Custom and Myth
by Andrew Lang · English · Gutenberg #14080 · 486,596 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Custom and Myth
Author: Andrew Lang
Release date: November 17, 2004 [eBook #14080]
Most recently updated: December 18, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14080
Credits: Transcribed from the 1884 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOM AND MYTH ***
Transcribed from the 1884 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
CUSTOM AND MYTH
To E. B. Tylor, author of 'Primitive Culture,' these studies of the
oldest stories are dedicated.
INTRODUCTION.
Though some of the essays in this volume have appeared in various
serials, the majority of them were written expressly for their present
purpose, and they are now arranged in a designed order. During some
years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mythologies, I have become
more and more impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of the prevalent
method of comparative mythology. That method is based on the belief that
myths are the result of a disease of language, as the pearl is the result
of a disease of the oyster. It is argued that men at some period, or
periods, spoke in a singular style of coloured and concrete language, and
that their children retained the phrases of this language after losing
hold of the original meaning. The consequence was the growth of myths
about supposed persons, whose names had originally been mere
'appellations.' In conformity with this hypothesis the method of
comparative mythology examines the proper names which occur in myths. The
notion is that these names contain a key to the meaning of the story, and
that, in fact, of the story the names are the germs and the oldest
surviving part.
The objections to this method are so numerous that it is difficult to
state them briefly. The attempt, however, must be made. To desert the
path opened by the most eminent scholars is in itself presumptuous; the
least that an innovator can do is to give his reasons for advancing in a
novel direction. If this were a question of scholarship merely, it would
be simply foolhardy to differ from men like Max Muller, Adalbert Kuhn,
Breal, and many others. But a revolutionary mythologist is encouraged by
finding that these scholars usually differ from each other. Examples
will be found chiefly in the essays styled 'The Myth of Cronus,' 'A Far-
travelled Tale,' and 'Cupid and Psyche.' Why, then, do distinguished
scholars and mythologists reach such different goals? Clearly because
their method is so precarious. They all analyse the names in myths; but,
where one scholar decides that the name is originally Sanskrit, another
holds that it is purely Greek, and a third, perhaps, is all for an
Accadian etymology, or a Semitic derivation. Again, even when scholars
agree as to the original root from which a name springs, they differ as
much as ever as to the meaning of the name in its present place. The
inference is, that the analysis of names, on which the whole edifice of
philological 'comparative mythology' rests, is a foundation of shifting
sand. The method is called 'orthodox,' but, among those who practise it,
there is none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy.
These objections are not made by the unscholarly anthropologist alone.
Curtius has especially remarked the difficulties which beset the
'etymological operation' in the case of proper names. 'Peculiarly
dubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are we to seek the
sources of the divine names in aspects of nature, or in moral
conceptions; in special Greek geographical conditions, or in natural
circumstances which are everywhere the same: in dawn with her rays, or in
clouds with their floods; are we to seek the origin of the names of
heroes in things historical and human, or in physical phenomena?' {3a}
Professor Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing: 'The uncertainties
are great, and there is a constant risk of taking mere jeux d'esprit for
scientific results.' {3b} Every name has, if we can discover or
conjecture it, a meaning. That meaning--be it 'large' or 'small,' 'loud'
or 'bright,' 'wise' or 'dark,' 'swift' or 'slow'--is always capable of
being explained as an epithet of the sun, or of the cloud, or of both.
Whatever, then, a name may signify, some scholars will find that it
originally denoted the cloud, if they belong to one school, or the sun or
dawn, if they belong to another faction. Obviously this process is a
mere jeu d'esprit. This logic would be admitted in no other science,
and, by similar arguments, any name whatever might be shown to be
appropriate to a solar hero.
The scholarly method has now been applied for many years, and what are
the results? The ideas attained by the method have been so popularised
that they are actually made to enter into the education of children, and
are published in primers and catechisms of mythology. But what has a
discreet scholar to say to the whole business? 'The difficult task of
interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain results'--so
writes Otto Schrader. {4} Though Schrader still has hopes of better
things, it is admitted that the present results are highly disputable. In
England, where one set of these results has become an article of faith,
readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single etymological school, and
thus escape the difficulty of making up their minds when scholars differ.
But differ scholars do, so widely and so often, that scarcely any solid
advantages have been gained in mythology from the philological method.
The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes
of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an
orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the sacred
enclosure. Even were there more harmony, the analysis of names could
throw little light on myths. In stories the names may well be, and often
demonstrably are, the latest, not the original, feature. Tales, at first
told of 'Somebody,' get new names attached to them, and obtain a new
local habitation, wherever they wander. 'One of the leading personages
to be met in the traditions of the world is really no more than--Somebody.
There is nothing this wondrous creature cannot achieve; one only
restriction binds him at all--that the name he assumes shall have some
sort of congruity with the office he undertakes, _and even from this he
oftentimes breaks loose_.' {5} We may be pretty sure that the adventures
of Jason, Perseus, OEdipous, were originally told only of 'Somebody.' The
names are later additions, and vary in various lands. A glance at the
essay on 'Cupid and Psyche' will show that a history like theirs is
known, where neither they nor their counterparts in the Veda, Urvasi and
Pururavas, were ever heard of; while the incidents of the Jason legend
are familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken. Finally, the names in
common use among savages are usually derived from natural phenomena,
often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a name in a myth can be
proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not (and usually one set of
scholars find clouds, where others see the dawn), we must not instantly
infer that the myth is a nature-myth. Though, doubtless, the heroes in
it were never real people, the names are as much common names of real
people in the savage state, as Smith and Brown are names of civilised
men.
For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the fact that stories are
usually anonymous at first, that names are added later, and that stories
naturally crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine, or human,
the process of analysis of names is most precarious and untrustworthy. A
story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by
scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter forgets, first, that to
the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the same thing as it means to him.
Sky meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, and, most
likely, a savage person. Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale
(say the tale of Zeus, Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been
originally anonymous, and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed
jests are attributed to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly
phenomena will be the basis and explanation of the story. If one thing
in mythology be certain, it is that myths are always changing masters,
that the old tales are always being told with new names. Where, for
example, is the value of a philological analysis of the name of Jason? As
will be seen in the essay 'A Far-travelled Tale,' the analysis of the
name of Jason is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his
myth is current in Samoa, Finland, North America, Madagascar, and other
lands, where the name was never heard, and where the characters in the
story have other names or are anonymous.
For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have
ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be
interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names. The system
adopted here is explained in the first essay, called 'The Method of
Folklore.' The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but 'comparative
mythology' is usually claimed exclusively by the philological
interpreters.
The second essay, 'The Bull-Roarer,' is intended to show that certain
peculiarities in the Greek mysteries occur also in the mysteries of
savages, and that on Greek soil they are survivals of savagery.
'The Myth of Cronus' tries to prove that the first part of the legend is
a savage nature-myth, surviving in Greek religion, while the sequel is a
set of ideas common to savages.
'Cupid and Psyche' traces another Aryan myth among savage races, and
attempts to show that the myth may have had its origin in a rule of
barbarous etiquette.
'A Far-travelled Tale' examines a part of the Jason myth. This myth
appears neither to be an explanation of natural phenomena (like part of
the Myth of Cronus), nor based on a widespread custom (like Cupid and
Psyche.) The question is asked whether the story may have been diffused
by slow filtration from race to race all over the globe, as there seems
no reason why it should have been invented separately (as a myth
explanatory of natural phenomena or of customs might be) in many
different places.
'Apollo and the Mouse' suggests hypothetically, as a possible explanation
of the tie between the God and the Beast, that Apollo-worship superseded,
but did not eradicate, Totemism. The suggestion is little more than a
conjecture.
'Star Myths' points out that Greek myths of stars are a survival from the
savage stage of fancy in which such stories are natural.
'Moly and Mandragora' is a study of the Greek, the modern, and the
Hottentot folklore of magical herbs, with a criticism of a scholarly and
philological hypothesis, according to which Moly is the dog-star, and
Circe the moon.
'The Kalevala' is an account of the Finnish national poem; of all poems
that in which the popular, as opposed to the artistic, spirit is
strongest. The Kalevala is thus a link between Marchen and Volkslieder
on one side, and epic poetry on the other.
'The Divining Rod' is a study of a European and civilised superstition,
which is singular in its comparative lack of copious savage analogues.
'Hottentot Mythology' is a criticism of the philological method, applied
to savage myth.
'Fetichism and the Infinite,' is a review of Mr. Max Muller's theory that
a sense of the Infinite is the germ of religion, and that Fetichism is
secondary, and a corruption. This essay also contains a defence of the
_evidence_ on which the anthropological method relies.
The remaining essays are studies of the 'History of the Family,' and of
'Savage Art.'
The essay on 'Savage Art' is reprinted, by the kind permission of Messrs.
Cassell & Co., from two numbers (April and May, 1882) of the Magazine of
Art. I have to thank the editors and publishers of the Contemporary
Review, the Cornhill Magazine, and Fraser's Magazine, for leave to
republish 'The Early History of the Family,' 'The Divining Rod,' and
'Star Myths,' and 'The Kalevala.' A few sentences in 'The Bull-Roarer,'
and 'Hottentot Mythology,' appeared in essays in the Saturday Review, and
some lines of 'The Method of Folklore' in the Guardian. To the editors
of those journals also I owe thanks for their courteous permission to
make this use of my old articles.
To Mr. E. B. Tylor and Mr. W. R. S. Ralston I must express my gratitude
for the kindness with which they have always helped me in all
difficulties.
I must apologise for the controversial matter in the volume. Controversy
is always a thing to be avoided, but, in this particular case, when a
system opposed to the prevalent method has to be advocated, controversy
is unavoidable. My respect for the learning of my distinguished
adversaries is none the less great because I am not convinced by their
logic, and because my doubts are excited by their differences.
Perhaps, it should be added, that these essays are, so to speak, only
flint-flakes from a neolithic workshop. This little book merely
skirmishes (to change the metaphor) in front of a much more methodical
attempt to vindicate the anthropological interpretation of myths. But
lack of leisure and other causes make it probable that my 'Key to All
Mythologies' will go the way of Mr. Casaubon's treatise.
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE.
After the heavy rain of a thunderstorm has washed the soil, it sometimes
happens that a child, or a rustic, finds a wedge-shaped piece of metal or
a few triangular flints in a field or near a road. There was no such
piece of metal, there were no such flints, lying there yesterday, and the
finder is puzzled about the origin of the objects on which he has
lighted. He carries them home, and the village wisdom determines that
the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a 'thunderbolt,' or that the bits of
flint are 'elf-shots,' the heads of fairy arrows. Such things are still
treasured in remote nooks of England, and the 'thunderbolt' is applied to
cure certain maladies by its touch.
As for the fairy arrows, we know that even in ancient Etruria they were
looked on as magical, for we sometimes see their points set, as amulets,
in the gold of Etruscan necklaces. In Perugia the arrowheads are still
sold as charms. All educated people, of course, have long been aware
that the metal wedge is a celt, or ancient bronze axe-head, and that it
was not fairies, but the forgotten peoples of this island who used the
arrows with the tips of flint. Thunder is only so far connected with
them that the heavy rains loosen the surface soil, and lay bare its long
hidden secrets.
There is a science, Archaeology, which collects and compares the material
relics of old races, the axes and arrow-heads. There is a form of study,
Folklore, which collects and compares the similar but immaterial relics
of old races, the surviving superstitions and stories, the ideas which
are in our time but not of it. Properly speaking, folklore is only
concerned with the legends, customs, beliefs, of the Folk, of the people,
of the classes which have least been altered by education, which have
shared least in progress. But the student of folklore soon finds that
these unprogressive classes retain many of the beliefs and ways of
savages, just as the Hebridean people use spindle-whorls of stone, and
bake clay pots without the aid of the wheel, like modern South Sea
Islanders, or like their own prehistoric ancestors. {11a} The student of
folklore is thus led to examine the usages, myths, and ideas of savages,
which are still retained, in rude enough shape, by the European
peasantry. Lastly, he observes that a few similar customs and ideas
survive in the most conservative elements of the life of educated
peoples, in ritual, ceremonial, and religious traditions and myths.
Though such remains are rare in England, we may note the custom of
leading the dead soldier's horse behind his master to the grave, a relic
of days when the horse would have been sacrificed. {11b} We may observe
the persistence of the ceremony by which the monarch, at his coronation,
takes his seat on the sacred stone of Scone, probably an ancient fetich
stone. Not to speak, here, of our own religious traditions, the old vein
of savage rite and belief is found very near the surface of ancient Greek
religion. It needs but some stress of circumstance, something answering
to the storm shower that reveals the flint arrow-heads, to bring savage
ritual to the surface of classical religion. In sore need, a human
victim was only too likely to be demanded; while a feast-day, or a
mystery, set the Greeks dancing serpent-dances or bear-dances like Red
Indians, or swimming with sacred pigs, or leaping about in imitation of
wolves, or holding a dog-feast, and offering dog's flesh to the gods.
{12} Thus the student of folklore soon finds that he must enlarge his
field, and examine, not only popular European story and practice, but
savage ways and ideas, and the myths and usages of the educated classes
in civilised races. In this extended sense the term 'folklore' will
frequently be used in the following essays. The idea of the writer is
that mythology cannot fruitfully be studied apart from folklore, while
some knowledge of anthropology is required in both sciences.
The science of Folklore, if we may call it a science, finds everywhere,
close to the surface of civilised life, the remains of ideas as old as
the stone elf-shots, older than the celt of bronze. In proverbs and
riddles, and nursery tales and superstitions, we detect the relics of a
stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, but which still exists in
many parts of the world. Now, just as the flint arrow-heads are
scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles, and everywhere are
much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of
race, so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of
folklore. The stone arrow-head buried in a Scottish cairn is like those
which were interred with Algonquin chiefs. The flints found in Egyptian
soil, or beside the tumulus on the plain of Marathon, nearly resemble the
stones which tip the reed arrow of the modern Samoyed. Perhaps only a
skilled experience could discern, in a heap of such arrow-heads, the
specimens which are found in America or Africa from those which are
unearthed in Europe. Even in the products of more advanced industry, we
see early pottery, for example, so closely alike everywhere that, in the
British Museum, Mexican vases have, ere now, been mixed up on the same
shelf with archaic vessels from Greece. In the same way, if a
superstition or a riddle were offered to a student of folklore, he would
have much difficulty in guessing its _provenance_, and naming the race
from which it was brought. Suppose you tell a folklorist that, in a
certain country, when anyone sneezes, people say 'Good luck to you,' the
student cannot say a priori what country you refer to, what race you have
in your thoughts. It may be Florida, as Florida was when first
discovered; it may be Zululand, or West Africa, or ancient Rome, or
Homeric Greece, or Palestine. In all these, and many other regions, the
sneeze was welcomed as an auspicious omen. The little superstition is as
widely distributed as the flint arrow-heads. Just as the object and use
of the arrow-heads became intelligible when we found similar weapons in
actual use among savages, so the salutation to the sneezer becomes
intelligible when we learn that the savage has a good reason for it. He
thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, again, and riddles
are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle over the same
devinettes as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. Thus, for
instance, the Wolufs of Senegal ask each other, 'What flies for ever, and
rests never?'--Answer, 'The Wind.' 'Who are the comrades that always
fight, and never hurt each other?'--'The Teeth.' In France, as we read
in the 'Recueil de Calembours,' the people ask, 'What runs faster than a
horse, crosses water, and is not wet?'--Answer, 'The Sun.' The Samoans
put the riddle, 'A man who stands between two ravenous fishes?'--Answer,
'The tongue between the teeth.' Again, 'There are twenty brothers, each
with a hat on his head?'--Answer, 'Fingers and toes, with nails for
hats.' This is like the French 'un pere a douze fils?'--'l'an.' A
comparison of M. Rolland's 'Devinettes' with the Woluf conundrums of
Boilat, the Samoan examples in Turner's' Samoa,' and the Scotch enigmas
collected by Chambers, will show the identity of peasant and savage
humour.
A few examples, less generally known, may be given to prove that the
beliefs of folklore are not peculiar to any one race or stock of men. The
first case is remarkable: it occurs in Mexico and Ceylon--nor are we
aware that it is found elsewhere. In Macmillan's Magazine {15} is
published a paper by Mrs. Edwards, called 'The Mystery of the Pezazi.'
The events described in this narrative occurred on August 28, 1876, in a
bungalow some thirty miles from Badiella. The narrator occupied a new
house on an estate called Allagalla. Her native servants soon asserted
that the place was haunted by a Pezazi. The English visitors saw and
heard nothing extraordinary till a certain night: an abridged account of
what happened then may be given in the words of Mrs. Edwards:--
Wrapped in dreams, I lay on the night in question tranquilly sleeping,
but gradually roused to a perception that discordant sounds disturbed
the serenity of my slumber. Loth to stir, I still dozed on, the
sounds, however, becoming, as it seemed, more determined to make
themselves heard; and I awoke to the consciousness that they proceeded
from a belt of adjacent jungle, and resembled the noise that would be
produced by some person felling timber.
Shutting my ears to the disturbance, I made no sign, until, with an
expression of impatience, E--- suddenly started up, when I laid a
detaining grasp upon his arm, murmuring that there was no need to
think of rising at present--it must be quite early, and the kitchen
cooly was doubtless cutting fire-wood in good time. E--- responded,
in a tone of slight contempt, that no one could be cutting fire-wood
at that hour, and the sounds were more suggestive of felling jungle;
and he then inquired how long I had been listening to them. Now
thoroughly aroused, I replied that I had heard the sounds for some
time, at first confusing them with my dreams, but soon sufficiently
awakening to the fact that they were no mere phantoms of my
imagination, but a reality. During our conversation the noises became
more distinct and loud; blow after blow resounded, as of the axe
descending upon the tree, followed by the crash of the falling timber.
Renewed blows announced the repetition of the operations on another
tree, and continued till several were devastated.
It is unnecessary to tell more of the tale. In spite of minute
examinations and close search, no solution of the mystery of the noises,
on this or any other occasion, was ever found. The natives, of course,
attributed the disturbance to the Pezazi, or goblin. No one, perhaps,
has asserted that the Aztecs were connected by ties of race with the
people of Ceylon. Yet, when the Spaniards conquered Mexico, and when
Sahagun (one of the earliest missionaries) collected the legends of the
people, he found them, like the Cingalese, strong believers in the mystic
tree-felling. We translate Sahagun's account of the 'midnight axe':--
When so any man heareth the sound of strokes in the night, as if one
were felling trees, he reckons it an evil boding. And this sound they
call youaltepuztli (youalli, night; and tepuztli, copper), which
signifies 'the midnight hatchet.' This noise cometh about the time of
the first sleep, when all men slumber soundly, and the night is still.
The sound of strokes smitten was first noted by the temple-servants,
called tlamacazque, at the hour when they go in the night to make
their offering of reeds or of boughs of pine, for so was their custom,
and this penance they did on the neighbouring hills, and that when the
night was far spent. Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes
when he splits wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar off),
they drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid, and said that the
sounds were part of the witchery of Tezeatlipoca, that often thus
dismayeth men who journey in the night. Now, when tidings of these
things came to a certain brave man, one exercised in war, he drew
near, being guided by the sound, till he came to the very cause of the
hubbub. And when he came upon it, with difficulty he caught it, for
the thing was hard to catch: natheless at last he overtook that which
ran before him; and behold, it was a man without a heart, and, on
either side of the chest, two holes that opened and shut, and so made
the noise. Then the man put his hand within the breast of the figure
and grasped the breast and shook it hard, demanding some grace or
gift.
