the living king
we pass to tlie notion of wliat Mr. S})encor calls " tlie
god-king," and thence to the rudimentary notion of deity.
Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the doctrine of
divine ancestors has been dovel(»|)ed to the extent of rec-
ognizing a first ancestor, tlie (jlreat Fatlier, Unkuhmkulu,
who made the world. But in the stratum of savage
THE PRIMEVAL GUOST-WORLD. 237
thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the
most part based, we find nonsuch exalted speculation.
The ancestors of the rude Veddas and of the Guinea
negroes, the Hindu pitris {jjcttres, " fathers "), and the
Eoman manes have become elemental deities which send
rain or sunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, and
to which their living offspring appeal for guidance amid
the vicissitudes of life.* The theory of embodiment,
already alluded to, shows how thoroughly the demons
which cause disease are identified with human and object
5ouls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which
creeps up into the liver of the impious wretch who has
ventured to pronounce his name ; while conversely in the
well-known European theory of demoniacal possession,
it is a fairy from elf-land, or an imp from hell, which has
entered the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship,
moreover, between disease-possession and oracle-posses-
sion, where the body of the Pythia, or the medicine-man,
is placed under the direct control of some great deity ,*|"
* The following citation is interesting as an illustration of the direct-
ness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian saint-worship :
" It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous in-
fancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and
safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly
infants to present them in his little round temple at the foot of the Pal-
atine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the church of St. Theo-
doras, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew public attention to
its curious history, used to look in and see ten or a dozen women, each
with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of
the saint. The ceremony of blessing children, especially after vaccina-
tion, may still be seen there on Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.
+ Want of space prevents me from remarking at length upon Mr.
Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular inspiration.
Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant explanation of the
importance accorded by all religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged
abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental state which is favour-
able to visions. The savage priest or mediciue-nian qualilies himself for
238 MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.
we may see how by insensible transitions the conception
of the human ghost passes into tne conception of the
spiritual numen, or divinity.
To pursue tliis line of inquiry t'iirough the countless
nymphs and dryads and nixies of the higher nature-wor-
ship up to the Olympian divinities of classic polytheism,
would be to enter upon the history of religious belief, and
in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which has
merely been to show by what mental process the myth-
maker can speak of natural objects in language which
implies that they are animated persons. Brief as our
account of this process has been, I believe that enough has
been said, not only to reveal the inadequacy of purely
philological solutions (like those contained in Max JMUl-
ler's famous Essay) to explain the growth of myths, but
also to exhibit the vast importance for tliis purpose of
the kind of psychological inquiry into the mental habits
of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted.
Indeed, however lacking we may still be in points of de-
tail, I think we have already reached a very satisfactory
explanation of the genesis of mythology. Since the essen-
tial characteristic of a myth is that it is an attempt to
explain some natural i)henomenon by endowing with
human feelings and capacities the senseless factors in the
phenomenon, and since it has here been shown how un-
cultured man, by the best use he can make of his rude
common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariably
come, to regard all objects as endowed with souls, and all
nature as peopled with su])ra-]niman entities sliaped after
the general pattern of tlie liiunan soul, I am inclined to
suspect that we have got very near to the root of the
the performance of his dutifs by fasting, and whore this is not sufficient,
often uses intoxicating drugs ; whence the sacrcclncss of tlie hasheesh, as
also of the Vedic soina-jiiice. The practice of fasting aiuung civilized
peoples is an instance of suivival.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD. 239
whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty in
seeing why a water- spout should be described in the
" Arabian Mghts " as a living demon : " The sea became
troubled before them, and there arose from it a black
pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the
meadow, .... and behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stat-
ure." We can see why the Moslem camel-driver should
find it most natural to regard the whirling simoom as a
malignant Jinni ; we may understand how it is that the
Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as " a
blushing maid with locks of flame and cheeks all rosy
red " ; and we need not consider it strange that the pri-
meval Aryan should have regarded the sun as a voyager, a
climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows driven by
the wind-god Hermes to their milking. The identifica-
tion of William Tell with the sun becomes thoroughly
intelhgible ; nor can we be longer surprised at the con-
ception of the howliQg night-mnd as a ravenous wolf.
When pots and kettles are thought to have souls that
live hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how
the blue sky can have been regarded as the sire of gods
and men. And thus, as the elves and bogarts of popular
lore are in many cases descended from ancient divinities
of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowl-
edge their ancestors in the shado^vy denizens of the prime-
val ghost- world.
August, 1872.
NOTE
The following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use
to the reader who is interested in the legend of William Tell.
HiSELY, J. J. Dissertatio historica inaugnralis de Gulielmo Tellio,
etc. Groningse, 1824.
Ideler, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Berlin, 1836.
