Myths and Myth-Makers

FOOTNOTES:

1 (return)
[ See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.]

2 (return)
[ Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.]

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

4 (return)
[ Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in Mr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Many parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp. 126-136. See also the story of Folliculus,—Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ad. Wright, Vol. I. p. lxxxii]

5 (return)
[ See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp. 145-149.]

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

7 (return)
[ The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of El-Basrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p. 452.]

8 (return)
[ "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le supprimer."—Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.]

9 (return)
[ "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made in the languages of the Eskimos, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it, so far as is known, and with them it is partial." According to the Fijians, "vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits."—M'Lennan, The Worship of Animals and Plants, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XII. p, 416.]

10 (return)
[ Marcus Aurelius, V. 7.]

11 (return)
[ Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy in his Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I am still disposed to follow Max Muller in adopting them, with the possible exception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52) that many of the Homeric legends may have clustered around some historical basis, I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my paper on "Juventus Mundi."]

12 (return)
[ Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memes que celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raison que l'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus riche mythologie a cote de la plus profonde metaphysique. "La conception de la multiplicite dans l'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez les peuples enfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a l'age mur."—Renan, Hist. des Langues Semitiques, Tom. I. p. 9.]

13 (return)
[ Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, in my paper on "Myths of the Barbaric World."]

14 (return)
[ A collection of these interesting legends may be found in Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," of which work this paper was originally a review.]

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

16 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. p. 197.]

17 (return)
[ Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to pay the piper."]

18 (return)
[ And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic musician, who

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

19 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 159.]

20 (return)
[ Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic terror which Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.]

21 (return)
[ In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person who is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. The same custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.]

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

23 (return)
[ "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneiennes choses, et la plenitude de l'histoire ne se devoile qu'a celui qui descend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeure moderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foi scientifique."—LITTRS.]

24 (return)
[ For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis tracing one of these illusions to its psychological sources, see the account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. pp. 121-125.]

25 (return)
[ See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp. 57-77. The learned author attributes the discomfiture to the uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning much like that of my village sorcerer, I fear.]

26 (return)
[ Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177.]

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

28 (return)
[ 1 Kings vi. 7.]

29 (return)
[ Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the temple, in Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ed. Wright, Vol I. p. lxiv. See also the pretty story of the knight unjustly imprisoned, id. p. cii.]

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

31 (return)
[ Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 202]

32 (return)
[ Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. Berlin, 1859.]

33 (return)
[ "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic the secge, forthon heo locath on helle.—Tell me, why is the sun red at even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.]

34 (return)
[ "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they are shaking up the feather beds in heaven."—Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 172.]

35 (return)
[ "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or 'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside."—Max Muller, Chips, II. 268.]

36 (return)
[ "—And said the gods, let there be a hammered plate in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters." Genesis i. 6.]

37 (return)
[ Genesis vii. 11.]

38 (return)
[ See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p 120; who states also that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed on top of the funeral-pile. In their character of cows, also, the clouds were regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popular superstition that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death in the family.]

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

40 (return)
[ Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representing it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinct dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true character when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures the sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns." See Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "Blue Belt" belongs to the same species.]

41 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.]

42 (return)
[ "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide." Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing of the incongruity.]

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

44 (return)
[ Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through which the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may henceforth pass forever. See the details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I. 315.]

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

46 (return)
[ In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures," it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must be good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous glands; while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a sovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder." Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866.]

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

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

49 (return)
[ Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faery Queen," where, however, the knight fares better than this poor priest. Usually these lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, into which none might look and live. This conception is the foundation of part of the story of Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the third one-eyed Calender]

50 (return)
[ Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. p. 161.]

51 (return)
[ Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.]

52 (return)
[ Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.]

53 (return)
[ Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.]

54 (return)
[ Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.]

55 (return)
[ The production of fire by the drill is often called churning, e. g. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it, and kindled a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174.]

56 (return)
[ Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VIII. 6, 32.]

57 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.]

58 (return)
[ It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the "holy water" of the Roman Catholic.]

59 (return)
[ In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally the personification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 277.]

60 (return)
[ We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek fire-god Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.]

61 (return)
[ "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for the purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar virtues."—Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.]

62 (return)
[ In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil, the thunder-god,.... "he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from his sling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villages as fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love."—Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 239]

63 (return)
[ In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new complication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as a wind-god."—Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242.]

64 (return)
[ Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.]

65 (return)
[ Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautological expression.]

66 (return)
[ Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. I. p. 151.]

67 (return)
[ Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.]

68 (return)
[ Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.]

69 (return)
[ Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of God"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation,—that Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan, Histoire des Langues Semitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note; Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 268.]

70 (return)
[ Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr. prath (to spread out), Eng. flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.]

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

72 (return)
[ Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, who slays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power of injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the whole country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur. Toward the close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with the professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit, excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and those concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.]

73 (return)
[ Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to open the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be hindered in joining the mystic cavalcade.]

74 (return)
[ The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the English version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissa the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by the cow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184; and the story of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All these are different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alternate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonly personified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see Early History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 501.]

75 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, II. 435.]

76 (return)
[ In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have been thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.]

77 (return)
[ See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselves with drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselves into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck.]

78 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.]

79 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.]

80 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.]

81 (return)
[ Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.]

82 (return)
[ "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceux qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de lui. Il dit en confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraiment un loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce qu'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans.—Pour s'assurer du fait, on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui emporta les bras et les jambes."—Taine, De l'Intelligence, Tom. II. p. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 404-418.]