As a rule, the grace demanded was power to make captives in war. The
curious coincidence of the 'midnight axe,' occurring in lands so remote
as Ceylon and Mexico, and the singular attestation by an English lady of
the actual existence of the disturbance, makes this youaltepuztli one of
the quaintest things in the province of the folklorist. But, whatever
the cause of the noise, or of the beliefs connected with the noise, may
be, no one would explain them as the result of community of _race_
between Cingalese and Aztecs. Nor would this explanation be offered to
account for the Aztec and English belief that the creaking of furniture
is an omen of death in a house. Obviously, these opinions are the
expression of a common state of superstitious fancy, not the signs of an
original community of origin.
Let us take another piece of folklore. All North-country English folk
know the Kernababy. The custom of the 'Kernababy' is commonly observed
in England, or, at all events, in Scotland, where the writer has seen
many a kernababy. The last gleanings of the last field are bound up in a
rude imitation of the human shape, and dressed in some tag-rags of
finery. The usage has fallen into the conservative hands of children,
but of old 'the Maiden' was a regular image of the harvest goddess,
which, with a sickle and sheaves in her arms, attended by a crowd of
reapers, and accompanied with music, followed the last carts home to the
farm. {18} It is odd enough that the 'Maiden' should exactly translate
[Greek], the old Sicilian name of the daughter of Demeter. 'The Maiden'
has dwindled, then, among us to the rudimentary kernababy; but ancient
Peru had her own Maiden, her Harvest Goddess. Here it is easy to trace
the natural idea at the basis of the superstitious practice which links
the shores of the Pacific with our own northern coast. Just as a portion
of the yule-log and of the Christmas bread were kept all the year
through, a kind of nest-egg of plenteous food and fire, so the kernababy,
English or Peruvian, is an earnest that corn will not fail all through
the year, till next harvest comes. For this reason the kernababy used to
be treasured from autumn's end to autumn's end, though now it commonly
disappears very soon after the harvest home. It is thus that Acosta
describes, in Grimston's old translation (1604), the Peruvian kernababy
and the Peruvian harvest home:--
This feast is made comming from the chacra or farme unto the house,
saying certaine songs, and praying that the Mays (maize) may long
continue, the which they call Mama cora.
What a chance this word offers to etymologists of the old school: how
promptly they would recognise, in mama mother--[Greek], and in
cora--[Greek], the Mother and the Maiden, the feast of Demeter and
Persephone! However, the days of that old school of antiquarianism are
numbered. To return to the Peruvian harvest home:--
They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays that
growes in their farmes, the which they put in a certaine granary which
they do calle Pirua, with certaine ceremonies, watching three nightes;
they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and, being thus
wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great
veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances,
and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved. In this
moneth they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of
this Pirua, 'if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next
yeare,' and if it answers 'no,' then they carry this Mays to the farme
to burne, whence they brought it, according to every man's power, then
they make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they
renue it, to the ende that the seede of the Mays may not perish.
The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise us; the Mexican held
much the same belief, according to Sahagun:--
It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the ground, he who
saw them lying there was bound to lift them, wherein, if he failed, he
harmed the maize, which plained itself of him to God, saying, 'Lord,
punish this man, who saw me fallen and raised me not again; punish him
with famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.'
Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian Mama
cora, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of human
nature. We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians and Scotch
are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they met each other,
and borrowed each other's superstitions. Again, when we find Odysseus
sacrificing a black sheep to the dead, {20} and when we read that the
Ovahereroes in South Africa also appease with a black sheep the spirits
of the departed, we do not feel it necessary to hint that the Ovahereroes
are of Greek descent, or have borrowed their ritual from the Greeks. The
connection between the colour black, and mourning for the dead, is
natural and almost universal.
Examples like these might be adduced in any number. We might show how,
in magic, negroes of Barbadoes make clay effigies of their enemies, and
pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato's time, or the men of Accad in
remotest antiquity. We might remark the Australian black putting sharp
bits of quartz in the tracks of an enemy who has gone by, that the enemy
may be lamed; and we might point to Boris Godunof forbidding the same
practice among the Russians. We might watch Scotch, and Australians, and
Jews, and French, and Aztecs spreading dust round the body of a dead man,
that the footprints of his ghost, or of other ghosts, may be detected
next morning. We might point to a similar device in a modern novel,
where the presence of a ghost is suspected, as proof of the similar
workings of the Australian mind and of the mind of Mrs. Riddell. We
shall later turn to ancient Greece, and show how the serpent-dances, the
habit of smearing the body with clay, and other odd rites of the
mysteries, were common to Hellenic religion, and to the religion of
African, Australian, and American tribes.
Now, with regard to all these strange usages, what is the method of
folklore? The method is, when an apparently irrational and anomalous
custom is found in any country, to look for a country where a similar
practice is found, and where the practice is no longer irrational and
anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people among
whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their mysteries with
harmless serpents in their hands looks quite unintelligible. When a wild
tribe of Red Indians does the same thing, as a trial of courage, with
real rattlesnakes, we understand the Red Man's motives, and may
conjecture that similar motives once existed among the ancestors of the
Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the seemingly meaningless
customs or manners of civilised races with the similar customs and
manners which exist among the uncivilised and still retain their meaning.
It is not necessary for comparison of this sort that the uncivilised and
the civilised race should be of the same stock, nor need we prove that
they were ever in contact with each other. Similar conditions of mind
produce similar practices, apart from identity of race, or borrowing of
ideas and manners.
Let us return to the example of the flint arrowheads. Everywhere
neolithic arrow-heads are pretty much alike. The cause of the
resemblance is no more than this, that men, with the same needs, the same
materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere produced the same
kind of arrow-head. No hypothesis of interchange of ideas nor of
community of race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in the
missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for the same causes, like
very early pottery in any other region. The same sort of similarity was
explained by the same resemblances in human nature, when we touched on
the identity of magical practices and of superstitious beliefs. This
method is fairly well established and orthodox when we deal with usages
and superstitious beliefs; but may we apply the same method when we deal
with myths?
Here a difficulty occurs. Mythologists, as a rule, are averse to the
method of folklore. They think it scientific to compare only the myths
of races which speak languages of the same family, and of races which
have, in historic times, been actually in proved contact with each other.
Thus, most mythologists hold it correct to compare Greek, Slavonic,
Celtic, and Indian stories, because Greeks, Slavs, Celts, and Hindoos all
speak languages of the same family. Again, they hold it correct to
compare Chaldaean and Greek myths, because the Greeks and the Chaldaeans
were brought into contact through the Phoenicians, and by other
intermediaries, such as the Hittites. But the same mythologists will vow
that it is unscientific to compare a Maori or a Hottentot or an Eskimo
myth with an Aryan story, because Maoris and Eskimo and Hottentots do not
speak languages akin to that of Greece, nor can we show that the
ancestors of Greeks, Maoris, Hottentots, and Eskimo were ever in contact
with each other in historical times.
Now the peculiarity of the method of folklore is that it will venture to
compare (with due caution and due examination of evidence) the myths of
the most widely severed races. Holding that myth is a product of the
early human fancy, working on the most rudimentary knowledge of the outer
world, the student of folklore thinks that differences of race do not
much affect the early mythopoeic faculty. He will not be surprised if
Greeks and Australian blacks are in the same tale.
In each case, he holds, all the circumstances of the case must be
examined and considered. For instance, when the Australians tell a myth
about the Pleiades very like the Greek myth of the Pleiades, we must ask
a number of questions. Is the Australian version authentic? Can the
people who told it have heard it from a European? If these questions are
answered so as to make it apparent that the Australian Pleiad myth is of
genuine native origin, we need not fly to the conclusion that the
Australians are a lost and forlorn branch of the Aryan race. Two other
hypotheses present themselves. First, the human species is of unknown
antiquity. In the moderate allowance of 250,000 years, there is time for
stories to have wandered all round the world, as the Aggry beads of
Ashanti have probably crossed the continent from Egypt, as the Asiatic
jade (if Asiatic it be) has arrived in Swiss lake-dwellings, as an
African trade-cowry is said to have been found in a Cornish barrow, as an
Indian Ocean shell has been discovered in a prehistoric bone-cave in
Poland. This slow filtration of tales is not absolutely out of the
question. Two causes would especially help to transmit myths. The first
is slavery and slave-stealing, the second is the habit of capturing
brides from alien stocks, and the law which forbids marriage with a woman
of a man's own family. Slaves and captured brides would bring their
native legends among alien peoples.
But there is another possible way of explaining the resemblance (granting
that it is proved) of the Greek and Australian Pleiad myth. The object
of both myths is to account for the grouping and other phenomena of the
constellations. May not similar explanatory stories have occurred to the
ancestors of the Australians, and to the ancestors of the Greeks, however
remote their home, while they were still in the savage condition? The
best way to investigate this point is to collect all known savage and
civilised stellar myths, and see what points they have in common. If
they all agree in character, though the Greek tales are full of grace,
while those of the Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may
plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we accounted for the
similarity of flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the arrow-heads,
resemble each other because they were originally framed to meet the same
needs out of the same material. In the case of the arrow-heads, the need
was for something hard, heavy, and sharp--the material was flint. In the
case of the myths, the need was to explain certain phenomena--the
material (so to speak) was an early state of the human mind, to which all
objects seemed equally endowed with human personality, and to which no
metamorphosis appeared impossible.
In the following essays, then, the myths and customs of various peoples
will be compared, even when these peoples talk languages of alien
families, and have never (as far as history shows us) been in actual
contact. Our method throughout will be to place the usage, or myth,
which is unintelligible when found among a civilised race, beside the
similar myth which is intelligible enough when it is found among savages.
A mean term will be found in the folklore preserved by the
non-progressive classes in a progressive people. This folklore
represents, in the midst of a civilised race, the savage ideas out of
which civilisation has been evolved. The conclusion will usually be that
the fact which puzzles us by its presence in civilisation is a relic
surviving from the time when the ancestors of a civilised race were in
the state of savagery. By this method it is not necessary that 'some
sort of genealogy should be established' between the Australian and the
Greek narrators of a similar myth, nor between the Greek and Australian
possessors of a similar usage. The hypothesis will be that the myth, or
usage, is common to both races, not because of original community of
stock, not because of contact and borrowing, but because the ancestors of
the Greeks passed through the savage intellectual condition in which we
find the Australians.
The questions may be asked, Has race nothing, then, to do with myth? Do
peoples never consciously borrow myths from each other? The answer is,
that race has a great deal to do with the development of myth, if it be
race which confers on a people its national genius, and its capacity of
becoming civilised. If race does this, then race affects, in the most
powerful manner, the ultimate development of myth. No one is likely to
confound a Homeric myth with a myth from the Edda, nor either with a myth
from a Brahmana, though in all three cases the substance, the original
set of ideas, may be much the same. In all three you have
anthropomorphic gods, capable of assuming animal shapes, tricky,
capricious, limited in many undivine ways, yet endowed with magical
powers. So far the mythical gods of Homer, of the Edda, of any of the
Brahmanas, are on a level with each other, and not much above the gods of
savage mythology. This stuff of myth is quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus, and is the original gift of the savage intellect. But the
final treatment, the ultimate literary form of the myth, varies in each
race. Homeric gods, like Red Indian, Thlinkeet, or Australian gods, can
assume the shapes of birds. But when we read, in Homer, of the arming of
Athene, the hunting of Artemis, the vision of golden Aphrodite, the
apparition of Hermes, like a young man when the flower of youth is
loveliest, then we recognise the effect of race upon myth, the effect of
the Greek genius at work on rude material. Between the Olympians and a
Thlinkeet god there is all the difference that exists between the Demeter
of Cnidos and an image from Easter Island. Again, the Scandinavian gods,
when their tricks are laid aside, when Odin is neither assuming the shape
of worm nor of raven, have a martial dignity, a noble enduring spirit of
their own. Race comes out in that, as it does in the endless sacrifices,
soma drinking, magical austerities, and puerile follies of Vedic and
Brahmanic gods, the deities of a people fallen early into its sacerdotage
and priestly second childhood. Thus race declares itself in the ultimate
literary form and character of mythology, while the common savage basis
and stuff of myths may be clearly discerned in the horned, and cannibal,
and shape-shifting, and adulterous gods of Greece, of India, of the
North. They all show their common savage origin, when the poet neglects
Freya's command and tells of what the gods did 'in the morning of Time.'
As to borrowing, we have already shown that in prehistoric times there
must have been much transmission of myth. The migrations of peoples, the
traffic in slaves, the law of exogamy, which always keeps bringing alien
women into the families--all these things favoured the migration of myth.
But the process lies behind history: we can only guess at it, we can
seldom trace a popular legend on its travels. In the case of the
cultivated ancient peoples, we know that they themselves believed they
had borrowed their religions from each other. When the Greeks first
found the Egyptians practising mysteries like their own, they leaped to
the conclusion that their own rites had been imported from Egypt. We,
who know that both Greek and Egyptian rites had many points in common
with those of Mandans, Zunis, Bushmen, Australians--people quite
unconnected with Egypt--feel less confident about the hypothesis of
borrowing. We may, indeed, regard Adonis, and Zeus Bagaeus, and
Melicertes, as importations from Phoenicia. In later times, too, the
Greeks, and still more the Romans, extended a free hospitality to alien
gods and legends, to Serapis, Isis, the wilder Dionysiac revels, and so
forth. But this habit of borrowing was regarded with disfavour by pious
conservatives, and was probably, in the width of its hospitality at
least, an innovation. As Tiele remarks, we cannot derive Dionysus from
the Assyrian Daian nisi, 'judge of men,' a name of the solar god Samas,
without ascertaining that the wine-god exercised judicial functions, and
was a god of the sun. These derivations, 'shocking to common sense,' are
to be distrusted as part of the intoxication of new learning. Some
Assyrian scholars actually derive Hades from Bit Edi or Bit Hadi--'though,
unluckily,' says Tiele, 'there is no such word in the Assyrian text.' On
the whole topic Tiele's essay {28} deserves to be consulted. Granting,
then, that elements in the worship of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and other
gods, may have been imported with the strange AEgypto-Assyrian vases and
jewels of the Sidonians, we still find the same basis of rude savage
ideas. We may push back a god from Greece to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia
to Accadia, but, at the end of the end, we reach a legend full of myths
like those which Bushmen tell by the camp-fire, Eskimo in their dark
huts, and Australians in the shade of the gunyeh--myths cruel, puerile,
obscene, like the fancies of the savage myth-makers from which they
sprang.
THE BULL-ROARER.
A Study of the Mysteries.
As the belated traveller makes his way through the monotonous plains of
Australia, through the Bush, with its level expanses and clumps of grey-
blue gum trees, he occasionally hears a singular sound. Beginning low,
with a kind of sharp tone thrilling through a whirring noise, it grows
louder and louder, till it becomes a sort of fluttering windy roar. If
the traveller be a new comer, he is probably puzzled to the last degree.
If he be an Englishman, country-bred, he says to himself, 'Why, that is
the bull-roarer.' If he knows the colony and the ways of the natives, he
knows that the blacks are celebrating their tribal mysteries. The
roaring noise is made to warn all women to keep out of the way. Just as
Pentheus was killed (with the approval of Theocritus) because he profaned
the rites of the women-worshippers of Dionysus, so, among the Australian
blacks, men must, at their peril, keep out of the way of female, and
women out of the way of male, celebrations.
The instrument which produces the sounds that warn women to remain afar
is a toy familiar to English country lads. They call it the bull-roarer.
The common bull-roarer is an inexpensive toy which anyone can make. I do
not, however, recommend it to families, for two reasons. In the first
place, it produces a most horrible and unexampled din, which endears it
to the very young, but renders it detested by persons of mature age. In
the second place, the character of the toy is such that it will almost
infallibly break all that is fragile in the house where it is used, and
will probably put out the eyes of some of the inhabitants. Having thus,
I trust, said enough to prevent all good boys from inflicting
bull-roarers on their parents, pastors, and masters, I proceed (in the
interests of science) to show how the toy is made. Nothing can be less
elaborate. You take a piece of the commonest wooden board, say the lid
of a packing-case, about a sixth of an inch in thickness, and about eight
inches long and three broad, and you sharpen the ends. When finished,
the toy may be about the shape of a large bay-leaf, or a 'fish' used as a
counter (that is how the New Zealanders make it), or the sides may be
left plain in the centre, and only sharpened towards the extremities, as
in an Australian example lent me by Mr. Tylor. Then tie a strong piece
of string, about thirty inches long, to one end of the piece of wood and
the bull-roarer (the Australian natives call it turndun, and the Greeks
called it [Greek]) is complete. Now twist the end of the string tightly
about your finger, and whirl the bull-roarer rapidly round and round. For
a few moments nothing will happen. In a very interesting lecture
delivered at the Royal Institution, Mr. Tylor once exhibited a
bull-roarer. At first it did nothing particular when it was whirled
round, and the audience began to fear that the experiment was like those
chemical ones often exhibited at institutes in the country, which
contribute at most a disagreeable odour to the education of the populace.
But when the bull-roarer warmed to its work, it justified its name,
producing what may best be described as a mighty rushing noise, as if
some supernatural being 'fluttered and buzzed his wings with fearful
roar.' Grown-up people, of course, are satisfied with a very brief
experience of this din, but boys have always known the bull-roarer in
England as one of the most efficient modes of making the hideous and
unearthly noises in which it is the privilege of youth to delight.
The bull-roarer has, of all toys, the widest diffusion, and the most
extraordinary history. To study the bull-roarer is to take a lesson in
folklore. The instrument is found among the most widely severed peoples,
savage and civilised, and is used in the celebration of savage and
civilised mysteries. There are students who would found on this a
hypothesis that the various races that use the bull-roarer all descend
from the same stock. But the bull roarer is introduced here for the very
purpose of showing that similar minds, working with simple means towards
similar ends, might evolve the bull-roarer and its mystic uses anywhere.
There is no need for a hypothesis of common origin, or of borrowing, to
account for this widely diffused sacred object.
The bull-roarer has been, and is, a sacred and magical instrument in many
and widely separated lands. It is found, always as a sacred instrument,
employed in religious mysteries, in New Mexico, in Australia, in New
Zealand, in ancient Greece, and in Africa; while, as we have seen, it is
a peasant-boy's plaything in England. A number of questions are
naturally suggested by the bull-roarer. Is it a thing invented once for
all, and carried abroad over the world by wandering races, or handed on
from one people and tribe to another? Or is the bull-roarer a toy that
might be accidentally hit on in any country where men can sharpen wood
and twist the sinews of animals into string? Was the thing originally a
toy, and is its religious and mystical nature later; or was it originally
one of the properties of the priest, or medicine-man, which in England
has dwindled to a plaything? Lastly, was this mystical instrument at
first employed in the rites of a civilised people like the Greeks, and
was it in some way borrowed or inherited by South Africans, Australians,
and New Mexicans? Or is it a mere savage invention, surviving (like
certain other features of the Greek mysteries) from a distant stage of
savagery? Our answer to all these questions is that in all probability
the presence of the [Greek], or bull-roarer, in Greek mysteries was a
survival from the time when Greeks were in the social condition of
Australians.