Hausser, L. Die Sage vom Tell auf s Neue kritisch untersucht. Hei-
delberg, 1840.
HiSELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur I'histoire de Guillaunie Tell.
Lausanne, 1843.
LiEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisch nach
neuesten Quellen. Aarau, 1864.
ViscHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreiimg der Waldstatte, etc.
Nebst einer Beilage : das alteste Tellenschauspiel. Leipzig, 1867.
BORDIER, H. L. Le Grutli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense de la tra-
dition vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation Suisse. Geneve
et Bale, 1869.
The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant I'origine de la
confederation Suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.
RiLLiET, A. Les origines de la confederation Suisse : histoire et
legende. 2^ ed,, revue et corrigee. Geneve et Bale, 1869,
The same. Lettre k M. Henri Bordier h propos de sa defense de la
tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confederation Suisse. Gen-
eve et Bale, 1869.
HuNGERBiJHLER, H. Etude Critique sur les traditions relatives aux
origines de la confederation Suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.
Meyer, Karl. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien,
L 159-170.] Wien, 1872.
See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18 Feb., 1868 ;
by M. Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire, 1868 ; by M. de Wiss, in
the Journal de Geneve, 7 July, 1868 ; also Revue critique, 17 July,
1869; Journal de Geneve, 24 Oct., 1868; Gazette de Lausanne, feuille-
ton litteraire, 2 -.5 Nov., 1868, "Les origines de la confederation
Suisse," par M. Secretan ; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869, " The Legend
of TeU and Rutli."
INDEX
Abgott, 105.
Achaians, 180.
Achilleis, Mr. Grote's theory of, 187.
AchiUeus, 20, 24, 112, 187, seq.
Adeva, 121.
Aditi, 104, 110.
Adonis, 25, 204.
Agamemnon, 19, 187, seq., 200.
Agassiz, his belief in the immortality
of lower animals, 231.
Agni, 110.
Ahana, 20.
Ahaiyu, 20, 121, 196.
Ahi, 58, 114, 118.
Ahmed and the Peri Banou, 30, 43, 49.
Aliriman, 121.
Ahuramazda, 121.
Aias, 193.
Aineias, 193.
Aithiopes, 199.
Aladdin's ring, 45 ; his request for a
roc's egg to hang in the dome of his
palace, 50.
Aleian land, 50.
Alexandrian library, 15.
Alexikakos, 117.
Allegorical interpretations of myths
inadequate, 21, 214.
Ambrosia, 63.
American culture-myths, 152 ; sim-
catcher - myth, 170 ; tortoise - myth,
172.
Amrita, 63.
Analogical reasoning among savages,
examples of, 217.
Animism, 215.
Anro-mainyas, 121.
Anteia, 205.
Antigone, 115.
Antiquity of man, 176.
Antwerp, 71.
Aphrodite, 18, 28, 30, 190, 204.
ApoUo and the Messiah, 203.
Apsaras, 96.
Arabian Nights, 11, 13, 36, 43, 50, 99,
111, 239.
Argive as an epithet, 202.
Argonauts, 133.
Arkadians, 73.
Arktos, 73.
Armida's gardens, 30.
Artemis, 18, 28, 190.
Aryan immigration into Europe, 197.
Ash-tree dreaded by venomous snakes,
61.
Ass delivered from enchantment by
old coat, 101.
Association of ideas variously illus-
trated in scientific and in barbaric
thought, 216.
Astarte, 25, 204.
Astyages, 114.
Athene, 20 ; compared by Mr. Glad
stone to the Logos, 203.
Auerbach's cellar, 124.
Autolykos, 71.
AjTnar, Jacques, 38, 40.
Azidahaka, 114.
B.
Baba AbdaUah, 43.
Babel, 72.
Baga, 104.
Bagaios, epithet of Zeus, 104.
Balder, 25.
244
INDEX.
Banier, Abbe, 15.
Barbaric and Aryan mj'ths, 149.
Barbarossa, 26, 201.
Baring-Gould, 7, 17, 26, 29, 40, 43, 51,
80, seq.
Bazra, 71.
Belisarius, 15.
Bellerophon, 19, 205.
Benaiali the son of Jelioiada, 43.
Berserkir madness, 79, 89.
Beth-Gellert, 7.
Bhaga, 104.
Bi.sliop Ilatto, 34, 72, 227.
Blue-beard, 60.
Boabilil, 26.
Bog, Bogie, 104.
Boots, 9 ; his eating-match w'ith the
Troll, 131.
Brahman and goat, 12.
Breal, Michel, 116.
Bridge of souls, 48.
Bri.lge of the dead, 151.
Brisaya, 20, 196.
Briseis, 20, 196.
Brunehault, 201.
Brynhild, 132.