83 (return)
[ Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have not the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion, unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may, no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.]

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

85 (return)
[ "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; compare Anglo-Saxon wudurmaere (wood-mare) = echo."—Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 173.]

86 (return)
[ See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische Studien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281 Muller, Chips, II. 114-128.]

87 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.]

88 (return)
[ The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden," as is illustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph and the Latin nubes.]

89 (return)
[ This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.]

90 (return)
[ The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssn of El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 179.]

91 (return)
[ Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 123.]

92 (return)
[ Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.]

93 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133.]

94 (return)
[ Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, Vol. I. pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen Grundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga.]

95 (return)
[ In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond question that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of Odin, the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus of the pagan Roman.]

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

97 (return)
[ See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.]

98 (return)
[ The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation degraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancient devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of Buddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. This is like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the Devil.]

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

100 (return)
[ Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. Petronius Arbiter, Sat. xliv.]

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

102 (return)
[ The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a circumlocution,—`the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear by." Ibid, p. 31.]

103 (return)
[ Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230.]

104 (return)
[ Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.]

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

106 (return)
[ The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being identical with that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, II. 358.]

107 (return)
[ In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed into the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the day of judgment.]

108 (return)
[ Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.]

109 (return)
[ In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of household legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundant and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very instructive.]

110 (return)
[ There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; the former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If Herakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta, sequor to epomai, etc. It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of his History, abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint zunachst als Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen Vermogensvermehrung." Romische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladly learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible opinion.]

111 (return)
[ For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970.]

112 (return)
[ Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, III. p. lxxxvi; Breal, op. cit. p. 98.]

113 (return)
[ Max Muller, Science of Language, II 484.]

114 (return)
[ As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythological considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek." Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers to the Panis.]

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

116 (return)
[ Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden of Eden.]

117 (return)
[ For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of the details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, seq.]

118 (return)
[ Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.]

119 (return)
[ Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.]

120 (return)
[ Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse story of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old woman is in doubt as to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in a tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks at her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the Frenschutz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.]

121 (return)
[ See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.]

122 (return)
[ Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No. XLII.]

123 (return)
[ See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 10.]

124 (return)
[ "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had never seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he said, 'Good day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff voice, and striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram; who are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.]

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

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

127 (return)
[ Max Muller, Chips, II. 96.]

128 (return)
[ Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.]

129 (return)
[ A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of the house."]

130 (return)
[ For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis of Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.]

131 (return)
[ Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.]

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

133 (return)
[ Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.]

134 (return)
[ Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.]

135 (return)
[ Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.]

136 (return)
[ Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.]

137 (return)
[ See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been absent from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a well-known passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal in Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west.]

138 (return)
[ Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 321.]

139 (return)
[ Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.]

140 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.]

141 (return)
[ Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.]

142 (return)
[ Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace says: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.]

143 (return)
[ Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.]

144 (return)
[ Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.]

145 (return)
[ Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-152; cf. a similar story in which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the sequel of the tale.]

146 (return)
[ Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.]

147 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.]

148 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.]

149 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. p. 336. November, 1870]

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

151 (return)
[ Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.]

152 (return)
[ Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.]

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

154 (return)
[ I have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come of comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872,—a book which is open to several of the criticisms here directed against Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing.]

155 (return)
[ "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, finds out the criminal, was originally quite free from mythology; IT MEANT NO MORE THAN THAT CRIME WOULD BE BROUGHT TO LIGHT SOME DAY OR OTHER. It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaning of Erinys was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the rank of a personal being."—Science of Language, 6th edition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine, contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at variance with the facts of history. The facts concerning primitive culture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the case is just the other way. Instead of the expression "Erinys finds the criminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literal statement of what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of time,"(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally regarded as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk in metaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their similes and personifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poetic metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone as essumenos or "yearning" (to keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurative expression; but to the savage it is the description of a fact.]

156 (return)
[ Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B. Tylor. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1871.]

157 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.]

158 (return)
[ Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration, see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures," supra, p. 55.]

159 (return)
[ Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36, "The Origin of Animal Worship."]

160 (return)
[ See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that the sitting up is intended to attract the master's attention. The dog has frequently been seen trying to soften the heart of the ball, while observed unawares by his master.]

161 (return)
[ "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr. Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a special providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life than is the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a few fetichistic notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with which he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play with him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had been drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit and eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or expected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit, however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1, 1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in the dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed association between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of a multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with his greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.]

162 (return)
[ Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, ekstasis, a displacement or removal of the soul from the body, into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the literal belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such words as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or transported."]

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

164 (return)
[ Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, p. 123.]

165 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.]

166 (return)
[ Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p. 210.]

167 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]

168 (return)
[ In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.]

169 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.]

171 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.]

172 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no reason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks why it is naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an evidence of bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the inroads of the practical sense.]

173 (return)
[ Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.]

174 (return)
[ Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.]

175 (return)
[ Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]

176 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.]

177 (return)
[ Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.]

178 (return)
[ According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOUL OF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.]

179 (return)
[ The following citation is interesting as an illustration of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple at the foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessing children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.]

180 (return)
[ Want of space prevents me from remarking at length upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant explanation of the importance accorded by all religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental state which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-man qualifies himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, and where this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence the sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. The practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of survival.]

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