In the first place, the bull-roarer is associated with mysteries and
initiations. Now mysteries and initiations are things that tend to
dwindle and to lose their characteristic features as civilisation
advances. The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret and
hidden; they are common to both sexes, they are publicly performed, and
religion and morality of the purest sort blend in these ceremonies. There
are no other initiations or mysteries that civilised modern man is
expected necessarily to pass through. On the other hand, looking widely
at human history, we find mystic rites and initiations numerous,
stringent, severe, and magical in character, in proportion to the lack of
civilisation in those who practise them. The less the civilisation, the
more mysterious and the more cruel are the rites. The more cruel the
rites, the less is the civilisation. The red-hot poker with which Mr.
Bouncer terrified Mr. Verdant Green at the sham masonic rites would have
been quite in place, a natural instrument of probationary torture, in the
Freemasonry of Australians, Mandans, or Hottentots. In the mysteries of
Demeter or Bacchus, in the mysteries of a civilised people, the red-hot
poker, or any other instrument of torture, would have been out of place.
But in the Greek mysteries, just as in those of South Africans, Red
Indians, and Australians, the disgusting practice of bedaubing the
neophyte with dirt and clay was preserved. We have nothing quite like
that in modern initiations. Except at Sparta, Greeks dropped the
tortures inflicted on boys and girls in the initiations superintended by
the cruel Artemis. {33} But Greek mysteries retained the daubing with
mud and the use of the bull-roarer. On the whole, then, and on a general
view of the subject, we prefer to think that the bull-roarer in Greece
was a survival from savage mysteries, not that the bull-roarer in New
Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa is a relic of
civilisation.
Let us next observe a remarkable peculiarity of the turndun, or
Australian bull-roarer. The bull-roarer in England is a toy. In
Australia, according to Howitt and Fison, {34} the bull-roarer is
regarded with religious awe. 'When, on lately meeting with two of the
surviving Kurnai, I spoke to them of the turndun, they first looked
cautiously round them to see that no one else was looking, and then
answered me in undertones.' The chief peculiarity in connection with the
turndun is that women may never look upon it. The Chepara tribe, who
call it bribbun, have a custom that, 'if seen by a woman, or shown by a
man to a woman, the punishment to both is _death_.'
Among the Kurnai, the sacred mystery of the turndun is preserved by a
legend, which gives a supernatural sanction to secrecy. When boys go
through the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown turnduns, or
bull-roarers, and made to listen to their hideous din. They are then
told that, if ever a woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will
open, and water will cover the globe. The old men point spears at the
boy's eyes, saying: 'If you tell this to any woman you will die, you will
see the ground broken up and like the sea; if you tell this to any woman,
or to any child, you will be killed!' As in Athens, in Syria, and among
the Mandans, the deluge-tradition of Australia is connected with the
mysteries. In Gippsland there is a tradition of the deluge. 'Some
children of the Kurnai in playing about found a turndun, which they took
home to the camp and showed the women. Immediately the earth crumbled
away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned.'
In consequence of all this mummery the Australian women attach great
sacredness to the very name of the turndun. They are much less
instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe. One woman
believed she had heard Pundjel, the chief supernatural being, descend in
a mighty rushing noise, that is, in the sound of the turndun, when boys
were being 'made men,' or initiated. {35} On turnduns the Australian
sorcerers can fly up to heaven. Turnduns carved with imitations of water-
flowers are used by medicine-men in rain-making. New Zealand also has
her bull-roarers; some of them, carved in relief, are in the Christy
Museum, and one is engraved here. I have no direct evidence as to the
use of these Maori bull-roarers in the Maori mysteries. Their
employment, however, may perhaps be provisionally inferred.
One can readily believe that the New Zealand bull-roarer may be whirled
by any man who is repeating a Karakia, or 'charm to raise the wind':--
Loud wind,
Lasting wind,
Violent whistling wind,
Dig up the calm reposing sky,
Come, come.
In New Zealand {36a} 'the natives regarded the wind as an indication of
the presence of their god,' a superstition not peculiar to Maori
religion. The 'cold wind' felt blowing over the hands at spiritualistic
seances is also regarded (by psychical researchers) as an indication of
the presence of supernatural beings. The windy roaring noise made by the
bull-roarer might readily be considered by savages, either as an
invitation to a god who should present himself in storm, or as a proof of
his being at hand. We have seen that this view was actually taken by an
Australian woman. The hymn called 'breath,' or haha, a hymn to the
mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori priests at the moment of the
initiation of young men in the tribal mysteries. It is a mere
conjecture, and possibly enough capable of disproof, but we have a
suspicion that the use of the mystica vannus Iacchi was a mode of raising
a sacred wind analogous to that employed by whirlers of the turndun.
{36b}
Servius, the ancient commentator on Virgil, mentions, among other
opinions, this--that the vannus was a sieve, and that it symbolised the
purifying effect of the mysteries. But it is clear that Servius was only
guessing; and he offers other explanations, among them that the vannus
was a crate to hold offerings, primitias frugum.
We have studied the bull-roarer in Australia, we have caught a glimpse of
it in England. Its existence on the American continent is proved by
letters from New Mexico, and by a passage in Mr. Frank Cushing's
'Adventures in Zuni.' {37} In Zuni, too, among a semi-civilised Indian
tribe, or rather a tribe which has left the savage for the barbaric
condition, we find the bull-roarer. Here, too, the instrument--a 'slat,'
Mr. Gushing calls it--is used as a call to the ceremonial observance of
the tribal ritual. The Zunis have various 'orders of a more or less
sacred and sacerdotal character.' Mr. Cushing writes:--
These orders were engaged in their annual ceremonials, of which little
was told or shown me; but, at the end of four days, I heard one
morning a _deep whirring noise_. Running out, I saw a procession of
three priests of the bow, in plumed helmets and closely-fitting
cuirasses, both of thick buckskin--gorgeous and solemn with sacred
embroideries and war-paint, begirt with bows, arrows, and war-clubs,
and each distinguished by his badge of degree--coming down one of the
narrow streets. The principal priest carried in his arms a wooden
idol, ferocious in aspect, yet beautiful with its decorations of
shell, turquoise, and brilliant paint. It was nearly hidden by
symbolic slats and prayer-sticks most elaborately plumed. He was
preceded by a guardian with drawn bow and arrows, while another
followed, _twirling the sounding slat_, which had attracted alike my
attention and that of hundreds of the Indians, who hurriedly flocked
to the roofs of the adjacent houses, or lined the street, bowing their
heads in adoration, and scattering sacred prayer-meal on the god and
his attendant priests. Slowly they wound their way down the hill,
across the river, and off toward the mountain of Thunder. Soon an
identical procession followed and took its way toward the western
hills. I watched them long until they disappeared, and a few hours
afterward there arose from the top of 'Thunder Mountain' a dense
column of smoke, simultaneously with another from the more distant
western mesa of 'U-ha-na-mi,' or 'Mount of the Beloved.'
Then they told me that for four days I must neither touch nor eat
flesh or oil of any kind, and for ten days neither throw any refuse
from my doors, nor permit a spark to leave my house, for 'This was the
season of the year when the "grandmother of men" (fire) was precious.'
Here then, in Zuni, we have the bull-roarer again, and once more we find
it employed as a summons to the mysteries. We do not learn, however,
that women in Zuni are forbidden to look upon the bull-roarer. Finally,
the South African evidence, which is supplied by letters from a
correspondent of Mr. Tylor's, proves that in South Africa, too, the bull-
roarer is employed to call the men to the celebration of secret
functions. A minute description of the instrument, and of its magical
power to raise a wind, is given in Theal's 'Kaffir Folklore,' p. 209. The
bull-roarer has not been made a subject of particular research; very
probably later investigations will find it in other parts of the modern
world besides America, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. I have myself
been fortunate enough to encounter the bull-roarer on the soil of ancient
Greece and in connection with the Dionysiac mysteries. Clemens of
Alexandria, and Arnobius, an early Christian father who follows Clemens,
describe certain toys of the child Dionysus which were used in the
mysteries. Among these are _turbines_, [Greek], and [Greek]. The
ordinary dictionaries interpret all these as whipping-tops, adding that
[Greek] is sometimes 'a magic wheel.' The ancient scholiast on Clemens,
however, writes: 'The [Greek] is a little piece of wood, to which a
string is fastened, and in the mysteries it is whirled round to make a
roaring noise.' {39} Here, in short, we have a brief but complete
description of the bull-roarer of the Australian turndun. No single
point is omitted. The [Greek], like the turndun, is a small object of
wood, it is tied to a string, when whirled round it produces a roaring
noise, and it is used at initiations. This is not the end of the matter.
In the part of the Dionysiac mysteries at which the toys of the child
Dionysus were exhibited, and during which (as it seems) the [Greek], or
bull-roarer, was whirred, the performers daubed themselves all over with
clay. This we learn from a passage in which Demosthenes describes the
youth of his hated adversary, AEschines. The mother of AEschines, he
says, was a kind of 'wise woman,' and dabbler in mysteries. AEschines
used to aid her by bedaubing the initiate over with clay and bran. {40a}
The word [Greek], here used by Demosthenes, is explained by Harpocration
as the ritual term for daubing the initiated. A story was told, as
usual, to explain this rite. It was said that, when the Titans attacked
Dionysus and tore him to pieces, they painted themselves first with clay,
or gypsum, that they might not be recognised. Nonnus shows, in several
places, that down to his time the celebrants of the Bacchic mysteries
retained this dirty trick. Precisely the same trick prevails in the
mysteries of savage peoples. Mr. Winwood Reade {40b} reports the
evidence of Mongilomba. When initiated, Mongilomba was 'severely flogged
in the Fetich House' (as young Spartans were flogged before the animated
image of Artemis), and then he was 'plastered over with goat-dung.' Among
the natives of Victoria, {40c} the 'body of the initiated is bedaubed
with clay, mud, charcoal powder, and filth of every kind.' The girls are
plastered with charcoal powder and white clay, answering to the Greek
gypsum. Similar daubings were performed at the mysteries by the Mandans,
as described by Catlin; and the Zunis made raids on Mr. Cushing's black
paint and Chinese ink for like purposes. On the Congo, Mr. Johnson found
precisely the same ritual in the initiations. Here, then, not to
multiply examples, we discover two singular features in common between
Greek and savage mysteries. Both Greeks and savages employ the
bull-roarer, both bedaub the initiated with dirt or with white paint or
chalk. As to the meaning of the latter very un-Aryan practice, one has
no idea. It is only certain that war parties of Australian blacks bedaub
themselves with white clay to alarm their enemies in night attacks. The
Phocians, according to Herodotus (viii. 27), adopted the same 'aisy
stratagem,' as Captain Costigan has it. Tellies, the medicine-man
([Greek]), chalked some sixty Phocians, whom he sent to make a night
attack on the Thessalians. The sentinels of the latter were seized with
supernatural horror, and fled, 'and after the sentinels went the army.'
In the same way, in a night attack among the Australian Kurnai, {41a}
'they all rapidly painted themselves with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use,
it cannot frighten an enemy.' If, then, Greeks in the historic period
kept up Australian tactics, it is probable that the ancient mysteries of
Greece might retain the habit of daubing the initiated which occurs in
savage rites.
'Come now,' as Herodotus would say, 'I will show once more that the
mysteries of the Greeks resemble those of Bushmen.' In Lucian's Treatise
on Dancing, {41b} we read, 'I pass over the fact that you cannot find a
single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. . . . To prove this
I will not mention the secret acts of worship, on account of the
uninitiated. But this much all men know, that most people say of those
who reveal the mysteries, that they "dance them out."' Here Liddell and
Scott write, rather weakly, 'to dance out, let out, betray, probably of
some dance which burlesqued these ceremonies.' It is extremely
improbable that, in an age when it was still forbidden to reveal the
[Greek], or secret rites, those rites would be mocked in popular
burlesques. Lucian obviously intends to say that the matter of the
mysteries was set forth in ballets d'action. Now this is exactly the
case in the surviving mysteries of the Bushmen. Shortly after the
rebellion of Langalibalele's tribe, Mr. Orpen, the chief magistrate in
St. John's Territory, made the acquaintance of Qing, one of the last of
an all but exterminated tribe. Qing 'had never seen a white man, except
fighting,' when he became Mr. Orpen's guide. He gave a good deal of
information about the myths of his people, but refused to answer certain
questions. 'You are now asking the secrets that are not spoken of.' Mr.
Orpen asked, 'Do you know the secrets?' Qing replied, 'No, only the
initiated men of that dance know these things.' To 'dance' this or that
means, 'to be acquainted with this or that mystery;' the dances were
originally taught by Cagn, the mantis, or grasshopper god. In many
mysteries, Qing, as a young man, was not initiated. He could not 'dance
them out.' {42}
There are thus undeniably close resemblances between the Greek mysteries
and those of the lowest contemporary races.
As to the bull-roarer, its recurrence among Greeks, Zunis, Kamilaroi,
Maoris, and South African races, would be regarded, by some students, as
a proof that all these tribes had a common origin, or had borrowed the
instrument from each other. But this theory is quite unnecessary. The
bull-roarer is a very simple invention. Anyone might find out that a bit
of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when whirred, a roaring
noise. Supposing that discovery made, it is soon turned to practical
use. All tribes have their mysteries. All want a signal to summon the
right persons together and warn the wrong persons to keep out of the way.
The church bell does as much for us, so did the shaken seistron for the
Egyptians. People with neither bells nor seistra find the bull-roarer,
with its mysterious sound, serve their turn. The hiding of the
instrument from women is natural enough. It merely makes the alarm and
absence of the curious sex doubly sure. The stories of supernatural
consequences to follow if a woman sees the turndun lend a sanction. This
is not a random theory, without basis. In Brazil, the natives have no
bull-roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence of the women at
the mysteries of the men is a terrible impiety. To warn away the women,
the Brazilians make loud 'devil-music' on what are called 'jurupari
pipes.' Now, just as in Australia, _the women may not see the jurupari
pipes on pain of death_. When the sound of the jurupari pipes is heard,
as when the turndun is heard in Australia, every woman flees and hides
herself. The women are always executed if they see the pipes. Mr.
Alfred Wallace bought a pair of these pipes, but he had to embark them at
a distance from the village where they were procured. The seller was
afraid that some unknown misfortune would occur if the women of his
village set eyes on the juruparis. {44}
The conclusion from all these facts seems obvious. The bull-roarer is an
instrument easily invented by savages, and easily adopted into the ritual
of savage mysteries. If we find the bull-roarer used in the mysteries of
the most civilised of ancient peoples, the most probable explanation is,
that the Greeks retained both the mysteries, the bull-roarer, the habit
of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of boys, the sacred obscenities,
the antics with serpents, the dances, and the like, from the time when
their ancestors were in the savage condition. That more refined and
religious ideas were afterwards introduced into the mysteries seems
certain, but the rites were, in many cases, simply savage. Unintelligible
(except as survivals) when found among Hellenes, they become intelligible
enough among savages, because they correspond to the intellectual
condition and magical fancies of the lower barbarism. The same sort of
comparison, the same kind of explanation, will account, as we shall see,
for the savage myths as well as for the savage customs which survived
among the Greeks.
THE MYTH OF CRONUS.
In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is
sometimes warned that he is 'as bad as cruel Tutenganahau.' If he asks
who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story:--
'In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the
father and mother of all things. "In these days the Heaven lay upon the
Earth, and all was darkness. They had never been separated." Heaven and
Earth had children, who grew up and lived in this thick night, and they
were unhappy because they could not see. Between the bodies of their
parents they were imprisoned, and there was no light. The names of the
children were Tumatuenga, Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau, and some others. So
they all consulted as to what should be done with their parents, Rangi
and Papa. "Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?" "Go to,"
said Tumatuenga, "let us slay them." "No," cried Tane Mahuta, "let us
rather separate them. Let one go upwards, and become a stranger to us;
let the other remain below, and be a parent to us." Only Tawhiri Matea
(the wind) had pity on his own father and mother. Then the fruit-gods,
and the war-god, and the sea-god (for all the children of Papa and Rangi
were gods) tried to rend their parents asunder. Last rose the forest-
god, cruel Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews which united Heaven and
Earth, Rangi and Papa. Then he pushed hard with his head and feet. Then
wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, "Wherefore this murder? Why this
great sin? Why destroy us? Why separate us?" But Tane pushed and
pushed: Rangi was driven far away into the air. "_They became visible,
who had hitherto been concealed between the hollows of their parents'
breasts_." Only the storm-god differed from his brethren: he arose and
followed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the open spaces of the
sky.'
This is the Maori story of the severing of the wedded Heaven and Earth.
The cutting of them asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and his
brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still held up as an example
of filial impiety. {46a} The story is preserved in sacred hymns of very
great antiquity, and many of the myths are common to the other peoples of
the Pacific. {46b}
Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as she was in the days of
Pericles. Socrates is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when
Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher.
After some talk, Euthyphro says, 'You will think me mad when I tell you
whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!' 'Why, has the fugitive wings?' asks
Socrates. 'Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life!' 'Who is
he?' 'My father.' 'Good heavens! you don't mean that. What is he
accused of?' 'Murder, Socrates.' Then Euthyphro explains the case,
which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro's father had an
agricultural labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a drunken passion,
killed a slave. Euthyphro's father seized the labourer, bound him, threw
him into a ditch, 'and then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should
be done with him.' Before the answer of the diviner arrived, the
labourer literally 'died in a ditch' of hunger and cold. For this
offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own father. Socrates shows that
he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of his own conduct:
'The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not
men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods? Yet even they
admit that Zeus bound his own father Cronus, because he wickedly devoured
his sons; and that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Uranus, for
a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when _I_ proceed against
_my_ father, people are angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of
talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.'
Here Socrates breaks in. He 'cannot away with these stories about the
gods,' and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which
he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his
father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can tell you
many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.' {48}
* * * * *
We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled the
early philosophers of Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to
respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet at the very outset
of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who mutilated and bound
their own parents. Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they
were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro. The problem
remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such
myths?
* * * * *
Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have
been given by scholars. Near the beginning of things, according to
Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to
Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth. Just
as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus and
Gaea. As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the various
elements. Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the sun--as
among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were the Wind and
the Sea. The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth was 'Cronus of
crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.' Now even as the
children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were 'concealed between the
hollows of their parents' breasts,' so the Greek Heaven used to 'hide his
children from the light in the hollows of Earth.' Both Earth and her
children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the children conspired
against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their counsels. Thereupon
Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge their wrongs. {49a} Now
fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who, like Tutenganahau, was all
for action. Cronus determined to end the embraces of Heaven and Earth.
But, while the Maori myth conceives of Heaven and Earth as of two beings
which have never been separated before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously
approach his wife from a distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand,
armed with a sickle of iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus were
Heaven and Earth practically divorced. But as in the Maori myth one of
the children of Heaven clave to his sire, so, in Greek, Oceanus remained
faithful to his father. {49b}
This is the first portion of the Myth of Cronus. Can it be denied that
the story is well illustrated and explained by the New Zealand parallel,
the myth of the cruelty of Tutenganahau? By means of this comparison,
the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. Just as the New Zealanders
had conceived of Heaven and Earth as at one time united, to the prejudice
of their children, so the ancestors of the Greeks had believed in an
ancient union of Heaven and Earth. Both by Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and
Earth were thought of as living persons, with human parts and passions.