Bug-a-l)oo and Bugbear, 104.
Byrsa, 71.
Cacus, 117, 121.
Ca-cius, 117, 121.
Cannibalism, abnormal : tailor of
Chalons, 81 ; beggar of Polomyia,
82 ; Jean Gretiier, 83 ; Jaccjues
Roulet, 84.
Cannibals (in Zulu folk-lore) and
Trolls, 165.
Canlinal points, 160.
Carib lightning-myth, 169.
Car\-ara, 20, 124.
Ca.Hsim Baba, 43.
Cat-woman, 91.
Catalejisy, 78, 222.
Cate<|uil the thunder-go<l, 65.
Cattle of HelioH, 116, 119.
fVlfstinus and the Miller's Horse, 125.
Llialons, tailor of, 81.
Changelings, 86.
Charis and Charites, 190.
Oiark, 62.
Charlemagne, 26, 199, seq.
Cliaron's ferry-boat, 49 ; obolus in
funeral rites, 234.
Cuateau Vert, 72.
Chesterfield, Lord, his remark about
the capriciousness of the human
mind, 218.
Cliimaira, 114.
Clerk and Image, 59.
Cloud-maidens, 96.
Clouds as cows, 19, 49 ; as birds, 50 ;
as mountains or rocks, 54.
Cows as psychopomps, 49.
Cox, G. W., 9, 14, 89, 193, 197, 211.
Creation of man, 65.
9ushna, 118.
Cyrus, legend of his infancy, 114.
Dagon, 19, 24.
Dahana, 113.
Dancers of Kolbeck, 27.
Danish legend of Tell, 3.
Dai)hne, 113.
Daras, 71.
Daspi, 113.
Davy's locker, 124.
Dawn as detector of crimes, 57, 210.
Day swallowed by Night, 77.
Death misinterpreted by savages, 75.
Demoniacal possession, 237.
Deva, 107.
Devil and walnut, 36 ; etjTnologj' of,
106 ; in mediaeval mythology, 123-
129; a profound scholar according
to Scotch divines, 124 ; blinded like
Polyi)hemos, 125 ; his gullibility,
125, seq.
Dewel, Gypsy name for God, 105.
Dido and the o.x-hides, 71 ; abandoned
by Aineias, 111.
Dietrich, 201.
Diocletian's ostrich, 44.
Diomedes, 193.
Dionysos, 124.
Divining-rod, 37, 55, 64.
Dog howling under the window, 35, 7d
INDEX.
245
Dogs, how far capable of fetichistic )
notions, 221.
Don Carlos, 22.
Dorians in Peloponnesos, 180.
Doiisterswivel, 37.
Dreams, primitive philosophy of, 219.
Drowning man ought not to be res-
cued, 215.
Durandal, 24.
Dyaus, or Dyaus-pitar, 20, 50, 52, 107,
108.
East of the sun and west of the moon,
98.
Echidna, 58, 114.
Echoes fetichistically explained, 224.
Ecstasy, 222.
Eden-myth, 122.
Efreets, 123.
Egeria, 30.
Egil, 5, 24.
Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 22.
Eleven thousand virgins, 28.
Elixir of life, 63.
Elizabeth, Himgarian countess, 80.
Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., 22.
Elves, 96.
Embodiment, theory of, 226,
Endymion, 25, 161.
England, the land of ghosts, 28.
Eos, 198.
Epimenides, 26.
Epimetheus, 64.
Erceldoune, Thomas of, 80.
Erinys, 57, 114, 123, 210.
Erlking, 31, seq.
Erotic virtues of lightning-plants, 65.
Es-Sirat, 48.
Esquimaux moon-myth, 162.
Etymological myths, 70.
Etzel, 201.
Euhemeros, 15.
Eumenides, 223.
Euphemisms for dreaded beings, 223.
Eurykleia, 25.
EurJ^stheus, 112, 169.
Evil, Jewish conception of, 122.
Excalibur, 24.
Fafnir, 132.
Fairies degraded by Christianity, 129.
Faithful John, 9, 142.
Farid-Uddin Attar, 5.
Fasting, origin of the practice in
savage philosophy, 237.
Faust, black dog which appeared in
his study, 124.
Feather-dresses, 98.
Fena and Phoinix, 71.
Fenrir, 77,
Fern-seed, 44.
Fetches, 228.
Figuier, Louis, his fancies concerning
metempsychosis, 231.
Fiji theory of souls, 18 ; of the second
death, 230.
Fingal, 71.
Fish, in the tale of Sindbad, 172.
Fisherman and Efreet, 36.
Foi scientijique, 39.
Folliciilus, 7.
Forget-me-not, 42.
Forty Thieves, 42.
Four a sacred number, 160.
Freeman, E. A., his view of the Trojan
War, 199, seq.