Their union was prejudicial to their children, and so the children
violently separated the parents. This conduct is regarded as impious,
and as an awful example to be avoided, in Maori pahs. In Naxos, on the
other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the conduct of Cronus deserved
imitation. If ever the Maoris had reached a high civilisation, they
would probably have been revolted, like Socrates, by the myth which
survived from their period of savagery. Mr. Tylor well says, {50a} 'Just
as the adzes of polished jade, and the cloaks of tied flax-fibre, which
these New Zealanders were using but yesterday, are older in their place
in history than the bronze battle-axes and linen mummy-cloths of ancient
Egypt, so the Maori poet's shaping of nature into nature-myth belongs to
a stage of intellectual history which was passing away in Greece five-and-
twenty centuries ago. The myth-maker's fancy of Heaven and Earth as
father and mother of all things naturally suggested the legend that they
in old days abode together, but have since been torn asunder.'
* * * * *
That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to early minds, Mr. Tylor
proves by the presence of the myth of the union and violent divorce of
the pair in China. {50b} Puang-ku is the Chinese Cronus, or
Tutenganahau. In India, {50c} Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth, were
once united, and were severed by Indra, their own child.
This, then, is our interpretation of the exploit of Cronus. It is an old
surviving nature-myth of the severance of Heaven and Earth, a myth found
in China, India, New Zealand, as well as in Greece. Of course it is not
pretended that Chinese and Maoris borrowed from Indians and Greeks, or
came originally of the same stock. Similar phenomena, presenting
themselves to be explained by human minds in a similar stage of fancy and
of ignorance, will account for the parallel myths.
The second part of the myth of Cronus was, like the first, a stumbling-
block to the orthodox in Greece. Of the second part we offer no
explanation beyond the fact that the incidents in the myth are almost
universally found among savages, and that, therefore, in Greece they are
probably survivals from savagery. The sequel of the myth appears to
account for nothing, as the first part accounts for the severance of
Heaven and Earth. In the sequel a world-wide Marchen, or tale, seems to
have been attached to Cronus, or attracted into the cycle of which he is
centre, without any particular reason, beyond the law which makes
detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name. To look further
is, perhaps, chercher raison ou il n'y en a pas.
The conclusion of the story of Cronus runs thus:--He wedded his sister,
Rhea, and begat children--Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and, lastly,
Zeus. 'And mighty Cronus swallowed down each of them, each that came to
their mother's knees from her holy womb, with this intent, that none
other of the proud children of Uranus should hold kingly sway among the
Immortals.' Cronus showed a ruling father's usual jealousy of his heirs.
It was a case of Friedrich Wilhelm and Friedrich. But Cronus (acting in
a way natural in a story perhaps first invented by cannibals) swallowed
his children instead of merely imprisoning them. Heaven and Earth had
warned him to beware of his heirs, and he could think of no safer plan
than that which he adopted. When Rhea was about to become the mother of
Zeus, she fled to Crete. Here Zeus was born, and when Cronus (in pursuit
of his usual policy) asked for the baby, he was presented with a stone
wrapped up in swaddling bands. After swallowing the stone, Cronus was
easy in his mind; but Zeus grew up, administered a dose to his father,
and compelled him to disgorge. 'The stone came forth first, as he had
swallowed it last.' {52a} The other children also emerged, all alive
and well. Zeus fixed the stone at Delphi, where, long after the
Christian era, Pausanias saw it. {52b} It was not a large stone,
Pausanias tells us, and the Delphians used to anoint it with oil and wrap
it up in wool on feast-days. All Greek temples had their fetich-stones,
and each stone had its legend. This was the story of the Delphian stone,
and of the fetichism which survived the early years of Christianity. A
very pretty story it is. Savages more frequently smear their
fetich-stones with red paint than daub them with oil, but the latter, as
we learn from Theophrastus's account of the 'superstitious man,' was the
Greek ritual.
* * * * *
This anecdote about Cronus was the stumbling-block of the orthodox Greek,
the jest of the sceptic, and the butt of the early Christian
controversialists. Found among Bushmen or Australians the narrative
might seem rather wild, but it astonishes us still more when it occurs in
the holy legends of Greece. Our explanation of its presence there is
simple enough. Like the erratic blocks in a modern plain, like the flint-
heads in a meadow, the story is a relic of a very distant past. The
glacial age left the boulders on the plain, the savage tribes of long ago
left the arrowheads, the period of savage fancy left the story of Cronus
and the rites of the fetich-stone. Similar rites are still notoriously
practised in the South Sea Islands, in Siberia, in India and Africa and
Melanesia, by savages. And by savages similar tales are still told.
* * * * *
We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and among Bushman divine myths
is room for the 'swallowing trick' attributed to Cronus by Hesiod. The
chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis insect. His adopted
daughter is the child of Kwai Hemm, a supernatural character, 'the all-
devourer.' The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to call the swallower to
his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the god-insect. As Zeus made
his own wife change herself into an insect, for the convenience of
swallowing her, there is not much difference between Bushman and early
Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm is killed by a stratagem, and all the animals
whom he has got outside of, in a long and voracious career, troop forth
from him alive and well, like the swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus.
{54a} Now, story for story, the Bushman version is much less offensive
than that of Hesiod. But the Bushman story is just the sort of story we
expect from Bushmen, whereas the Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of
tale we look for from Greeks. The explanation is, that the Greeks had
advanced out of a savage state of mind and society, but had retained
their old myths, myths evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with
that condition of fancy. Among the Kaffirs {54b} we find the same
'swallow-myth.' The Igongqongqo swallows all and sundry; a woman cuts
the swallower with a knife, and 'people came out, and cattle, and dogs.'
In Australia, a god is swallowed. As in the myth preserved by
Aristophanes in the 'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the
original gods, and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The
Moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil
he could. One day he swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle
came up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well. They
pointed out a well, and, as he drank, they hit the Moon with a stone
tomahawk, and out flew the eagle. {54c} This is oddly like Grimm's tale
of 'The Wolf and the Kids.' The wolf swallowed the kids, their mother
cut a hole in the wolf, let out the kids, stuffed the wolf with stones,
and sewed him up again. The wolf went to the well to drink, the weight
of the stones pulled him in, and he was drowned. Similar stories are
common among the Red Indians, and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in Guiana.
How savages all over the world got the idea that men and beasts could be
swallowed and disgorged alive, and why they fashioned the idea into a
divine myth, it is hard to say. Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,' {55a}
adds many examples of the narrative. The Basutos have it; it occurs some
five times in Callaway's 'Zulu Nursery Tales.' In Greenland the Eskimo
have a shape of the incident, and we have all heard of the escape of
Jonah.
It has been suggested that night, covering up the world, gave the first
idea of the swallowing myth. Now in some of the stories the night is
obviously conceived of as a big beast which swallows all things. The
notion that night is an animal is entirely in harmony with savage
metaphysics. In the opinion of the savage speculator, all things are men
and animals. 'Ils se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les
autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animees,'
says one of the old Jesuit missionaries in Canada. {55b} 'The wind was
formerly a person; he became a bird,' say the Bushmen.
G' oo ka! Kui (a very respectable Bushman, whose name seems a little hard
to pronounce), once saw the wind-person at Haarfontein. Savages, then,
are persuaded that night, sky, cloud, fire, and so forth, are only the
schein, or sensuous appearance, of things that, in essence, are men or
animals. A good example is the bringing of Night to Vanua Lava, by Qat,
the 'culture-hero' of Melanesia. At first it was always day, and people
tired of it. Qat heard that Night was at the Torres Islands, and he set
forth to get some. Qong (Night) received Qat well, blackened his
eyebrows, showed him Sleep, and sent him off with fowls to bring Dawn
after the arrival of Night should make Dawn a necessary. Next day Qat's
brothers saw the sun crawl away west, and presently Night came creeping
up from the sea. 'What is this?' cried the brothers. 'It is Night,'
said Qat; 'sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down
and keep quiet.' So they went to sleep. 'When Night had lasted long
enough, Qat took a piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the
Dawn came out.' {56}
Night is more or less personal in this tale, and solid enough to be cut,
so as to let the Dawn out. This savage conception of night, as the
swallower and disgorger, might start the notion of other swallowing and
disgorging beings. Again the Bushmen, and other savage peoples, account
for certain celestial phenomena by saying that 'a big star has swallowed
his daughter, and spit her out again.' While natural phenomena,
explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallow-myth,
we must not conclude that all beings to whom the story is attached are,
therefore, the Night. On this principle Cronus would be the Night, and
so would the wolf in Grimm. For our purposes it is enough that the feat
of Cronus is a feat congenial to the savage fancy and repugnant to the
civilised Greeks who found themselves in possession of the myth. Beyond
this, and beyond the inference that the Cronus myth was first evolved by
people to whom it seemed quite natural, that is, by savages, we do not
pretend to go in our interpretation.
* * * * *
To end our examination of the Myth of Cronus, we may compare the
solutions offered by scholars. As a rule, these solutions are based on
the philological analysis of the names in the story. It will be seen
that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings of
Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority. These
contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the exception in
the etymological interpretation of myths.
* * * * *
The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing
from English inquirers. Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name
of the god whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no
such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after
Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time ([Greek]).
This is a very simple and very common form of mythological expression. It
meant originally, not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but
[Greek] or [Greek] was used in the sense of "connected with time,
representing time, existing through all time." Derivatives in -[Greek]
and -[Greek] took, in later times, the more exclusive meaning of
patronymics. . . . When this (the meaning of [Greek] as equivalent to
Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, . . . people asked themselves
the question, Why is Zeus called [Greek]? And the natural and almost
inevitable answer was, Because he is the son, the offspring of a more
ancient god, Kronos. This may be a very old myth in Greece; but the
misunderstanding which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece
only. We cannot expect, therefore, a god Kronos in the Veda.' To expect
Greek in the Veda would certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of Kronos
had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. If Zeus had once a
father called Kronos, Kronos must have a wife.' It is added, as
confirmation, that 'the name of [Greek] belongs originally to Zeus only,
and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and Hades.'
{58a}
Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology' {58b}:
'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age of
Solon) 'the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks were
adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos,--of Kronos
eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole
progeny. Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we hardly find
anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good deal of the
sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of place.
One objection to Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no
clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in Hellenism that their own early
language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the god [Greek],
to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) [Greek], son of
[Greek]. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about
the god they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on
irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange
moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts
for the existence of a god called [Greek], it does not even attempt to
show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories about the
god.
* * * * *
This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of
Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of
'Die Herabkunft des Feuers,' is directly opposed to the ideas of Mr.
Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a god who could only have come
into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the original
meaning of 'derivatives in -[Greek] and -[Greek].' Kuhn, on the other
hand, derives [Greek] from the same root as the Sanskrit Krana. {59}
Krana means, it appears, der fur sich schaffende, he who creates for
himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian Pragapati, about whom even
more abominable stories are told than the myths which circulate to the
prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the 'swallow-myth' means that
Cronus, the lord of light and dark powers, swallows the divinities of
light. But in place of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight
sky) he swallows a stone, that is, the sun. When he disgorges the stone
(the sun), he also disgorges the gods of light whom he had swallowed.
I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the father
and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do
I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those
distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief
thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of
Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on
etymological analysis, is somewhat discomfiting.
The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown. In
'The Great Dionysiak Myth' {60a} Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos as
the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned God; Assyrian,
KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; Hellenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.' Mr. Brown
seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of harvest,' and also
'a wily savage god,' in which opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the
name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he is never represented with
horns, it is hard to say. But among the various foreign gods in whom the
Greeks recognised their own Cronus, one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as
Kronos,' seems to have been 'horn-wearing.' {60b} Horns are lacking in
Seb and Il, if not in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn
them.
Let us now turn to Preller. {61a} According to Preller, Kronos is
connected with [Greek], to fulfil, to bring to completion. The harvest
month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called [Greek] in some
parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's
golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of
harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of
pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation from
[Greek]:--
[Greek]
and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126)--
[Greek].
Preller illustrates the mutilation of Uranus by the Maori tale of
Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and Phoenician
influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Porphyry {61b}
speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised
Cronus in the Carthaginian god to whom children were offered up.
Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Uranus, to be the fire of
the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of
accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, the
cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Uranus
the lightning. {61d} According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-
drops of Uranus are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-god, piercing the dark
cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof. Sayce sees
points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name
of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he thinks, is not a god
of Phoenician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian
population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as
the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars. The story of the sickle
may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a
crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron--for, in this theory, the fetich-
stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.
* * * * *
It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much
more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts any
one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek
god, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b}
unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the mythologist may be
quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit,
but Phoenician. A not less adequate interpretation assigns him
ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer who can choose a system and
stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well
acquainted with his character as a nature-god. He may be Time, or
perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned god; or he is the harvest-
god, or the god of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,--the choice
is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the
stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will.
The mythologist has only to make his selection.
The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less
ondoyant et divers. We do not even pretend to explain everything. We do
not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. We only find
parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile in
such legends. And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally
evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition. The
survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of
the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'
'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman in
Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient
formula which has been dear to so many generations of children. In one
shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is
forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished
fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.' According
to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the hidden face is
beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the forbidden name is
uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and the union
is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united, after long searchings and
wanderings; sometimes they are severed for ever. Such are the central
situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche.
In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based came
into existence, we may choose one of two methods. We may confine our
investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs both in
the form of myth and of household tale. Again, we may look for the
shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise, among the
rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb of savages.
If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and also
customs and laws out of which the myth might have arisen, we may
provisionally conclude that similar customs once existed among the
civilised races who possess the tale, and that from these sprang the
early forms of the myth.
In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the
second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples.
The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found in
the Rig Veda (x. 95). The characters of a singular and cynical dialogue
in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former is an Apsaras, a
kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a folle maitresse, too) of
Pururavas, a mortal man. {65} In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she
dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small piece of butter, and
therewith well satisfied went away.' This slightly reminds one of the
common idea that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, and of
Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in Hades.
Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr.
Toots, that 'the language is coarse and the meaning is obscure.' We only
gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the society
of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns'; that she
'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.' She gives her
lover some hope, however--that the gods promise immortality even to him,
'the kinsman of Death' as he is. 'Let thine offspring worship the gods
with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the festival.'
In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man
and an immortal bride, and a promise of reconciliation.
The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial dramatisation, is given
in the Brahmana of the Yajur Veda. Mr. Max Muller has translated the
passage. {66a} According to the Brahmana, 'Urvasi, a kind of fairy, fell
in love with Pururavas, and when she met him she said: Embrace me three
times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without
your royal garments, _for this is the manner of women_.' {66b} The
Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, thought she had lingered
too long among men. They therefore plotted some way of parting her from
Pururavas. Her covenant with her lord declared that she was never to see
him naked. If that compact were broken she would be compelled to leave
him. To make Pururavas break this compact the Gandharvas stole a lamb
from beside Urvasi's bed: Pururavas sprang up to rescue the lamb, and, in
a flash of lightning, Urvasi saw him naked, contrary to the _manner of
women_. She vanished. He sought her long, and at last came to a lake
where she and her fairy friends were playing _in the shape of birds_.
Urvasi saw Pururavas, revealed herself to him, and, according to the
Brahmana, part of the strange Vedic dialogue was now spoken. Urvasi
promised to meet him on the last night of the year: a son was to be the
result of the interview. Next day, her kinsfolk, the Gandharvas, offered
Pururavas the wish of his heart. He wished to be one of them. They then
initiated him into the mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after
which he became immortal and dwelt among the Gandharvas.
It is highly characteristic of the Indian mind that the story should be
thus worked into connection with ritual. In the same way the Bhagavata
Purana has a long, silly, and rather obscene narrative about the
sacrifice offered by Pururavas, and the new kind of sacred fire. Much
the same ritual tale is found in the Vishnu Purana (iv. 6, 19).
Before attempting to offer our own theory of the legend, we must examine
the explanations presented by scholars. The philological method of
dealing with myths is well known. The hypothesis is that the names in a
myth are 'stubborn things,' and that, as the whole narrative has probably
arisen from forgetfulness of the meaning of language, the secret of a
myth must be sought in analysis of the proper names of the persons. On
this principle Mr. Max Muller interprets the myth of Urvasi and
Pururavas, their loves, separation, and reunion. Mr. Muller says that
the story 'expresses the identity of the morning dawn and the evening
twilight.' {68} To prove this, the names are analysed. It is Mr.
Muller's object to show that though, even in the Veda, Urvasi and
Pururavas are names of persons, they were originally 'appellations'; and
that Urvasi meant 'dawn,' and Pururavas 'sun.' Mr. Muller's opinion as
to the etymological sense of the names would be thought decisive,
naturally, by lay readers, if an opposite opinion were not held by that
other great philologist and comparative mythologist, Adalbert Kuhn.
Admitting that 'the etymology of Urvasi is difficult,' Mr. Muller derives
it from 'uru, wide ([Greek]), and a root as = to pervade.' Now the dawn
is 'widely pervading,' and has, in Sanskrit, the epithet uruki,
'far-going.' Mr. Muller next assumes that 'Eurykyde,' 'Eurynome,'
'Eurydike,' and other heroic Greek female names, are 'names of the dawn';
but this, it must be said, is merely an assumption of his school. The
main point of the argument is that Urvasi means 'far-going,' and that
'the far and wide splendour of dawn' is often spoken of in the Veda.
'However, the best proof that Urvasi was the dawn is the legend told of
her and of her love to Pururavas, a story that is true only of the sun
and the dawn' (i. 407).
We shall presently see that a similar story is told of persons in whom
the dawn can scarcely be recognised, so that 'the best proof' is not very
good.
The name of Pururavas, again, is 'an appropriate name for a solar hero.'
. . . Pururavas meant the same as [Greek], 'endowed with much light,'
for, though rava is generally used of sound, yet the root ru, which means
originally 'to cry,' is also applied to colour, in the sense of a loud or
crying colour, that is, red. {69a} Violet also, according to Sir G. W.
Cox, {69b} is a loud or crying colour. 'The word ([Greek]), as applied
to colour, is traced by Professor Max Muller to the root i, as denoting a
"crying hue," that is, a loud colour.' It is interesting to learn that
our Aryan fathers spoke of 'loud colours,' and were so sensitive as to
think violet 'loud.' Besides, Pururavas calls himself Vasistha, which,
as we know, is a name of the sun; and if he is called Aido, the son of
Ida, the same name is elsewhere given {69c} to Agni, the fire. 'The
conclusion of the argument is that antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and
of the chaste dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband. Yet
she says she will come again. And after the sun has travelled through
the world in search of his beloved, when he comes to the threshold of
Death and is going to end his solitary life, she appears again, in the
gloaming, the same as the dawn, as Eos in Homer, begins and ends the day,
and she carries him away to the golden seats of the Immortals.' {69d}
Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on what we think the
inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the story
of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred fire-lighting.
Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers
of the Brahmanas in their existing form. Coming to the analysis of
names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi 'a weakening of Urvanki (uru + anc), like
yuvaca from yuvanka, Latin juvencus . . . the accent is of no decisive
weight.' Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is the sun, and is
unmoved by the ingenious theory of 'a crying colour,' denoted by his
name, and the inference, supported by such words as rufus, that crying
colours are red, and therefore appropriate names of the red sun. The
connection between Pururavas and Agni, fire, is what appeals to Kuhn--and,
in short, where Mr. Muller sees a myth of sun and dawn, Kuhn recognises a
fire-myth. Roth, again (whose own name means _red_), far from thinking
that Urvasi is 'the chaste dawn,' interprets her name as die geile, that
is, 'lecherous, lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene'; while Pururavas, as
'the Roarer,' suggests 'the Bull in rut.' In accordance with these views
Roth explains the myth in a fashion of his own. {70a}
Here, then, as Kuhn says, 'we have three essentially different modes of
interpreting the myth,' {70b} all three founded on philological analysis
of the names in the story. No better example could be given to
illustrate the weakness of the philological method. In the first place,
that method relies on names as the primitive relics and germs of the
tale, although the tale may occur where the names have never been heard,
and though the names are, presumably, late additions to a story in which
the characters were originally anonymous. Again, the most illustrious
etymologists differ absolutely about the true sense of the names. Kuhn
sees fire everywhere, and fire-myths; Mr. Muller sees dawn and
dawn-myths; Schwartz sees storm and storm-myths, and so on. As the
orthodox teachers are thus at variance, so that there is no safety in
orthodoxy, we may attempt to use our heterodox method.
None of the three scholars whose views we have glanced at--neither Roth,
Kuhn, nor Mr. Muller--lays stress on the saying of Urvasi, 'never let me
see you without your royal garments, _for this is the custom of women_.'
{71} To our mind, these words contain the gist of the myth. There must
have been, at some time, a custom which forbade women to see their
husbands without their garments, or the words have no meaning. If any
custom of this kind existed, a story might well be evolved to give a
sanction to the law. 'You must never see your husband naked: think what
happened to Urvasi--she vanished clean away!' This is the kind of
warning which might be given. If the customary prohibition had grown
obsolete, the punishment might well be assigned to a being of another, a
spiritual, race, in which old human ideas lingered, as the neolithic
dread of iron lingers in the Welsh fairies.
Our method will be, to prove the existence of singular rules of
etiquette, corresponding to the etiquette accidentally infringed by
Pururavas. We shall then investigate stories of the same character as
that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringement of the etiquette
is chastised. It will be seen that, in most cases, the bride is of a
peculiar and perhaps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of Urvasi will
be taken up again, will be shown to conform in character to the other
stories examined, and will be explained as a myth told to illustrate, or
sanction, a nuptial etiquette.
The lives of savages are bound by the most closely-woven fetters of
custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed,' a strict code regulates all
intercourse. Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters.
There will be nothing remarkable in the wide distribution of a myth
turning on nuptial etiquette, if this law of nuptial etiquette proves to
be also widely distributed. That it is widely distributed we now propose
to demonstrate by examples.
The custom of the African people of the kingdom of Futa is, or was, even
stricter than the Vedic _custom of women_--'wives never permit their
husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their marriage.' {72}
In his 'Travels to Timbuctoo' (i. 94), Caillie says that the bridegroom
'is not allowed to see his intended during the day.' He has a tabooed
hut apart, and 'if he is obliged to come out he covers his face.' He
'remains with his wife only till daybreak'--like Cupid--and flees, like
Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity
such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never
seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo.
{73a}
Among the Yorubas 'conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to her
husband, or even to see him, if it can be avoided.' {73b} Of the
Iroquois Lafitau says: 'Ils n'osent aller dans les cabanes particulieres
ou habitent leurs epouses que durant l'obscurite de la nuit.' {73c} The
Circassian women live on distant terms with their lords till they become
mothers. {73d} Similar examples of reserve are reported to be customary
among the Fijians.
In backward parts of Europe a strange custom forbids the bride to speak
to her lord, as if in memory of a time when husband and wife were always
of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, spoke different languages.
In the Bulgarian 'Volkslied,' the Sun marries Grozdanka, a mortal girl.
Her mother addresses her thus:--
Grozdanka, mother's treasure mine,
For nine long years I nourished thee,
For nine months see thou do not speak
To thy first love that marries thee.
M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, says that this custom of
prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in Bulgaria,
though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous. {74a} In
Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom was long the victim
of a somewhat similar taboo, and was only permitted to seek the company
of his wife secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described by
Lafitau.
Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old Ionian colonists
'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the Carians,
whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law for
themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they should never
sit at meat with their husbands, and _that none should ever call her
husband by his name_.' In precisely the same way, in Zululand the wife
may not mention her husband's name, just as in the Welsh fairy tale the
husband may not even know the name of his fairy bride, on pain of losing
her for ever. These ideas about names, and freakish ways of avoiding the
use of names, mark the childhood of languages, according to Mr. Max
Muller, {74b} and, therefore, the childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call
this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir
bride is not called by her own name in her husband's village, but is
spoken of as 'mother of so and so,' even before she has borne a child.
The universal superstition about names is at the bottom of this custom.
The Aleutian Islanders, according to Dall, are quite distressed when
obliged to speak to their wives in the presence of others. The Fijians
did not know where to look when missionaries hinted that a man might live
under the same roof as his wife. {75a} Among the Turkomans, for six
months, a year, or two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife
by stealth.
The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little
research. Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a
husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom'--sees the other's face or
body, or utters the forbidden name--might well have arisen as tales
illustrating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious
coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' class is
confessedly founded on the existence of the rule of nuptial etiquette.
{75b}
In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries the daughter of the
King of Naz--wherever that may be. In Naz a man is never allowed to see
the face of his wife till she has borne him a child--a modification of
the Futa rule. The inquisitive French husband unveils his wife, and,
like Psyche in Apuleius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek. When the
pair return to Naz, the king of that country discovers the offence of the
husband, and, by the aid of his magicians, transforms the Frenchman into
a monster. Here we have the old formula--the infringement of a 'taboo,'
and the magical punishment--adapted to the ideas of Breton peasantry. The
essential point of the story, for our purpose, is that the veiling of the
bride is 'the custom of women,' in the mysterious land of Naz. 'C'est
l'usage du pays: les maris ne voient leurs femmes sans voile que
lorsqu'elles sont devenues meres.' Now our theory of the myth of Urvasi
is simply this: 'the custom of women,' which Pururavas transgresses, is
probably a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette, l'usage du pays,
once prevalent among the people of India.
If our view be correct, then several rules of etiquette, and not one
alone, will be illustrated in the stories which we suppose the rules to
have suggested. In the case of Urvasi and Pururavas, the rule was, not
to see the husband naked. In 'Cupid and Psyche,' the husband was not to
be looked upon at all. In the well-known myth of Melusine, the bride is
not to be seen naked. Melusine tells her lover that she will only abide
with him dum ipsam nudam non viderit. {76a} The same taboo occurs in a
Dutch Marchen. {76b}
We have now to examine a singular form of the myth, in which the strange
bride is not a fairy, or spiritual being, but an animal. In this class
of story the husband is usually forbidden to perform some act which will
recall to the bride the associations of her old animal existence. The
converse of the tale is the well-known legend of the Forsaken Merman. The
king of the sea permits his human wife to go to church. The ancient
sacred associations are revived, and the woman returns no more.
She will not come though you call all day
Come away, come away.
Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her associations with her
former life among the beasts that are not to be revived, and when they
are reawakened by the commission of some act which she has forbidden, or
the neglect of some precaution which she has enjoined, she, like Urvasi,
disappears.
* * * * *
The best known example of this variant of the tale is the story of Bheki,
in Sanskrit. Mr. Max Muller has interpreted the myth in accordance with
his own method. {77} His difficulty is to account for the belief that a
king might marry a frog. Our ancestors, he remarks, 'were not idiots,'
how then could they tell such a story? We might reply that our
ancestors, if we go far enough back, were savages, and that such stories
are the staple of savage myth. Mr. Muller, however, holds that an
accidental corruption of language reduced Aryan fancy to the savage
level. He explains the corruption thus: 'We find, in Sanskrit, that
Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful girl, and that one day, when sitting
near a well, she was discovered by a king, who asked her to be his wife.
She consented, _on condition that he should never show her a drop of
water_. One day, being tired, she asked the king for water; the king
forgot his promise, brought water, and Bheki disappeared.' This myth,
Mr. Muller holds, 'began with a short saying, such as that "Bheki, the
sun, will die at the sight of water," as we should say that the sun will
set, when it approaches the water from which it rose in the morning.' But
how did the sun come to be called Bheki, 'the frog'? Mr. Muller supposes
that this name was given to the sun by some poet or fisherman. He gives
no evidence for the following statement: 'It can be shown that "frog" was
used as a name for the sun. Now at sunrise and sunset, when the sun was
squatting on the water, it was called the "frog."' At what historical
period the Sanskrit-speaking race was settled in seats where the sun rose
and set in water, we do not know, and 'chapter and verse' are needed for
the statement that 'frog' was actually a name of the sun. Mr. Muller's
argument, however, is that the sun was called 'the frog,' that people
forgot that the frog and sun were identical, and that Frog, or Bheki, was
mistaken for the name of a girl to whom was applied the old saw about
dying at sight of water. 'And so,' says Mr. Muller, 'the change from sun
to frog, and from frog to man, which was at first due to the mere spell
of language, would in our nursery tales be ascribed to miraculous charms
more familiar to a later age.' As a matter of fact, magical
metamorphoses are infinitely more familiar to the lowest savages than to
people in a 'later age.' Magic, as Castren observes, 'belongs to the
lowest known stages of civilisation.' Mr. Muller's theory, however, is
this--that a Sanskrit-speaking people, living where the sun rose out of
and set in some ocean, called the sun, as he touched the water, Bheki,
the frog, and said he would die at the sight of water. They ceased to
call the sun the frog, or Bheki, but kept the saying, 'Bheki will die at
sight of water.' Not knowing who or what Bheki might be, they took her
for a frog, who also was a pretty wench. Lastly, they made the story of
Bheki's distinguished wedding and mysterious disappearance. For this
interpretation, historical and linguistic evidence is not offered. When
did a Sanskrit-speaking race live beside a great sea? How do we know
that 'frog' was used as a name for 'sun'?
* * * * *
We have already given our explanation. To the savage intellect, man and
beast are on a level, and all savage myth makes men descended from
beasts; while stories of the loves of gods in bestial shape, or the
unions of men and animals, incessantly occur. 'Unnatural' as these
notions seem to us, no ideas are more familiar to savages, and none recur
more frequently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek mythology. An
extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent from a frog. The
wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a tale of
this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her associations with her old
amphibious life are revived in the manner she had expressly forbidden.
* * * * *
Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojibway parallel. A hunter
named Otter-heart, camping near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl
loitering round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 'lays his
blanket near the deerskin she had laid for herself. "Good," he muttered,
"this is my wife."' She refuses to eat the beavers he has shot, but at
night he hears a noise, 'krch, krch, as if beavers were gnawing wood.' He
sees, by the glimmer of the fire, his wife nibbling birch twigs. In
fact, the good little wife is a beaver, as the pretty Indian girl was a
frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and the snow melted and
the streams ran full. Then his wife implored the hunter to build her a
bridge over every stream and river, that she might cross dry-footed.
'For,' she said, 'if my feet touch water, this would at once cause thee
great sorrow.' The hunter did as she bade him, but left unbridged one
tiny runnel. The wife stumbled into the water, and, as soon as her foot
was wet, she immediately resumed her old shape as a beaver, her son
became a beaverling, and the brooklet, changing to a roaring river, bore
them to the lake. Once the hunter saw his wife again among her beast
kin. 'To thee I sacrificed all,' she said, 'and I only asked thee to
help me dry-footed over the waters. Thou didst cruelly neglect this. Now
I must remain for ever with my people.'
* * * * *
This tale was told to Kohl by 'an old insignificant squaw among the
Ojibways.' {80a} Here we have a precise parallel to the tale of Bheki,
the frog-bride, and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water is
made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically revived the bride's old
animal life with the beavers. Or was the Indian name for beaver
(temakse) once a name for the sun? {80b}
A curious variant of this widely distributed Marchen of the animal bride
is found in the mythical genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur, a chief
of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja Janameja prepared a
yajnya, or great malevolently magical incantation, to destroy all the
people of the serpent race. To prevent this annihilation, the
supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, and became the
husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a Brahman. But Pundarika
Nag, being a serpent by nature, could not divest himself, even in human
shape, of his forked tongue and venomed breath. And, just as Urvasi
could not abide with her mortal lover, after he transgressed the
prohibition to appear before her naked, so Pundarika Nag was compelled by
fate to leave his bride, if she asked him any questions about his
disagreeable peculiarities. She did, at last, ask questions, in
circumstances which made Pundarika believe that he was bound to answer
her. Now the curse came upon him, he plunged into a pool, like the
beaver, and vanished. His wife became the mother of the serpent Rajas of
Chutia Nagpur. Pundarika Nag, in his proper form as a great hooded
snake, guarded his first-born child. The crest of the house is a hooded
snake with human face. {81a}
Here, then, we have many examples of the disappearance of the bride or
bridegroom in consequence of infringement of various mystic rules.
Sometimes the beloved one is seen when he or she should not be seen.
Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride vanishes, merely because she is
in a bad temper. {81b} Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo on
water is broken, with the usual results. Now for an example in which the
rule against using _names_ is infringed. {82a}
This formula constantly occurs in the Welsh fairy tales published by
Professor Rhys. {82b} Thus the heir of Corwrion fell in love with a
fairy: 'They were married on the distinct understanding that the husband
was not to know her name, . . . and was not to strike her with iron, on
pain of her leaving him at once.' Unluckily the man once tossed her a
bridle, the iron bit touched the wife, and 'she at once flew through the
air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Lake.'
A number of tales turning on the same incident are published in
'Cymmrodor,' v. I. In these we have either the taboo on the name, or the
taboo on the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition iron
'drives away devils and ghosts,' according to the Scholiast on the
eleventh book of the 'Odyssey,' and the Oriental Djinn also flee from
iron. {82c} Just as water is fatal to the Aryan frog-bride and to the
Red Indian beaver-wife, restoring them to their old animal forms, so the
magic touch of iron breaks love between the Welshman and his fairy
mistress, the representative of the stone age.
In many tales of fairy-brides, they are won by a kind of force. The
lover in the familiar Welsh and German Marchen sees the swan-maidens
throw off their swan plumage and dance naked.. He steals the feather-
garb of one of them, and so compels her to his love. Finally, she leaves
him, in anger, or because he has broken some taboo. Far from being
peculiar to Aryan mythology, this legend occurs, as Mr. Farrer has shown,
{83a} in Algonquin and Bornoese tradition. The Red Indian story told by
Schoolcraft in his 'Algic Researches' is most like the Aryan version, but
has some native peculiarities. Wampee was a great hunter, who, on the
lonely prairie, once heard strains of music. Looking up he saw a speck
in the sky: the speck drew nearer and nearer, and proved to be a basket
containing twelve heavenly maidens. They reached the earth and began to
dance, inflaming the heart of Wampee with love. But Wampee could not
draw near the fairy girls in his proper form without alarming them. Like
Zeus in his love adventures, Wampee exercised the medicine-man's power of
metamorphosing himself. He assumed the form of a mouse, approached
unobserved, and caught one of the dancing maidens. After living with
Wampee for some time she wearied of earth, and, by virtue of a 'mystic
chain of verse,' she ascended again to her heavenly home.
Now is there any reason to believe that this incident was once part of
the myth of Pururavas and Urvasi? Was the fairy-love, Urvasi, originally
caught and held by Pururavas among her naked and struggling companions?
Though this does not appear to have been much noticed, it seems to follow
from a speech of Pururavas in the Vedic dialogue {83b} (x. 95, 8, 9). Mr.
Max Muller translates thus: 'When I, the mortal, threw my arms round
those flighty immortals, they trembled away from me like a trembling doe,
like horses that kick against the cart.' {84a} Ludwig's rendering suits
our view--that Pururavas is telling how he first caught Urvasi--still
better: 'When I, the mortal, held converse with the immortals who had
laid aside their raiment, like slippery serpents they glided from me,
like horses yoked to the car.' These words would well express the
adventure of a lover among the naked flying swan-maidens, an adventure
familiar to the Red Men as to Persian legends of the Peris.
To end our comparison of myths like the tale of 'Cupid and Psyche,' we
find an example among the Zulus. Here {84b} the mystic lover came in
when all was dark, and felt the damsel's face. After certain rites, 'in
the morning he went away, he speaking continually, the girl not seeing
him. During all those days he would not allow the girl (sic), when she
said she would light a fire. Finally, after a magical ceremony, he said,
"Light the fire!" and stood before her revealed, a shining shape.' This
has a curious resemblance to the myth of Cupid and Psyche; but a more
curious detail remains. In the Zulu story of Ukcombekcansini, the
friends of a bride break a taboo and kill a tabooed animal. Instantly,
like Urvasi and her companions in the Yajur Veda, the bride and her
maidens disappear _and are turned into birds_! {84c} They are afterwards
surprised in human shape, and the bride is restored to her lover.
Here we conclude, having traced parallels to Cupid and Psyche in many non-
Aryan lands. Our theory of the myth does not rest on etymology. We have
seen that the most renowned scholars, Max Muller, Kuhn, Roth, all analyse
the names Urvasi and Pururavas in different ways, and extract different
interpretations. We have found the story where these names were probably
never heard of. We interpret it as a tale of the intercourse between
mortal men and immortal maids, or between men and metamorphosed animals,
as in India and North America. We explain the separation of the lovers
as the result of breaking a taboo, or law of etiquette, binding among men
and women, as well as between men and fairies.
* * * * *
The taboos are, to see the beloved unveiled, to utter his or her name, to
touch her with a metal 'terrible to ghosts and spirits,' or to do some
action which will revive the associations of a former life. We have
shown that rules of nuptial etiquette resembling these in character do
exist, and have existed, even among Greeks--as where the Milesian, like
the Zulu, women made a law not to utter their husbands' names. Finally,
we think it a reasonable hypothesis that tales on the pattern of 'Cupid
and Psyche' might have been evolved wherever a curious nuptial taboo
required to be sanctioned, or explained, by a myth. On this hypothesis,
the stories may have been separately invented in different lands; but
there is also a chance that they have been transmitted from people to
people in the unknown past of our scattered and wandering race. This
theory seems at least as probable as the hypothesis that the meaning of
an Aryan proverbial statement about sun and dawn was forgotten, and was
altered unconsciously into a tale which is found among various non-Aryan
tribes. That hypothesis again, learned and ingenious as it is, has the
misfortune to be opposed by other scholarly hypotheses not less ingenious
and learned.
* * * * *
As for the sun-frog, we may hope that he has sunk for ever beneath the
western wave.
A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE.
A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read 'from Tobolsk to
Tangiers.' This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in the
world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike Ouida,
will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to examine is,
perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there is no ready way
of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any true 'nature-myth,'
any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of
natural phenomena, may conceivably have been invented separately,
wherever men in an early state of thought observed the same facts, and
attempted to explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen that the
earlier part of the Myth of Cronus is a nature-myth, setting forth the
cause of the separation of Heaven and Earth. Star-myths again, are
everywhere similar, because men who believed all nature to be animated
and personal, accounted for the grouping of constellations in accordance
with these crude beliefs. {87} Once more, if a story like that of 'Cupid
and Psyche' be found among the most diverse races, the distribution
becomes intelligible if the myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a
widely prevalent custom. But in the following story no such explanation
is even provisionally acceptable.