Freischiitz and Devil, 127.
Frere's "Old Deccan Days," 10.
Freudenberger, Uriel, 3.
Frodi and his quern, QQ.
Funeral sacrifices illustrating theory
of object-souls, 233.
Furies, 57, 123.
G.
Gaia, 198.
Gambrinus, 128.
Gandharvas, 95.
Garcilaso de la Vega, 112.
Gellert, 6.
Gertrude, 34.
Gessler, 2,
Gesta Romanorum, 7, 44, 94, 125.
Ghost, geist, etymology of, 225.
Giant who had no Heart in his Body,
9, 132, 146, 163, 227.
246
INDEX.
Giants or Trolls as nnchilued prehis-
toric Europeans, 130.
Gladstone, W. E., his "Juventus
Mundi," 174, seq. ; maintains the
unity of the Homeric poems, 181,
scq. ; his uncritical views of ancient
history an.l legend, 191 ; his ig-
norance of comparative mythology,
2lt3 ; unsoundness of his philology,
206.
Glaukos, 199.
Glaukos and Poljidos, 60.
Glistening Heath, 132.
Gnat and Shepherd, 7.
God, etymolog}' of, 105, 198.
Golden Fleece, 133.
Gorgon's head, 58.
Graiai, 50.
Grateful beasts 9.
Great Bear, 73.
Grenier Jean, 83, 90.
Grote, G. , his theory of the structure
of the Iliad, 187.
Giiilliman, his work on Swiss antiqui-
ties, 3.
Gunadhya, 33.
Guodan, 105.
Gyges, ring of, 44.
R
Hagen, 24.
Hair of werewolf growing inward, 89.
Haiiielin, jiiper of, 31.
Hamlet, 195.
Hand of glorj', 45, 56.
Hare-li],, 161.
Harold Blue-tooth, 4.
Harold Hardrada, 5.
Harjiies and swan-maidens, 164.
Hassan of El-Basrah, 13.
Hatto (Bishop), 34, 72, 227.
Hraiilcss Giant, 9, 132, 146, 163, 227.
Hektor, 1.^9.
Helena, 20, 121, 196.
Helios, oxen of, 205.
H.-ll.-nes, 180.
H.'ndi.gr, .1, 24.
iJfphaistos and Aphrodite, 6,''), 190:
and Devil, 124.
Herakleids, legend of, 179, 192.
Herakles, 15, 24, 112, 169.
Herakles and Geryon, 117.
Heraldic endjlems, 78.
Hercules and Cacus, 22, 116, seq.
Here, 19.
Hermes, 19, 20, 32, 35, 67, 124, 204.
Hesperides, 15.
Hildeslieim, monk of, 26.
Hindu practice of self-immolation for
purposes of revenge, 75.
Historic period, begiiming of, 177.
Hitopadesa, 12.
Holda, 35.
Holy water, 63.
Homer, birthplace of, 178.
Homeric poems, date of, 179 ; Wolfian
hypothesis, 181 ; unity of style, 185 ;
not analogous to ballad poetry, 186 ;
artistic structure, 187 ; unhistorical
character, 191.
Homerids, 183.
Horsel, 28.
Htir.selberg, 29.
Houris, 102.
H>T)erboreans, garden of, 114.
Ida, 114.
Iliad, its structure, according to Grote,
187.
Ilsenstein shepherd, 41.
Indian summer, myth of, 25.
Indra, 109, seq., 196.
Indra Savitar, 56.
Invisibility from use of talismans, 44,
lokaste, lole, and lamos, 113.
lole, 19, 196.
loskeha, 156.
Iris, 204.
Itslie-likaiitniijambili, 168.
Ixion, 19, ()<).
Jack and Jill, 28, 213.
Jack and the Beanstalk, 23, 33, 79,
151, 16.*i, 168.
Jack the Giant-killer, 130.
INDEX.
247
Jacolliot, " Bible in India," 205.
Jewish notion of the firmament, 48.
Jinn, 129, 239.
Jonah and the whale, 77.
Joseph of Arimathaea, 27.
Joseph and Znleikha, 205.
Jotuns, 129.
Jupiter, 20, 108, 117.
Kaikias, 117.
Kalypso, 30, 111.
Kamtchatkan lightning-myth, 169.
Karl the Great, 200.
Kasimbaha, 163.
Kelly, W. K., on lightning-m}i;hs, 49,
62, 66.
Kennedy, P., his Irish legends, 86, 101,
136.
Kerberos, 20, 124.
Kinships among barbaric myths, 150.
Kirke, 111.
Koroibos, Olympiad of, 177.
Krilof 's Fables, 7.
Kuhn's "Descent of Fire," 47; his
theory of myths not incompatible
with Max Miiller's, 119.
Labe, Queen, 111.