The gist of the tale (which has many different 'openings,' and
conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is
brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or a
malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various severe
trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. In each trial he is
assisted by the daughter of his host. After achieving the adventures, he
elopes with the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway pair
throw various common objects behind them, which are changed into magical
obstacles and check the pursuit of the father. The myth has various
endings, usually happy, in various places. Another form of the narrative
is known, in which the visitors to the home of the hostile being are, not
wooers of his daughter, but brothers of his wife. {88} The incidents of
the flight, in this variant, are still of the same character. Finally,
when the flight is that of a brother from his sister's malevolent ghost,
in Hades (Japan), or of two sisters from a cannibal mother or step-mother
(Zulu and Samoyed), the events of the flight and the magical aids to
escape remain little altered. We shall afterwards see that attempts have
been made to interpret one of these narratives as a nature-myth; but the
attempts seem unsuccessful. We are therefore at a loss to account for
the wide diffusion of this tale, unless it has been transmitted slowly
from people to people, in the immense unknown prehistoric past of the
human race.
* * * * *
Before comparing the various forms of the myth in its first shape--that
which tells of the mortal lover and the giant's or wizard's daughter--let
us give the Scottish version of the story. This version was written down
for me, many years ago, by an aged lady in Morayshire. I published it in
the 'Revue Celtique'; but it is probably new to story-comparers, in its
broad Scotch variant.
NICHT NOUGHT NOTHING.
There once lived a king and a queen. They were long married and had
no bairns; but at last the queen had a bairn, when the king was away
in far countries. The queen would not christen the bairn till the
king came back, and she said, 'We will just call him Nicht Nought
Nothing until his father comes home.' But it was long before he came
home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king
was on his way back; but he had a big river to cross, and there was a
spate, and he could not get over the water. But a giant came up to
him, and said, 'If you will give me Nicht Nought Nothing, I will carry
you over the water on my back.' The king had never heard that his son
was called Nicht Nought Nothing, and so he promised him. When the
king got home again, he was very happy to see his wife again, and his
young son. She told him that she had not given the child any name but
Nicht Nought Nothing, until he should come home again himself. The
poor king was in a terrible case. He said, 'What have I done? I
promised to give the giant who carried me over the river on his back,
Nicht Nought Nothing.' The king and the queen were sad and sorry, but
they said, 'When the giant comes we will give him the hen-wife's
bairn; he will never know the difference.' The next day the giant
came to claim the king's promise, and he sent for the hen-wife's
bairn; and the giant went away with the bairn on his back. He
travelled till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down to rest.
He said,
'Hidge, Hodge, on my back, what time of day is it?' The poor little
bairn said, 'It is the time that my mother, the hen-wife, takes up the
eggs for the queen's breakfast.'
The giant was very angry, and dashed the bairn on the stone and killed
it.
. . . . .
The same adventure is repeated with the gardener's son.
. . . . .
Then the giant went back to the king's house, and said he would
destroy them all if they did not give him Nicht Nought Nothing this
time. They had to do it; and when he came to the big stone, the giant
said, 'What time of day is it?' Nicht Nought Nothing said, 'It is the
time that my father the king will be sitting down to supper.' The
giant said, 'I've got the richt ane noo;' and took Nicht Nought
Nothing to his own house and brought him up till he was a man.
The giant had a bonny dochter, and she and the lad grew very fond of
each other. The giant said one day to Nicht Nought Nothing, 'I've
work for you to-morrow. There is a stable seven miles long and seven
miles broad, and it has not been cleaned for seven years, and you must
clean it to-morrow, or I will have you for my supper.'
The giant's dochter went out next morning with the lad's breakfast,
and found him in a terrible state, for aye as he cleaned out a bit, it
aye fell in again. The giant's dochter said she would help him, and
she cried a' the beasts of the field, and a' the fowls o' the air, and
in a minute they a' came, and carried awa' everything that was in the
stable and made a' clean before the giant came home. He said, 'Shame
for the wit that helped you; but I have a worse job for you
to-morrow.' Then he told Nicht Nought Nothing that there was a loch
seven miles long, and seven miles deep, and seven miles broad, and he
must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper.
Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the
water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he
did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish
in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it
dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said,
'I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree seven miles high,
and no branch on it, till you get to the top, and there is a nest, and
you must bring down the eggs without breaking one, or else I will have
you for my supper.' At first the giant's dochter did not know how to
help Nicht Nought Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers and then
her toes, and made steps of them, and he clomb the tree, and got all
the eggs safe till he came to the bottom, and then one was broken. The
giant's dochter advised him to run away, and she would follow him. So
he travelled till he came to a king's palace, and the king and queen
took him in and were very kind to him. The giant's dochter left her
father's house, and he pursued her and was drowned. Then she came to
the king's palace where Nicht Nought Nothing was. And she went up
into a tree to watch for him. The gardener's dochter, going to draw
water in the well, saw the shadow of the lady in the water, and
thought it was herself, and said, 'If I'm so bonny, if I'm so brave,
do you send me to draw water?' The gardener's wife went out, and she
said the same thing. Then the gardener went himself, and brought the
lady from the tree, and led her in. And he told her that a stranger
was to marry the king's dochter, and showed her the man: and it was
Nicht Nought Nothing asleep in a chair. And she saw him, and cried to
him, 'Waken, waken, and speak to me!' But he would not waken, and
syne she cried,
'I cleaned the stable, I laved the loch, and I clamb the tree,
And all for the love of thee,
And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.'
The king and the queen heard this, and came to the bonny young lady,
and she said,
'I canna get Nicht Nought Nothing to speak to me for all that I can
do.'
Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of Nicht Nought
Nothing, and asked where he was, and she said, 'He that sits there in
the chair.' Then they ran to him and kissed him and called him their
own dear son, and he wakened, and told them all that the giant's
dochter had done for him, and of all her kindness. Then they took her
in their arms and kissed her, and said she should now be their
dochter, for their son should marry her.
And they lived happy all their days.
In this variant of the story, which we may use as our text, it is to be
noticed that a lacuna exists. The narrative of the flight omits to
mention that the runaways threw things behind them which became obstacles
in the giant's way. One of these objects probably turned into a lake, in
which the giant was drowned. {92} A common incident is the throwing
behind of a comb, which changes into a thicket. The formula of leaving
obstacles behind occurs in the Indian collection, the 'Kathasarit sagara'
(vii. xxxix.). The 'Battle of the Birds,' in Campbell's 'Tales of the
West Highlands,' is a very copious Gaelic variant. Russian parallels are
'Vasilissa the Wise and the Water King,' and 'The King Bear.' {93a} The
incident of the flight and the magical obstacles is found in Japanese
mythology. {93b} The 'ugly woman of Hades' is sent to pursue the hero.
He casts down his black head-dress, and it is instantly turned into
grapes; he fled while she was eating them. Again, 'he cast down his
multitudinous and close-toothed comb, and it instantly turned into bamboo
sprouts.' In the Gaelic version, the pursuer is detained by talkative
objects which the pursued leave at home, and this marvel recurs in
Zululand, and is found among the Bushmen. The Zulu versions are
numerous. {93c} Oddly enough, in the last variant, the girl performs no
magic feat, but merely throws sesamum on the ground to delay the
cannibals, for cannibals are very fond of sesamum. {93d}
* * * * *
Here, then, we have the remarkable details of the flight, in Zulu,
Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, {93e} Russian, Italian, Japanese. Of all
incidents in the myth, the incidents of the flight are most widely known.
But the whole connected series of events--the coming of the wooer; the
love of the hostile being's daughter; the tasks imposed on the wooer; the
aid rendered by the daughter; the flight of the pair; the defeat or
destruction of the hostile being--all these, or most of these, are
extant, in due sequence, among the following races. The Greeks have the
tale, the people of Madagascar have it, the Lowland Scotch, the Celts,
the Russians, the Italians, the Algonquins, the Finns, and the Samoans
have it. Now if the story were confined to the Aryan race, we might
account for its diffusion, by supposing it to be the common heritage of
the Indo-European peoples, carried everywhere with them in their
wanderings. But when the tale is found in Madagascar, North America,
Samoa, and among the Finns, while many scattered incidents occur in even
more widely severed races, such as Zulus, Bushmen, Japanese, Eskimo,
Samoyeds, the Aryan hypothesis becomes inadequate.
To show how closely, all things considered, the Aryan and non-Aryan
possessors of the tale agree, let us first examine the myth of Jason.
* * * * *
The earliest literary reference to the myth of Jason is in the 'Iliad'
(vii. 467, xxiii. 747). Here we read of Euneos, a son whom Hypsipyle
bore to Jason in Lemnos. Already, even in the 'Iliad,' the legend of
Argo's voyage has been fitted into certain well-known geographical
localities. A reference in the 'Odyssey' (xii. 72) has a more antique
ring: we are told that of all barques Argo alone escaped the jaws of the
Rocks Wandering, which clashed together and destroyed ships. Argo
escaped, it is said, 'because Jason was dear to Hera.' It is plain, from
various fragmentary notices, that Hesiod was familiar with several of the
adventures in the legend of Jason. In the 'Theogony' (993-998) Hesiod
mentions the essential facts of the legend: how Jason carried off from
AEetes his daughter, 'after achieving the adventures, many and grievous,'
which were laid upon him. At what period the home of AEetes was placed
in Colchis, it is not easy to determine. Mimnermus, a contemporary of
Solon, makes the home of AEetes lie 'on the brink of ocean,' a very vague
description. {95} Pindar, on the other hand, in the splendid Fourth
Pythian Ode, already knows Colchis as the scene of the loves and flight
of Jason and Medea.
* * * *
'Long were it for me to go by the beaten track,' says Pindar, 'and I know
a certain short path.' Like Pindar, we may abridge the tale of Jason. He
seeks the golden fleece in Colchis: AEetes offers it to him as a prize
for success in certain labours. By the aid of Medea, the daughter of
AEetes, the wizard-king, Jason tames the fire-breathing oxen, yokes them
to the plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea's help he conquers the
children of the teeth of the dragon, subdues the snake that guards the
fleece of gold, and escapes, but is pursued by AEetes. To detain AEetes,
Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own brother, Apsyrtos, and
the Colchians pursue no further than the scene of this bloody deed. The
savagery of this act survives even in the work of a poet so late as
Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 477), where we read how Jason performed a rite of
savage magic, mutilating the body of Apsyrtos in a manner which was
believed to appease the avenging ghost of the slain. 'Thrice he tasted
the blood, thrice spat it out between his teeth,' a passage which the
Scholiast says contains the description of an archaic custom popular
among murderers.
Beyond Tomi, where a popular etymology fixed the 'cutting up' of
Apsyrtos, we need not follow the fortunes of Jason and Medea. We have
already seen the wooer come to the hostile being, win his daughter's
love, achieve the adventures by her aid, and flee in her company,
delaying, by a horrible device, the advance of the pursuers. To these
incidents in the tale we confine our attention.
Many explanations of the Jason myth have been given by Scholars who
thought they recognised elemental phenomena in the characters. As usual
these explanations differ widely. Whenever a myth has to be interpreted,
it is certain that one set of Scholars will discover the sun and the
dawn, where another set will see the thunder-cloud and lightning. The
moon is thrown in at pleasure. Sir G. W. Cox determines {96} 'that the
name Jason (Iason) must be classed with the many others, Iasion, Iamus,
Iolaus, Iaso, belonging to the same root.' Well, what is the root?
Apparently the root is 'the root i, as denoting a crying colour, that is,
a loud colour' (ii. 81). Seemingly (i. 229) violet is a loud colour,
and, wherever you have the root i, you have 'the violet-tinted morning
from which the sun is born.' Medea is 'the daughter of the sun,' and
most likely, in her 'beneficent aspect,' is the dawn. But (ii. 81, note)
ios has another meaning, 'which, as a spear, represents the far-darting
ray of the sun'; so that, in one way or another, Jason is connected with
the violet-tinted morning or with the sun's rays. This is the gist of
the theory of Sir George Cox.
Preller {97a} is another Scholar, with another set of etymologies. Jason
is derived, he thinks, from [Greek], to heal, because Jason studied
medicine under the Centaur Chiron. This is the view of the Scholiast on
Apollonius Rhodius (i. 554). Jason, to Preller's mind, is a form of
Asclepius, 'a spirit of the spring with its soft suns and fertile rains.'
Medea is the moon. Medea, on the other hand, is a lightning goddess, in
the opinion of Schwartz. {97b} No philological reason is offered.
Meanwhile, in Sir George Cox's system, the equivalent of Medea, 'in her
beneficent aspect,' is the dawn.
We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft spring rains and the
moon, or the dawn and the sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud, in
one arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to early Aryan minds,
the picture of a wooer, arriving in a hostile home, winning a maiden's
love, achieving adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from her angry
father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. Why the spring, the
moon, the lightning, the dawn--any of them or all of them--should have
suggested such a tale, let Scholars determine when they have reconciled
their own differences. It is more to our purpose to follow the myth
among Samoans, Algonquins, and Finns. None of these races speak an Aryan
language, and none can have been beguiled into telling the same sort of
tale by a disease of Aryan speech.
Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic
islands in Central Polynesia. They are about 3,000 miles from Sidney,
were first observed by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as most
spots from direct Aryan influences. Our position is, however, that in
the shiftings and migrations of peoples, the Jason tale has somehow been
swept, like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of Samoa. In the
islands, the tale has an epical form, and is chanted in a poem of twenty-
six stanzas. There is something Greek in the free and happy life of the
Samoans--something Greek, too, in this myth of theirs. There was once a
youth, Siati, famous for his singing, a young Thamyris of Samoa. But as,
according to Homer, 'the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian, and made an end
of his singing, for he boasted and said that he would vanquish even the
Muses if he sang against them,' so did the Samoan god of song envy Siati.
The god and the mortal sang a match: the daughter of the god was to be
the mortal's prize if he proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off,
riding on a shark, as Arion rode the dolphin, to seek the home of the
defeated deity. At length he reached the shores divine, and thither
strayed Puapae, daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she had
lost. 'Siati,' said she, 'how camest thou hither?' 'I am come to seek
the song-god, and to wed his daughter.' 'My father,' said the maiden,
'is more a god than a man; eat nothing he hands you, never sit on a high
seat, lest death follow.' So they were united in marriage. But the god,
like AEetes, was wroth, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks:
'Build me a house, and let it be finished this very day, else death and
the oven await thee.' {99a}
Siati wept, but the god's daughter had the house built by the evening.
The other adventures were to fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring lost
at sea. Just as the Scotch giant's daughter cut off her fingers to help
her lover, so the Samoan god's daughter bade Siati cut her body into
pieces and cast her into the sea. There she became a fish, and recovered
the ring. They set off to the god's house, but met him pursuing them,
with the help of his other daughter. 'Puapae and Siati threw down the
comb, and it became a bush of thorns in the way to intercept the god and
Puanli,' the other daughter. Next they threw down a bottle of earth
which became a mountain; 'and then followed their bottle of water, and
that became a sea, and drowned the god and Puanli.' {99b}
This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to the
various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape in the
Jason saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is the Malagasy
version of the narrative. In the Malagasy story, the conclusion is
almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale. The girl
hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is mistaken by women
for their own faces, and the recognition follows in due course. {99c}
Like most Red Indian versions of popular tales, the Algonquin form of the
Jason saga is strongly marked with the peculiarities of the race. The
story is recognisable, and that is all.
The opening, as usual, differs from other openings. Two children are
deserted in the wilderness, and grow up to manhood. One of them loses an
arrow in the water; the elder brother, Panigwun, wades after it. A
magical canoe flies past: an old magician, who is alone in the canoe,
seizes Panigwun and carries him off. The canoe fleets along, like the
barques of the Phaeacians, at the will of the magician, and reaches the
isle where, like the Samoan god of song, he dwells with his two
daughters. 'Here, my daughter,' said he, 'is a young man for your
husband.' But the daughter knew that the proposed husband was but
another victim of the old man's magic arts. By the daughter's advice,
Panigwun escaped in the magic barque, consoled his brother, and returned
to the island. Next day the magician, Mishosha, set the young man to
hard tasks and perilous adventures. He was to gather gulls' eggs; but
the gulls attacked him in dense crowds. By an incantation he subdued the
birds, and made them carry him home to the island. Next day he was sent
to gather pebbles, that he might be attacked and eaten by the king of the
fishes. Once more the young man, like the Finnish Ilmarinen in Pohjola,
subdued the mighty fish, and went back triumphant. The third adventure,
as in 'Nicht Nought Nothing,' was to climb a tree of extraordinary height
in search of a bird's nest. Here, again, the youth succeeded, and
finally conspired with the daughters to slay the old magician. Lastly
the boy turned the magician into a sycamore tree, and won his daughter.
The other daughter was given to the brother who had no share in the
perils. {101} Here we miss the incident of the flight; and the
magician's daughter, though in love with the hero, does not aid him to
perform the feats. Perhaps an Algonquin brave would scorn the assistance
of a girl. In the 'Kalevala,' the old hero, Wainamoinen, and his friend
Ilmarinen, set off to the mysterious and hostile land of Pohjola to win a
bride. The maiden of Pohjola loses her heart to Ilmarinen, and, by her
aid, he bridles the wolf and bear, ploughs a field of adders with a
plough of gold, and conquers the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of
Finnish mythology. After this point the story is interrupted by a long
sequel of popular bridal songs, and, in the wandering course of the
rather aimless epic, the flight and its incidents have been forgotten, or
are neglected. These incidents recur, however, in the thread of somewhat
different plots. We have seen that they are found in Japan, among the
Eskimo, among the Bushmen, the Samoyeds, and the Zulus, as well as in
Hungarian, Magyar, Celtic, and other European household tales.
The conclusion appears to be that the central part of the Jason myth is
incapable of being explained, either as a nature-myth, or as a myth
founded on a disease of language. So many languages could not take the
same malady in the same way; nor can we imagine any series of natural
phenomena that would inevitably suggest this tale to so many diverse
races.
We must suppose, therefore, either that all wits jumped and invented the
same romantic series of situations by accident, or that all men spread
from one centre, where the story was known, or that the story, once
invented, has drifted all round the world. If the last theory be
approved of, the tale will be like the Indian Ocean shell found lately in
the Polish bone-cave, {102a} or like the Egyptian beads discovered in the
soil of Dahomey. The story will have been carried hither and thither, in
the remotest times, to the remotest shores, by traders, by slaves, by
captives in war, or by women torn from their own tribe and forcibly
settled as wives among alien peoples.
Stories of this kind are everywhere the natural property of mothers and
grandmothers. When we remember how widely diffused is the law of
exogamy, which forbids marriage between a man and woman of the same
stock, we are impressed by the number of alien elements which must have
been introduced with alien wives. Where husband and wife, as often
happened, spoke different languages, the woman would inevitably bring the
hearthside tales of her childhood among a people of strange speech. By
all these agencies, working through dateless time, we may account for the
diffusion, if we cannot explain the origin, of tales like the central
arrangement of incidents in the career of Jason. {102b}
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE.
Why is Apollo, especially the Apollo of the Troad, he who showered the
darts of pestilence among the Greeks, so constantly associated with a
mouse? The very name, Smintheus, by which his favourite priest calls on
him in the 'Iliad' (i. 39), might be rendered 'Mouse Apollo,' or 'Apollo,
Lord of Mice.' As we shall see later, mice lived beneath the altar, and
were fed in the holy of holies of the god, and an image of a mouse was
placed beside or upon his sacred tripod. The ancients were puzzled by
these things, and, as will be shown, accounted for them by
'mouse-stories,' [Greek], so styled by Eustathius, the mediaeval
interpreter of Homer. Following our usual method, let us ask whether
similar phenomena occur elsewhere, in countries where they are
intelligible. Did insignificant animals elsewhere receive worship: were
their effigies elsewhere placed in the temples of a purer creed? We find
answers in the history of Peruvian religion.
After the Spanish conquest of Peru, one of the European adventurers, Don
Garcilasso de la Vega, married an Inca princess. Their son, also named
Garcilasso, was born about 1540. His famous book, 'Commentarias Reales,'
contains the most authentic account of the old Peruvian beliefs.
Garcilasso was learned in all the learning of the Europeans, and, as an
Inca on the mother's side, had claims on the loyalty of the defeated
race. He set himself diligently to collect both their priestly and
popular traditions, and his account of them is the more trustworthy as it
coincides with what we know to have been true in lands with which
Garcilasso had little acquaintance.
* * * * *
To Garcilasso's mind, Peruvian religion seems to be divided into two
periods--the age before, and the age which followed the accession of the
Incas, and their establishment of sun-worship as the creed of the State.
In the earlier period, the pre-Inca period, he tells us 'an Indian was
not accounted honourable unless he was descended from a fountain, river,
or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild animal, such as a bear,
lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other
bird of prey.' {104a} To these worshipful creatures 'men offered what
they usually saw them eat' (i. 53). But men were not content to adore
large and dangerous animals. 'There was not an animal, how vile and
filthy soever, that they did not worship as a god,' including 'lizards,
toads, and frogs.' In the midst of these superstitions the Incas
appeared. Just as the tribes claimed descent from animals, great or
small, so the Incas drew _their_ pedigree from the sun, which they adored
like the gens of the Aurelii in Rome. {104b} Thus every Indian had his
pacarissa, or, as the North American Indians say, totem, {105a} a natural
object from which he claimed descent, and which, in a certain degree, he
worshipped. Though sun-worship became the established religion, worship
of the animal pacarissas was still tolerated. The sun-temples also
contained huacas, or images, of the beasts which the Indians had
venerated. {105b} In the great temple of Pachacamac, the most spiritual
and abstract god of Peruvian faith, 'they worshipped a she-fox and an
emerald. The devil also appeared to them, and spoke in the form of a
tiger, very fierce.' {105c} This toleration of an older and cruder, in
subordination to a purer, faith is a very common feature in religious
evolution. In Catholic countries, to this day, we may watch, in Holy
Week, the Adonis feast described by Theocritus, {105d} and the procession
and entombment of the old god of spring.
'The Incas had the good policy to collect all the tribal animal gods into
their temples in and round Cuzco, in which the two leading gods were the
Master of Life, and the Sun.' Did a process of this sort ever occur in
Greek religion, and were older animal gods ever collected into the
temples of such deities as Apollo?
* * * * *
While a great deal of scattered evidence about many animals consecrated
to Greek gods points in this direction, it will be enough, for the
present, to examine the case of the Sacred Mice. Among races which are
still in the totemistic stage, which still claim descent from animals and
from other objects, a peculiar marriage law generally exists, or can be
shown to have existed. No man may marry a woman who is descended from
the same ancestral animal, and who bears the same totem-name, and carries
the same badge or family crest, as himself. A man descended from the
Crane, and whose family name is Crane, cannot marry a woman whose family
name is Crane. He must marry a woman of the Wolf, or Turtle, or Swan, or
other name, and her children keep her family title, not his. Thus, if a
Crane man marries a Swan woman, the children are Swans, and none of them
may marry a Swan; they must marry Turtles, Wolves, or what not, and
_their_ children, again, are Turtles, or Wolves. Thus there is
necessarily an eternal come and go of all the animal names known in a
district. As civilisation advances these rules grow obsolete. People
take their names from the father, as among ourselves. Finally the
dwellers in a given district, having become united into a local tribe,
are apt to drop the various animal titles and to adopt, as the name of
the whole tribe, the name of the chief, or of the predominating family.
Let us imagine a district of some twenty miles in which there are Crane,
Wolf, Turtle, and Swan families. Long residence together, and common
interests, have welded them into a local tribe. The chief is of the Wolf
family, and the tribe, sinking family differences and family names, calls
itself 'the Wolves.' Such tribes were probably, in the beginning, the
inhabitants of the various Egyptian towns which severally worshipped the
wolf, or the sheep, or the crocodile, and abstained religiously (except
on certain sacrificial occasions) from the flesh of the animal that gave
them its name. {107}
* * * * *
It has taken us long to reach the Sacred Mice of Greek religion, but we
are now in a position to approach their august divinity. We have seen
that the sun-worship superseded, without abolishing, the tribal
pacarissas in Peru, and that the huacas, or images, of the sacred animals
were admitted under the roof of the temple of the Sun. Now it is
recognised that the temples of the Sminthian Apollo contained images of
sacred mice among other animals, and our argument is that here, perhaps,
we have another example of the Peruvian religious evolution. Just as, in
Peru, the tribes adored 'vile and filthy' animals, just as the solar
worship of the Incas subordinated these, just as the huacas of the beasts
remained in the temples of the Peruvian Sun; so, we believe, the tribes
along the Mediterranean coasts had, at some very remote prehistoric
period, their animal pacarissas; these were subordinated to the religion
(to some extent solar) of Apollo; and the huacas, or animal idols,
survived in Apollo's temples.
* * * * *
If this theory be correct, we shall probably find the mouse, for example,
revered as a sacred animal in many places. This would necessarily
follow, if the marriage customs which we have described ever prevailed on
Greek soil, and scattered the mouse-name far and wide. {108a} Traces of
the Mouse families, and of adoration, if adoration there was of the
mouse, would linger on in the following shapes:--(1) Places would be
named from mice, and mice would be actually held sacred in themselves.
(2) The mouse-name would be given locally to the god who superseded the
mouse. (3) The figure of the mouse would be associated with the god, and
used as a badge, or a kind of crest, or local mark, in places where the
mouse has been a venerated animal. (4) Finally, myths would be told to
account for the sacredness of a creature so undignified.
Let us take these considerations in their order:--
(1) If there were local mice tribes, deriving their name from the
worshipful mouse, certain towns settled by these tribes would retain a
reverence for mice.
In Chrysa, a town of the Troad, according to Heraclides Ponticus, mice
were held sacred, the local name for mouse being [Greek]. Many places
bore this mouse-name, according to Strabo. {108b} This is precisely what
would have occurred had the Mouse totem, and the Mouse stock, been widely
distributed. {108c} The Scholiast {109a} mentions Sminthus as a place in
the Troad. Strabo speaks of two places deriving their name from
Sminthus, or mouse, near the Sminthian temple, and others near Larissa.
In Rhodes and Lindus, the mouse place-name recurs, 'and in many other
districts' ([Greek]). Strabo (x. 486) names Caressus, and Poeessa, in
Ceos, among the other places which had Sminthian temples, and,
presumably, were once centres of tribes named after the mouse.
Here, then, are a number of localities in which the Mouse Apollo was
adored, and where the old mouse-name lingered. That the mice were
actually held sacred in their proper persons we learn from AElian. 'The
dwellers in Hamaxitus of the Troad worship mice,' says AElian. 'In the
temple of Apollo Smintheus, mice are nourished, and food is offered to
them, at the public expense, and white mice dwell beneath the altar.'
{109b} In the same way we found that the Peruvians fed their sacred
beasts on what they usually saw them eat.
(2) The second point in our argument has already been sufficiently
demonstrated. The mouse-name 'Smintheus' was given to Apollo in all the
places mentioned by Strabo, 'and many others.'
(3) The figure of the mouse will be associated with the god, and used as
a badge, or crest, or local mark, in places where the mouse has been a
venerated animal.
The passage already quoted from AElian informs us that there stood 'an
effigy of the mouse beside the tripod of Apollo.' In Chrysa, according
to Strabo (xiii. 604), the statue of Apollo Smintheus had a mouse beneath
his foot. The mouse on the tripod of Apollo is represented on a
bas-relief illustrating the plague, and the offerings of the Greeks to
Apollo Smintheus, as described in the first book of the 'Iliad.' {110a}
* * * * *
The mouse is a not uncommon local badge or crest in Greece. The animals
whose figures are stamped on coins, like the Athenian owl, are the most
ancient marks of cities. It is a plausible conjecture that, just as the
Iroquois when they signed treaties with the Europeans used their
totems--bear, wolf, and turtle--as seals, {110b} so the animals on
archaic Greek city coins represented crests or badges which, at some far
more remote period, had been totems.
The Argives, according to Pollux, {110c} stamped the mouse on their
coins. {110d} As there was a temple of Apollo Smintheus in Tenedos, we
naturally hear of a mouse on the coins of the island. {111a} Golzio has
published one of these mouse coins. The people of Metapontum stamped
their money with a mouse gnawing an ear of corn. The people of Cumae
employed a mouse dormant. Paoli fancied that certain mice on Roman
medals might be connected with the family of Mus, but this is rather
guesswork. {111b}
We have now shown traces, at least, of various ways in which an early
tribal religion of the mouse--the mouse pacarissa, as the Peruvians
said--may have been perpetuated. When we consider that the superseding
of the mouse by Apollo must have occurred, if it did occur, long before
Homer, we may rather wonder that the mouse left his mark on Greek
religion so long. We have seen mice revered, a god with a mouse-name,
the mouse-name recurring in many places, the huaca, or idol, of the mouse
preserved in the temples of the god, and the mouse-badge used in several
widely severed localities. It remains (4) to examine the myths about
mice. These, in our opinion, were probably told to account for the
presence of the huaca of the mouse in temples, and for the occurrence of
the animal in religion, and his connection with Apollo.
A singular mouse-myth, narrated by Herodotus, is worth examining for
reasons which will appear later, though the events are said to have
happened on Egyptian soil. {111c} According to Herodotus, one Sethos, a
priest of Hephaestus (Ptah), was king of Egypt. He had disgraced the
military class, and he found himself without an army when Sennacherib
invaded his country. Sethos fell asleep in the temple, and the god,
appearing to him in a vision, told him that divine succour would come to
the Egyptians. {112a} In the night before the battle, field-mice gnawed
the quivers and shield-handles of the foe, who fled on finding themselves
thus disarmed. 'And now,' says Herodotus, 'there standeth a stone image
of this king in the temple of Hephaestus, and in the hand of the image a
mouse, and there is this inscription, "Let whoso looketh on me be
pious."'
Prof. Sayce {112b} holds that there was no such person as Sethos, but
that the legend 'is evidently Egyptian, not Greek, and the name of
Sennacherib, as well as the fact of the Assyrian attack, is correct.' The
legend also, though Egyptian, is 'an echo of the biblical account of the
destruction of the Assyrian army,' an account which omits the mice. 'As
to the mice, here,' says Prof. Sayce, 'we have to do again with the Greek
dragomen (sic). The story of Sethos was attached to the statue of some
deity which was supposed to hold a mouse in its hand.' It must have been
easy to verify this supposition; but Mr. Sayce adds, 'mice were not
sacred in Egypt, nor were they used as symbols, or found on the
monuments.' To this remark we may suggest some exceptions. Apparently
this one mouse _was_ found on the monuments. Wilkinson (iii. 264) says
mice do occur in the sculptures, but they were not sacred. Rats,
however, were certainly sacred, and as little distinction is taken, in
myth, between rats and mice as between rabbits and hares. The rat was
sacred to Ra, the Sun-god, and (like all totems) was not to be eaten.
{113a} This association of the rat and the Sun cannot but remind us of
Apollo and his mouse. According to Strabo, a certain city of Egypt did
worship the shrew-mouse. The Athribitae, or dwellers in Crocodilopolis,
are the people to whom he attributes this cult, which he mentions (xvii.
813) among the other local animal-worships of Egypt. {113b} Several
porcelain examples of the field-mouse sacred to Horus (commonly called
Apollo by the Greeks) may be seen in the British Museum.
That rats and field-mice were sacred in Egypt, then, we may believe on
the evidence of the Ritual, of Strabo, and of many relics of Egyptian
art. Herodotus, moreover, is credited when he says that the statue 'had
a mouse on its hand.' Elsewhere, it is certain that the story of mice
gnawing the bowstrings occurs frequently as an explanation of
mouse-worship. One of the Trojan 'mouse-stories' ran--That emigrants had
set out in prehistoric times from Crete. The oracle advised them to
settle 'wherever they were attacked by the children of the soil.' At
Hamaxitus in the Troad, they were assailed in the night by mice, which
ate all that was edible of their armour and bowstrings. The colonists
made up their mind that these mice were 'the children of the soil,'
settled there, and adored the mouse Apollo. {114a} A myth of this sort
may either be a story invented to explain the mouse-name; or a Mouse
tribe, like the Red Indian Wolves, or Crows, may actually have been
settled on the spot, and may even have resisted invasion. {114b} Another
myth of the Troad accounted for the worship of the mouse Apollo on the
hypothesis that he had once freed the land from mice, like the Pied Piper
of Hamelin, whose pipe (still serviceable) is said to have been found in
his grave by men who were digging a mine. {114c}
Stories like these, stories attributing some great deliverance to the
mouse, or some deliverance from mice to the god, would naturally spring
up among people puzzled by their own worship of the mouse-god or of the
mouse. We have explained the religious character of mice as the relics
of a past age in which the mouse had been a totem and mouse family names
had been widely diffused. That there are, and have been, mice totems and
mouse family names among Semitic stocks round the Mediterranean is proved
by Prof. Robertson Smith: {115a} 'Achbor, the mouse, is an Edomite name,
apparently a stock name, as the jerboa and another mouse-name are among
the Arabs. The same name occurs in Judah.' Where totemism exists, the
members of each stock either do not eat the ancestral animal at all, or
only eat him on rare sacrificial occasions. The totem of a hostile stock
may be eaten by way of insult. In the case of the mouse, Isaiah seems to
refer to one or other of these practices (lxvi.): 'They that sanctify
themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the
midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the _mouse_, shall
be consumed together, saith the Lord.' This is like the Egyptian
prohibition to eat 'the abominable' (that is, tabooed or forbidden) 'Rat
of Ra.' If the unclean animals of Israel were originally the totems of
each clan, then the mouse was a totem, {115b} for the chosen people were
forbidden to eat 'the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his
kind.' That unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally
totems, Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ezekiel (viii. 10, 11), where
'we find seventy of the elders of Israel--that is, the heads of
houses--worshipping in a chamber which had on its walls the figures of
all manner of unclean' (tabooed) 'creeping things, and quadrupeds, _even
all the idols of the House of Israel_.' Some have too hastily concluded
that the mouse was a sacred animal among the neighbouring Philistines.
After the Philistines had captured the Ark and set it in the house of
Dagon, the people were smitten with disease. They therefore, in
accordance with a well-known savage magical practice, made five golden
representations of the diseased part, and five golden mice, as 'a
trespass offering to the Lord of Israel,' and so restored the Ark. {116}
Such votive offerings are common still in Catholic countries, and the
mice of gold by no means prove that the Philistines had ever worshipped
mice.
* * * * *
Turning to India from the Mediterranean basin, and the Aryan, Semitic,
and Egyptian tribes on its coasts, we find that the mouse was the sacred
animal of Rudra. 'The mouse, Rudra, is thy beast,' says the Yajur Veda,
as rendered by Grohmann in his 'Apollo Smintheus.' Grohmann recognises
in Rudra a deity with most of the characteristics of Apollo. In later
Indian mythology, the mouse is an attribute of Ganeca, who, like Apollo
Smintheus, is represented in art with his foot upon a mouse.
Such are the chief appearances of the mouse in ancient religion. If he
really was a Semitic totem, it may, perhaps, be argued that his
prevalence in connection with Apollo is the result of a Semitic leaven in
Hellenism. Hellenic invaders may have found Semitic mouse-tribes at
home, and incorporated the alien stock deity with their own
Apollo-worship. In that case the mouse, while still originally a totem,
would not be an Aryan totem. But probably the myths and rites of the
mouse, and their diffusion, are more plausibly explained on our theory
than on that of De Gubernatis: 'The Pagan sun-god crushes under his foot
the Mouse of Night. When the cat's away, the mice may play; the shadows
of night dance when the moon is absent.' {117a} This is one of the
quaintest pieces of mythological logic. Obviously, when the cat (the
moon) is away, the mice (the shadows) _cannot_ play: there is no light to
produce a shadow. As usually chances, the scholars who try to resolve
all the features of myth into physical phenomena do not agree among
themselves about the mouse. While the mouse is the night, according to
M. de Gubernatis, in Grohmann's opinion the mouse is the lightning. He
argues that the lightning was originally regarded by the Aryan race as
the 'flashing tooth of a beast,' especially of a mouse. Afterwards men
came to identify the beast with his teeth, and, behold, the lightning and
the mouse are convertible mythical terms! Now it is perfectly true that
savages regard many elemental phenomena, from eclipses to the rainbow, as
the result of the action of animals. The rainbow is a serpent; {117b}
thunder is caused by the thunder-bird, who has actually been shot in
Dacotah, and who is familiar to the Zulus; while rain is the milk of a
heavenly cow--an idea recurring in the 'Zend Avesta.' But it does not
follow because savages believe in these meteorological beasts that all
the beasts in myth were originally meteorological. Man raised a serpent
to the skies, perhaps, but his interest in the animal began on earth, not
in the clouds. It is excessively improbable, and quite unproved, that
any race ever regarded lightning as the flashes of a mouse's teeth. The
hypothesis is a jeu d'esprit, like the opposite hypothesis about the
mouse of Night. In these, and all the other current theories of the
Sminthian Apollo, the widely diffused worship of ordinary mice, and such
small deer, has been either wholly neglected, or explained by the first
theory of symbolism that occurred to the conjecture of a civilised
observer. The facts of savage animal-worship, and their relations to
totemism, seem still unknown to or unappreciated by scholars, with the
exception of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the
zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion.
Our explanation, whether adequate or not, is not founded on an isolated
case. If Apollo superseded and absorbed the worship of the mouse, he did
no less for the wolf, the ram, the dolphin, and several other animals
whose images were associated with his own. The Greek religion was more
refined and anthropomorphic than that of Egypt. In Egypt the animals
were still adored, and the images of the gods had bestial heads. In
Greece only a few gods, and chiefly in very archaic statues, had bestial
heads; but beside the other deities the sculptor set the owl, eagle,
wolf, serpent, tortoise, mouse, or whatever creature was the local
favourite of the deity. {118a} Probably the deity had, in the majority
of cases, superseded the animal and succeeded to his honours. But the
conservative religious sentiment retained the beast within the courts and
in the suit and service of the anthropomorphic god. {118b}
The process by which the god ousted the beasts may perhaps be observed in
Samoa. There (as Dr. Turner tells us in his 'Samoa') each family has its
own sacred animal, which it may not eat. If this law be transgressed,
the malefactor is supernaturally punished in a variety of ways. But,
while each family has thus its totem, four or five different families
recognise, in owl, crab, lizard, and so on, incarnations of the same god,
say of Tongo. If Tongo had a temple among these families, we can readily
believe that images of the various beasts in which he was incarnate would
be kept within the consecrated walls. Savage ideas like these, if they
were ever entertained in Greece, would account for the holy animals of
the different deities. But it is obvious that the phenomena which we
have been studying may be otherwise explained. It may be said that the
Sminthian Apollo was only revered as the enemy and opponent of mice. St.