Lad who went to the North Wind, 67.
Lady of Shalott, 49.
Laios, 112.
Lancashire witch bequeaths her soul
to a friend, 226.
Lapps as giants or Trolls, 130.
Latium, 72.
Leichnam, 102.
Leopard and Ram, 131.
Leto, 198.
Lightning-birds, 51, 168.
Lightning-myths in barbaric folk-lore,
168, seq.
Lightning-plants, 40, 44, 55, '61.
Llangeller, 7.
Lotos-eaters, 50.
Loup-garou, 69.
Luck-flower, 43.
Lykaon, 69.
Lykegenes, 71.
Lykians, 73^ 199.
M.
Maitland, blasphemous remark of, 104.
Malay swan-maidens, 162.
Malleus Maleficarum, 5.
Man in the Moon, 27.
Manabozho, 153.
Mandara, or Manthara, 63, 171.
Manes-worship, 74, 236.
Maori divination with Venus and moon,
218.
Mara, 93, seq.
Marechal de Retz, 80.
Master Thief, 11, 35.
Maui, 67, 169.
Max Miiller, his theory of mythology
inadequate, 135, 210.
Medeia, 111.
Medusa, 58, 114.
Meleagros, 19, 24, 112.
Melusina, 96.
Memnon, 199.
Merchant of Louvain and Devil, 126.
Merlin, 26.
Mermaid's cap, 100.
Mermaids foretokening shipwreck, 103.
Metempsychosis, 74, 230, seq.
Mice and rats as souls, 33.
Michabo, 25, 73, 153.
Milesian, soubriquet for the Irish, 71.
Milky Way, 151.
MiiTor, when broken, portends a death
in the family, 217.
Mishkat-ul-Masabili, 22.
Mitra, 110.
Moon and hare, 161.
Moon-m}i;hs among barbarians, 161.
Moon-spots, 27.
Mother Goose, 27.
Mouse Tower, maut-thnrm, 34, 72.
Muri-ranga-wheniia, 169.
Mykenai, its ancient supremacy in
Greece, 200.
Myth, definition of, 21, seq.
248
INDEX.
N.
P.
Names, savages unwilling to tell
them. 223.
Nausikaa, 102.
Necklace of swan-maiden, 99.
Nectar, 63.
Nephele, 133, 196.
Nesisos-.shirt, 24.
Nestor. 193.
Nihelunirenlieil, 132; as illustrating
Iliad, 201.
Nibelungs, 196.
Nick, as epithet of the Devil, 124.
Niebuhr's views concernin<; words
common to Greek and Latin, 206.
Night-and-morning-myth resembles
storm-mvth, 119.
Night-folk] 129.
Nightmare, 93.
Nixy and her glove, 99.
Not a Pin to choose between them,
128.
Numa, 30.
Nymph, 97.
Oberon, horn of, 33.
Odin, 32, 35, 67, lO."), 124 ; his eold-
cn ship, 49 ; his magic cudgel, 67,
217.
Odin, lord of the gallows, 56.
Odvsseus, 23, 25,30, .53, HI.
Oid'ipous, 22, 60, 112.
Oinone. 19, 113.
Olaf, Saint, 132.
Olaf Tryggvesson, 26.
Olgcr lian.ske, 26.
Olympiad of Koroibos, 177.
Omar, 15.
Orncle-po.s.session, 237.
Ormuzd, 121.
Orpheus, 32, 124.
Orthros, 118.
( )ssa and Pelion, 54.
Other self, j)rimitive doctrine of,
219, «€7.
Palmatoki, 3, 24.
Pan, his relationship to the Devil,
124.
Panch Phul Kanee, 61.
Panchatantra, 7.
Panis, 20, 58, 118, 120, 196.
Paris, 20, 193; invested with solai
attributes, 195, 198.
Parizade, 1 1.
Patroklos, 189.
Paul Pry, 36.
Pavilion given by the Peri Banou
to Ahmed, 49.
Peisistratos, his recension of Homer,
181.
Pelasgian theory of Niebuhr, 206.
Penelope, 24, 111.
Permanence in language and cul-
ture, conditions essential to, 149,
Peter Schlemihl, 224.
Pha'thon, 19.
Philip II., 22.
Philological method, how far use-
ful in the study of myths, 144,
seq.
Phanician origin of the Irish, 71.
Phoibos, 19.
Phoibos Lykegenes, 71.
Phoronous, 65.
Phrixos and Ilelle, 133.
Pictures, animation of, 223.
Piper of Ilamelin, 31.
Pitris, 76, 237.
Pliny's account of springwort, 44.
Polomyia, cannil)al i)eggar of, 82.
l*olynesian sun-myth, 170.
Polyi)hemos, his one eye, 50, 53 ; hif
blinding, 125.