Gertrude (whose heart was eaten by mice) has the same role in France.
{119} The worship of Apollo, and the badge of the mouse, would, on this
principle, be diffused by colonies from some centre of the faith. The
images of mice in Apollo's temples would be nothing more than votive
offerings. Thus, in the church of a Saxon town, the verger shows a
silver mouse dedicated to Our Lady. 'This is the greatest of our
treasures,' says the verger. 'Our town was overrun with mice till the
ladies of the city offered this mouse of silver. Instantly all the mice
disappeared.' 'And are you such fools as to believe that the creatures
went away because a silver mouse was dedicated?' asked a Prussian
officer. 'No,' replied the verger, rather neatly; 'or long ago we should
have offered a silver Prussian.'
STAR MYTHS.
Artemus Ward used to say that, while there were many things in the
science of astronomy hard to be understood, there was one fact which
entirely puzzled him. He could partly perceive how we 'weigh the sun,'
and ascertain the component elements of the heavenly bodies, by the aid
of spectrum analysis. 'But what beats me about the stars,' he observed
plaintively, 'is how we come to know their names.' This question, or
rather the somewhat similar question, 'How did the constellations come by
their very peculiar names?' has puzzled Professor Pritchard and other
astronomers more serious than Artemus Ward. Why is a group of stars
called the Bear, or the Swan, or the Twins, or named after the Pleiades,
the fair daughters of the Giant Atlas? {121} These are difficulties that
meet even children when they examine a 'celestial globe.' There they
find the figure of a bear, traced out with lines in the intervals between
the stars of the constellations, while a very imposing giant is so drawn
that Orion's belt just fits his waist. But when he comes to look at the
heavens, the infant speculator sees no sort of likeness to a bear in the
stars, nor anything at all resembling a giant in the neighbourhood of
Orion. The most eccentric modern fancy which can detect what shapes it
will in clouds, is unable to find any likeness to human or animal forms
in the stars, and yet we call a great many of the stars by the names of
men and beasts and gods. Some resemblance to terrestrial things, it is
true, everyone can behold in the heavens. Corona, for example, is like a
crown, or, as the Australian black fellows know, it is like a boomerang,
and we can understand why they give it the name of that curious curved
missile. The Milky Way, again, does resemble a path in the sky; our
English ancestors called it Watling Street--the path of the Watlings,
mythical giants--and Bushmen in Africa and Red Men in North America name
it the 'ashen path,' or 'the path of souls.' The ashes of the path, of
course, are supposed to be hot and glowing, not dead and black like the
ash-paths of modern running-grounds. Other and more recent names for
certain constellations are also intelligible. In Homer's time the Greeks
had two names for the Great Bear; they called it the Bear, or the Wain:
and a certain fanciful likeness to a wain may be made out, though no
resemblance to a bear is manifest. In the United States the same
constellation is popularly styled the Dipper, and every one may observe
the likeness to a dipper or toddy-ladle.
But these resemblances take us only a little way towards appellations. We
know that we derive many of the names straight from the Greek; but whence
did the Greeks get them? Some, it is said, from the Chaldaeans; but
whence did they reach the Chaldaeans? To this we shall return later,
but, as to early Greek star-lore, Goguet, the author of 'L'Origine des
Lois,' a rather learned but too speculative work of the last century,
makes the following characteristic remarks: 'The Greeks received their
astronomy from Prometheus. This prince, as far as history teaches us,
made his observations on Mount Caucasus.' That was the eighteenth
century's method of interpreting mythology. The myth preserved in the
'Prometheus Bound' of AEschylus tells us that Zeus crucified the Titan on
Mount Caucasus. The French philosopher, rejecting the supernatural
elements of the tale, makes up his mind that Prometheus was a prince of a
scientific bent, and that he established his observatory on the frosty
Caucasus. But, even admitting this, why did Prometheus give the stars
animal names? Goguet easily explains this by a hypothetical account of
the manners of primitive men. 'The earliest peoples,' he says, 'must
have used writing for purposes of astronomical science. They would be
content to design the constellations of which they wished to speak by the
hieroglyphical symbols of their names; hence the constellations have
insensibly taken the names of the chief symbols.' Thus, a drawing of a
bear or a swan was the hieroglyphic of the name of a star, or group of
stars. But whence came the name which was represented by the
hieroglyphic? That is precisely what our author forgets to tell us. But
he remarks that the meaning of the hieroglyphic came to be forgotten, and
'the symbols gave rise to all the ridiculous tales about the heavenly
signs.' This explanation is attained by the process of reasoning in a
vicious circle from hypothetical premises ascertained to be false. All
the known savages of the world, even those which have scarcely the
elements of picture-writing, call the constellations by the names of men
and animals, and all tell 'ridiculous tales' to account for the names.
As the star-stories told by the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, and other
civilised people of the old world, exactly correspond in character, and
sometimes even in incident, with the star-stories of modern savages, we
have the choice of three hypotheses to explain this curious coincidence.
Perhaps the star-stories, about nymphs changed into bears, and bears
changed into stars, were invented by the civilised races of old, and
gradually found their way amongst people like the Eskimo, and the
Australians, and Bushmen. Or it may be insisted that the ancestors of
Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen were once civilised, like the Greeks and
Egyptians, and invented star-stories, still remembered by their
degenerate descendants. These are the two forms of the explanation which
will be advanced by persons who believe that the star-stories were
originally the fruit of the civilised imagination. The third theory
would be, that the 'ridiculous tales' about the stars were originally the
work of the savage imagination, and that the Greeks, Chaldaeans, and
Egyptians, when they became civilised, retained the old myths that their
ancestors had invented when they were savages. In favour of this theory
it may be said, briefly, that there is no proof that the fathers of
Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen had ever been civilised, while there is
a great deal of evidence to suggest that the fathers of the Greeks had
once been savages. {125} And, if we incline to the theory that the star-
myths are the creation of savage fancy, we at once learn why they are, in
all parts of the world, so much alike. Just as the flint and bone
weapons of rude races resemble each other much more than they resemble
the metal weapons and the artillery of advanced peoples, so the mental
products, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have everywhere a
strong family resemblance. They are produced by men in similar mental
conditions of ignorance, curiosity, and credulous fancy, and they are
intended to supply the same needs, partly of amusing narrative, partly of
crude explanation of familiar phenomena.
Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion that the star-stories
of savage and of civilised races closely resemble each other. Let us
begin with that well-known group the Pleiades. The peculiarity of the
Pleiades is that the group consists of seven stars, of which one is so
dim that it seems entirely to disappear, and many persons can only detect
its presence through a telescope. The Greeks had a myth to account for
the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. The tale is given in the
'Catasterismoi' (stories of metamorphoses into stars) attributed to
Eratosthenes. This work was probably written after our era; but the
author derived his information from older treatises now lost. According
to the Greek myth, then, the seven stars of the Pleiad were seven
maidens, daughters of the Giant Atlas. Six of them had gods for lovers;
Poseidon admired two of them, Zeus three, and Ares one; but the seventh
had only an earthly wooer, and when all of them were changed into stars,
the maiden with the mortal lover hid her light for shame.
Now let us compare the Australian story. According to Mr. Dawson
('Australian Aborigines'), a writer who understands the natives well,
'their knowledge of the heavenly bodies greatly exceeds that of most
white people,' and 'is taught by men selected for their intelligence and
information. The knowledge is important to the aborigines on their night
journeys;' so we may be sure that the natives are careful observers of
the heavens, and are likely to be conservative of their astronomical
myths. The 'Lost Pleiad' has not escaped them, and this is how they
account for her disappearance. The Pirt Kopan noot tribe have a
tradition that the Pleiades were a queen and her six attendants. Long
ago the Crow (our Canopus) fell in love with the queen, who refused to be
his wife. The Crow found that the queen and her six maidens, like other
Australian gins, were in the habit of hunting for white edible grubs in
the bark of trees. The Crow at once changed himself into a grub (just as
Jupiter and Indra used to change into swans, horses, ants, or what not)
and hid in the bark of a tree. The six maidens sought to pick him out
with their wooden hooks, but he broke the points of all the hooks. Then
came the queen, with her pretty bone hook; he let himself be drawn out,
took the shape of a giant, and ran away with her. Ever since there have
only been six stars, the six maidens, in the Pleiad. This story is well
known, by the strictest inquiry, to be current among the blacks of the
West District and in South Australia.
Mr. Tylor, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, thinks that
this may be a European myth, told by some settler to a black in the Greek
form, and then spread about among the natives. He complains that the
story of the loss of the _brightest_ star does not fit the facts of the
case.
We do not know, and how can the Australians know, that the lost star was
once the brightest? It appears to me that the Australians, remarking the
disappearances of a star, might very naturally suppose that the _Crow_
had selected for his wife that one which had been the most brilliant of
the cluster. Besides, the wide distribution of the tale among the
natives, and the very great change in the nature of the incidents, seem
to point to a native origin. Though the main conception--the loss of one
out of seven maidens--is identical in Greek and in Murri, the manner of
the disappearance is eminently Hellenic in the one case, eminently savage
in the other. However this may be, nothing of course is proved by a
single example. Let us next examine the stars Castor and Pollux. Both
in Greece and in Australia these are said once to have been two young
men. In the 'Catasterismoi,' already spoken of, we read: 'The Twins, or
Dioscouroi.--They were nurtured in Lacedaemon, and were famous for their
brotherly love, wherefore, Zeus, desiring to make their memory immortal,
placed them both among the stars.' In Australia, according to Mr. Brough
Smyth ('Aborigines of Victoria'), Turree (Castor) and Wanjel (Pollux) are
two young men who pursue Purra and kill him at the commencement of the
great heat. Coonar toorung (the mirage) is the smoke of the fire by
which they roast him. In Greece it was not Castor and Pollux, but Orion
who was the great hunter placed among the stars. Among the Bushmen of
South Africa, Castor and Pollux are not young men, but young women, the
wives of the Eland, the great native antelope. In Greek star-stories the
Great Bear keeps watch, Homer says, on the hunter Orion for fear of a
sudden attack. But how did the Bear get its name in Greece? According
to Hesiod, the oldest Greek poet after Homer, the Bear was once a lady,
daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. She was a nymph of the train of
chaste Artemis, but yielded to the love of Zeus, and became the
ancestress of all the Arcadians (that is, Bear-folk). In her bestial
form she was just about to be slain by her own son when Zeus rescued her
by raising her to the stars. Here we must notice first, that the
Arcadians, like Australians, Red Indians, Bushmen, and many other wild
races, and like the Bedouins, believed themselves to be descended from an
animal. That the early Egyptians did the same is not improbable; for
names of animals are found among the ancestors in the very oldest
genealogical papyrus, {128} as in the genealogies of the old English
kings. Next the Arcadians transferred the ancestral bear to the heavens,
and, in doing this, they resembled the Peruvians, of whom Acosta says:
'They adored the star Urchuchilly, feigning it to be a Ram, and
worshipped two others, and say that one of them is a _sheep_, and the
other a lamb . . . others worshipped the star called the Tiger. _They
were of opinion that there was not any beast or bird upon the earth,
whose shape or image did not shine in the heavens_.'
But to return to our bears. The Australians have, properly speaking, no
bears, though the animal called the native bear is looked up to by the
aborigines with superstitious regard. But among the North American
Indians, as the old missionaries Lafitau and Charlevoix observed, 'the
four stars in front of our constellation are a bear; those in the tail
are hunters who pursue him; the small star apart is the pot in which they
mean to cook him.'
It may be held that the Red Men derived their bear from the European
settlers. But, as we have seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has
always been useful if not essential to savages; and we venture to doubt
whether they would confuse their nomenclature and sacred traditions by
borrowing terms from trappers and squatters. But, if this is improbable,
it seems almost impossible that all savage races should have borrowed
their whole conception of the heavenly bodies from the myths of Greece.
It is thus that Egede, a missionary of the last century, describes the
Eskimo philosophy of the stars: 'The notions that the Greenlanders have
as to the origin of the heavenly lights--as sun, moon, and stars--are
very nonsensical; in that they pretend they have formerly been as many of
their own ancestors, who, on different accounts, were lifted up to
heaven, and became such glorious celestial bodies.' Again, he writes:
'Their notions about the stars are that some of them have been men, and
others different sorts, of animals and fishes.' But every reader of Ovid
knows that this was the very mythical theory of the Greeks and Romans.
The Egyptians, again, worshipped Osiris, Isis, and the rest as
_ancestors_, and there are even modern scholars, like Mr. Loftie in his
'Essay of Scarabs,' who hold Osiris to have been originally a real
historical person. But the Egyptian priests who showed Plutarch the
grave of Osiris, showed him, too, the stars into which Osiris, Isis, and
Horus had been metamorphosed. Here, then, we have Greeks, Egyptians, and
Eskimo, all agreed about the origin of the heavenly lights, all of
opinion that 'they have formerly been as many of their own ancestors.'
The Australian general theory is: 'Of the good men and women, after the
deluge, Pundjel (a kind of Zeus, or rather a sort of Prometheus of
Australian mythology) made stars. Sorcerers (Biraark) can tell which
stars were once good men and women.' Here the sorcerers have the same
knowledge as the Egyptian priests. Again, just as among the Arcadians,
'the progenitors of the existing tribes, whether birds, or beasts, or
men, were set in the sky, and made to shine as stars.' {130}
We have already given some Australian examples in the stories of the
Pleiades, and of Castor and Pollux. We may add the case of the Eagle. In
Greece the Eagle was the bird of Zeus, who carried off Ganymede to be the
cup-bearer of Olympus. Among the Australians this same constellation is
called Totyarguil; he was a man who, when bathing, was killed by a
fabulous animal, a kind of kelpie; as Orion, in Greece, was killed by the
Scorpion. Like Orion, he was placed among the stars. The Australians
have a constellation named Eagle, but he is our Sinus, or Dog-star.
The Indians of the Amazon are in one tale with the Australians and
Eskimo. 'Dr. Silva de Coutinho informs me,' says Professor Hartt, {131}
'that the Indians of the Amazonas not only give names to many of the
heavenly bodies, but also tell stories about them. The two stars that
form the shoulders of Orion are said to be an old man and a boy in a
canoe, chasing a peixe boi, by which name is designated a dark spot in
the sky near the above constellation.' The Indians also know
monkey-stars, crane-stars, and palm-tree stars.
The Bushmen, almost the lowest tribe of South Africa, have the same star-
lore and much the same myths as the Greeks, Australians, Egyptians, and
Eskimo. According to Dr. Bleek, 'stars, and even the sun and moon, were
once mortals on earth, or even animals or inorganic substances, which
happened to get translated to the skies. The sun was once a man, whose
arm-pit radiated a limited amount of light round his house. Some
children threw him into the sky, and there he shines.' The Homeric hymn
to Helios, in the same way, as Mr. Max Muller observes, 'looks on the sun
as a half-god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth.' The pointers
of the Southern Cross were 'two men who were lions,' just as Callisto, in
Arcadia, was a woman who was a bear. It is not at all rare in those
queer philosophies, as in that of the Scandinavians, to find that the sun
or moon has been a man or woman. In Australian fable the moon was a man,
the sun a woman of indifferent character, who appears at dawn in a coat
of red kangaroo skins, the present of an admirer. In an old Mexican text
the moon was a man, across whose face a god threw a rabbit, thus making
the marks in the moon. {132a}
Many separate races seem to recognise the figure of a hare, where we see
'the Man in the Moon.' In a Buddhist legend, an exemplary and altruistic
hare was translated to the moon. 'To the common people in India the
spots on the moon look like a hare, and Chandras, the god of the moon,
carries a hare: hence the moon is called sasin or sasanka, hare-mark. The
Mongolians also see in these shadows the figure of a hare.' {132b} Among
the Eskimo, the moon is a girl, who always flees from her cruel brother,
the sun, because he disfigured her face. Elsewhere the sun is the girl,
beloved by her own brother, the moon; she blackens her face to avert his
affection. On the Rio Branco, and among the Tomunda, the moon is a girl
who loved her brother and visited him in the dark. He detected her
wicked passion by drawing his blackened hand over her face. The marks
betrayed her, and, as the spots on the moon, remain to this day. {133}
Among the New Zealanders and North American Indians the sun is a great
beast, whom the hunters trapped and thrashed with cudgels. His blood is
used in some New Zealand incantations; and, according to an Egyptian
myth, was kneaded into clay at the making of man. But there is no end to
similar sun-myths, in all of which the sun is regarded as a man, or even
as a beast.
To return to the stars--
The Red Indians, as Schoolcraft says, 'hold many of the planets to be
transformed adventurers.' The Iowas 'believed stars to be a sort of
living creatures.' One of them came down and talked to a hunter, and
showed him where to find game. The Gallinomeros of Central California,
according to Mr. Bancroft, believe that the sun and moon were made and
lighted up by the Hawk and the Coyote, who one day flew into each other's
faces in the dark, and were determined to prevent such accidents in the
future. But the very oddest example of the survival of the notion that
the stars are men or women is found in the 'Pax' of Aristophanes. Trygaeus
in that comedy has just made an expedition to heaven. A slave meets him,
and asks him, 'Is not the story true, then, that we become stars when we
die?' The answer is 'Certainly;' and Trygaeus points out the star into
which Ios of Chios has just been metamorphosed. Aristophanes is making
fun of some popular Greek superstition. But that very superstition meets
us in New Zealand. 'Heroes,' says Mr. Taylor, 'were thought to become
stars of greater or less brightness, according to the number of their
victims slain in fight.' The Aryan race is seldom far behind, when there
are ludicrous notions to be credited or savage tales to be told. We have
seen that Aristophanes, in Greece, knew the Eskimo doctrine that stars
are souls of the dead. The Persians had the same belief, {134a} 'all the
unnumbered stars were reckoned ghosts of men.' {134b} The German
folklore clings to the same belief, 'Stars are souls; when a child dies
God makes a new star.' Kaegi quotes {134c} the same idea from the Veda,
and from the Satapatha Brahmana the thoroughly Australian notion that
'good men become stars.' For a truly savage conception, it would be
difficult, in South Africa or on the Amazons, to beat the following story
from the 'Aitareya Brahmana' (iii. 33.) Pragapati, the Master of Life,
conceived an incestuous passion for his own daughter. Like Zeus, and
Indra, and the Australian wooer in the Pleiad tale, he concealed himself
under the shape of a beast, a roebuck, and approached his own daughter,
who had assumed the form of a doe. The gods, in anger at the awful
crime, made a monster to punish Pragapati. The monster sent an arrow
through the god's body; he sprang into heaven, and, like the Arcadian
bear, this Aryan roebuck became a constellation. He is among the stars
of Orion, and his punisher, also now a star, is, like the Greek Orion, a
hunter. Th
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