Poseidon, 204.
Pramantha, 64.
Primeviil philosophy, 16,18,21,47,
216.
Priticesses carried off by Trolls and
Ef reels, 132.
Prometlicus, 64.
Puncher, 5.
Punchkin, 10, 132, 146.
Putraka, 13.
INDEX.
249
Q.
Quetzalcoatl, 157.
Rain-water, mythical conception of,
63,
Rainbow, 151, 204.
Rakshasa, 77.
Rama and Luxman, 9, 142.
Rattlesnakes afraid of ash-trees, 61.
Red James, 100.
Red Riding Hood, 77.
Renan, E., his suggestion that an ex-
ploration of the Hindu Kush might
throw light on the origin of lan-
guage, 175.
Retz, Marechal de, 80.
RhampsLaitos, 14.
Rickard the Rake, 86.
Riksha, 73.
Rip van Winkle, 26.
Robin red-breast, 71 ; wickedness of
killing robins, 51, 214.
Roc's egg, 50.
Romulus as guardian of children, 237.
Roulet, Jacques, 84, 90.
Rousseau, J. J., his method of inquir-
ing into the safety of his soul, 218.
Sacrifices, 233.
Saktideva, 77.
Samu and his brethren, 230.
Sancus, 117.
Sanskrit names of Greek deities, 20.
Sarama, 20, 119, seq., 196.
Sarameias, 20, 204.
Saranyu, 57, 210.
Sarpedon, 193, 199.
Sassafras, 43.
Satan, 122.
Saxo Grammaticus. 3.
Scaletta, 71.
Scarlet fever, in Persian folk-lore, 239.
Schamir, 43, 51.
Scribe, his remark about the possible
11*
V
number of dramatic situations, 115,
133.
Sculloge of Muskerry, 136-140.
Sea of Streams of Story, 13.
Seal-women, 100.
Sebastian of Portugal, 26.
Selene, 198 ; and Endymion, 161.
Serpent in Eden, 122.
Serpent's venom neutralized by ash-
tree, 61.
Sesame, 42, 168.
Seven Sleepers, 26.
Seyf-el-Mulook, 10.
Shotover, 72.
Siberian swan-maidens, 163.
Siegfried, 24.
Sieve of the Daughters of Danaos, 48.
" Signatures," doctrine of, 55.
Sigurd, 24, 132.
Simoom, 239.
Sindbad, his great fish, 172.
Sioux, lightning-myth, 62.
Sir Elidoc, 61.
Sir Guyon, 59.
Sirens, 32.
Sisyphos and his stone, 50.
Skin-changers, 89.
Skithblathnir, 49.
Sky descending at horizon, 48.
Sky-sea, 49.
Skye-terrier and ball, 220.
Slamming door, 229.
Sleeping Beauty, 25.
Snake leaves, 60.
Snake of darkness, 114.
Solomon, 43.
Soma, 63.
Somadeva, 13, 77.
Song of sixpence, 212.
Soul, quitting body during lifetime,
78 ; as shadow, 224 ; as breath, 225,
seq. ; resemblance to body, 228, seq. ;
killed over again, 230 ; souls of
beasts, 230 ; of plants, 231 ; of in-
animate objects, 232.
Spencer, Herbert, on totemism, 74;
on the doctrine of ghosts, 222.
Spento-mainyas, 121.
Sphinx, 22, 60, 114.
Spirits, doctrine of, 225, seq.
250
INDEX.
St. George and the Dragon, 23,
St. John's sleep at Ephesus, 26,
Stars as missiles for stoning the De^^l,
22 ; as angels' eyes, 76 ; as pitris,
76.
fitorni-nu-th, resemblance to da'ssTi-
myth, 119.
Story-roots, 115.
Succubus, monkish tale of, 94.
Sun as prototype of Don Juan, 111.
Sun-catcher-m>-ths, 112, 169.
Sun-mj-ths, 23 ; why they are so nu-
merous, 134.
Sun-worship, 108.
Simset-clouds representing hell, 48.
Suttee, not sustained by Vedic author-
ity, 233 ; remarkable case of, in
England, 234.
Swan-maiden as psychopomp, 102.
Swearing, Puritan horror of, 224.
Symplegades, 54.
T.
Tannhauser, 29.
Tuntalos, 73.
Tawi.skara, 156.
Tell, WUliam, 1-6, 15, 24, 239, 241,
Te pi and Ukuhlf/nipa, or tabuing of
chief's name, 223,
Themis, 206.
Thor, 19, 65, 124.
Tliree Princesses of Whiteland, 12.
Three Tells of Rutli, 26.
Tithonos, 27.
Torn of Coventry, 36.
Tom Tliumb, 77.
Tortoise supporting world, 171.
Totemism, 74,
Trance, 78,
Trolls, 129, 8Pq.
Trojan War, 20 ; elements of the m\'th
found in the Veda.s, 20, 120, 194 ;
how far a sun-mytli, 195 ; how far a
gt-nuirie triylition, 199, srq.
Tuesday, et>^nology of, 108.
U.
Undine, 98.
Unity (if human culture, 149.
Unkulunkulu, 236.
Ursula, 28.
Urvasi and Purdravas, 85.
Usilosimapundu, 172.
Utahagi, 163.
Utldakanyana, 166.
V.
Valk>'ries, 19, 102.
Valley of diamonds, 50.
Van Diemen's Land, the home of
ghosts, 28.
Varuna, 50, 110.
Vasilissa the Beautiful, 77.
Venus, 25.
Venusberg, 29.
Viracoclia, 156.
Vittikab, 33, 124.
Vivasvat, 110.
Vivien, 26.
Viilsunga Saga, 132.
Vritra, 114, 118, 120.
Vulcan, 124.
W.
Wainamoinen, 33.
Wall and cook, 7.
Wandering Jew, 27, 114.
Waterspout, 239.
Waxen image, necromancy with, 217.
Wayland Smith, 5, 124.
Werewolf, etymology of, 69 ; hallu-
cination, 85 ; summary of the super-
stition, 88 ; enchantment variously
cured, 90, 92 ; in South Africa, 164.
Werewolves and witchcraft, 79, 91 ; in
Aryan and barbaric folk-lore, con-
trasted, 165.
Wliite bear as bridegroom, 98.
Why the sea is salt, 66.
Wilil Huntsman, 27, 33, 76.
William of Cloudeslee, 5, 24.
Wind-and-Weather, 132.
Windows opened to let souls pass out,
76, 229.
Winterthiir, John of, 2.
Wishbone, 55.
INDEX.
251
Wishrod, m.
Wolf of darkness, 77.
Wolf girdle, 90.
Wolfskin, 89.
"Wolfian hypothesis, 181.
World-tortoise, 171.
Wraiths, 228.
Y.
Yama, 76.
Yarrow and rue, 100,
Yellow hair of solar heroes, 202.
Yggdi-asil, 65.
Youth of the World, 175.
Zendavesta, 121.
Zeus, 20 ; etymology of, 107.
Zeus Lykaios, 69.
Zio, 108.
Zohak, 114.
Zulu folk-lore, 165 -169.
THE END.
THE WRITINGS OF
JOHN nSKE
if-
THE DISCOVBEY OF AMEEICA
With som<i Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Con-
quest. With a Steel Portrait of Mr. Fiske, many maps, fac-
similes, etc. 2 vols, crown 8vo, gilt top, %4-00.
The book bring"s tog-ether a great deal of information hitherto
accessible only in special treatises, and elucidates with care and
judgment some of the most perplexing problems in the history
of discovery. — The Speaker (London).
OLD VIRGINIA AND HEE
NEIGHBOUES
2 vols, crown 8vo, gilt top, $4-00.
Illustrated Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, $8.00.
History has rarely been invested with such interest and charm
as in these volumes. — The Outlook (New York).
THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW
ENGLAND
Or, the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Re-
ligious Liberty. Crown 8vo, $2.00. Illustrated Edition. Con-
taining Portraits, Maps, Facsimiles, Contemporary Views,
Prints, and other Historic Materials. 2 vols. 8vo, gilt top, $4.00.
Having in the first chapters strikingly and convincingly shown
that New England's history was the birth of centuries of travail,
and having prepared his readers to estimate at their true impor-
tance the events of our early colonial life, Mr. Fiske is ready to
take up his task as the historian of the New England of the Puri-
tans.— Advertiser (Boston).
THE DUTCH AND QUAKER
COLONIES IN AlVIERICA
With 8 Maps. 2 vols, crown Svo, gilt top, $4.00.
The work is a lucid summary of the events of a changeful and
important time, carefully examined by a conscientious scholar,
\rho is master of his subject. — Daily News (London).
THE ^V]MERICAN REYOLUTION
With Plans of Battles, and a Steel Portrait of Washington.
2 vols, crown Svo, gilt top, %4-00. Illustrated Edition. Contain-
ing about SOU Illustrations. J vols, ^vo, gilt top, SS.OO.
The reader may turn to these volumes with full assurance of
faitli for a fresh rehearsal of the old facts, which no time can
stale, and for new views of those old facts, according to the larger
framework of ideas in which they can now be set by the master
of a captivating style and an expert in historical philosophy. —
New York Evening Post.
TILE AYAK OF IXDEPEOT)EI^CE
In Riverside Library for Young People. With Maps. 16mo,
75 cents.
A book brilliant and efEective beyond measure. ... It is a
statement that every child can comprehend. — Mrs. Caeolinb
H. Dall, in the Springfield Republican.
THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF
AJSIERICAIN" HISTORY, 1783-1789
With Map, Notes, etc. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $3.00. Illus-
trated Edition. Containing about 170 Illustrations. 8vo, gilt
top, S4'00.
The author combines in an unusual degree the impartiality of
the trained scholar with the fervor of the interested narrator.
— The Congregationalist (Boston).
THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY IN
THE CIYIL WAR
With 23 Maps and Plans. 1 vol. crown Svo, $2.00.
A HISTORY OF THE UIS^ITED
STATES FOR SCHOOLS
With Topical Analysis, Suggestive Questions, and Directions
for Teachers, by F. A. Hill, and Illustrations and Maps.
Crown 6'vo, $1.00, net.
It is doubtful if Mr. Fiske has done anything better for Iiis
generation than the preparation of this text-book, which combines
in a rare degree accuracy, intelligent condensation, historical dis-
crimination, and an attractive style. — The Outlook (New York).
CIVIL GOVERNMEISTT IN THE
UOTTED STATES
Considered with some Reference to its Origins. With Ques-
tions on the Text by Frank A. Hill, and Bibliographical Notes
by Mr. Fiske. Crown Svo, $1.00, net.
It is most admirable, alike in plan and execution, and will do
a vast amount of g-ood in teaching- our people the principles and
forms of our civil institutions. — Moses Coit Tyler, Professor
of American Constitutional History and Law, Cornell University.
A CE]S"TURY OF SCIB:N"CB,
AND OTHER ESSAYS
Crown Svo, $3.00.
Mr. Fiske's freedom from exclusive specialism is one source
of his eminence as a teacher. ... He touches, in the course of
his career as writer and lecturer, almost every department of
contemporaneous human interest, and he touches nothing which
he does not adorn. — Advertiser (Boston).
outlijstes of cosmic
philosophy
Based on the Doctrine of Evolution, with Criticisms on the
Positive Philosophy. In two volumes, Svo, $6.00.
You must allow me to thank you for the very great interest
with which I have at last slowly read the whole of your work.
V*- 'i ^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^*® ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^° expositor (and therefore
tlunker) as you are ; and I think that I understand nearly the
whole, thoug-h perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and cau-
sation than other parts. — Charles Darwin.
THE DESTESTY OF MAN
Viewed in the Light of His Origin. 16mo, gilt tap, %1.00.
Of one thing we may be sure : that none are leading us more
surely or rapidly to the full truth than men like the author of
this little book, who reverently study the works of God for the
lessons which He would teach his children. —Christian Union
(New York).
THE IDEA OF GOD
As Affected by Modern Knowledge. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00.
The vigor, the earnestness, the honesty, and the freedom from
cant and subtlety in his writings are exceedingly ref reshino- He
18 a scholar, a critic, and a thinker of the first order. — Christian
Megister (Boston).
THEOUGH ]N^ATUEE TO GOD
IGmo, gilt top, SI. 00.
Contents: The Mystery of Evil ; The Cosmic Roots of Love
and Self-Sacrijice ; The Everlasting .Ueality of lieligion.
The little volume has a reasonableness and a persuasiveness
that cannot fail to commend its arguments to all. — Public
Ledger (Philadelphia).
LIFE EVERLASTING
lOmo, gilt top, $1.00, net.
A book of profound interest treating-, in Mr. Fiske's charac-
teristic manner, the subject of Immortality.
DAEWIOTSM, AXD OTHEE
ESSAYS
Crown Svo, gilt top, %2.00.
IVIYTHS AND MYTH-MAE:EES
Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative
Mythology. Crown Svo, gilt top, $2.00.
THE UNSEEN WOELD
And Other Essays. Crown Svo, gilt top, %2.00.
To each study the writer seems to have brought, besides an
excellent quality of discriminating judgment, full and fresh spe-
cial knowledge. — Advertiser (Boston).
EXCUESIONS OF AN
EVOLUTIONIST
Crown Svo, gilt top, $2.00.
Among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant
than Mr. John Fiske. His pure style suits his clear thought. —
The Nation (New York).
*»* For sale by all Bonksrllers. Sent by mail, postpaid^ on
receipt of price by tlie Publisfters,
IIOUGIITO:Nr, MIFFLI?^ & CO.
4 Park Street, Boston ; S5 Fifth Avenue, New York.
•J-*.-?./
1
;:f:^
•.^ ^-T/l*"
^
-? '''*^"feS
^-.vii .jfel
- ■ r^.v ^*-
.^w
^^^^^^H
. - . , J^' :v '
'Ci^^H
■[ ■/'•>/-v*"^
' "<'^9Bil
i
-i
I